Connor Beaton - The Myth Of Toxic Masculinity: Why 'Man-Shaming' Needs To Stop Now

Full transcript: Connor Beaton on London Real

3:39 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Connor Beaton, the entrepreneur, best selling author and keynote speaker.

3:56 You are the founder of Mantalks, an international organisation focusing on improving the lives and relationships of men, with the goal of helping to better understand the challenges men face in today’s world. Your work has been featured on platforms like Forbes, CBS and Ted X, and you are the author of Men’s Work, a practical guide for men seeking to confront their inner darkness, overcome self sabotage and gain a sense of freedom and purpose. You have developed an innovative approach to healing the quote unquote shadow, a concept that addresses the hidden parts of ourselves that contribute to our struggles. You have said there’s an epidemic of man shaming within society as well as a lack of authentic support, leading many men to feel isolated, purposeless and disconnected. You ultimately believe that too many men have traded their sovereignty and masculinity for comforts and validation. Connor, welcome to London Real.

4:54 Connor Beaton: Thank you very much for having me Brian. I appreciate it and feels good to be here.

5:00 Brian Rose: Great to have you. You know, in preparing for this, I really thought deeply about who taught me to be a man. I think I’m pretty well versed in the subject.

5:11 But of course, I’m 53, so I’ve been around the block and I grew up at a different time where you used to think you’re, you know, your grandpa’s generation was when men were men. But I guess I got a different experience than, say, if you’re in your 20s growing up today, because I guess I was a little more older school than that, even though I don’t feel old school per SE. And I also have sons that are 7 and 8 years old. And so I think regularly about how I want to raise them, which isn’t often in conflict with their mother. And so I’ve thought a lot about this. And I don’t know, part of me wants to just hit you with a few highlights that came out.

5:50 And then I’d love to also dive into a lot of the things that you talk about. How does that sound?

5:55 Connor Beaton: That sounds great.

5:56 Brian Rose: So I just real quick, I don’t know why, I just feel like I got a blast through some of the points in, in my head. But you know, I was, you know, grew up in the 70s in California.

6:04 My parents divorced when I was 7 and then I was with my mom, you know, and I think that event had a big effect on me. And I saw my dad every now and then, but I wasn’t really around a lot of men. And besides, I guess movies and TV back then, there wasn’t, you know, Jocko Willinks and Jordan Peterson’s on YouTube, you know, that just didn’t exist. And weirdly enough, my mom actually got a couple college students from the local UCSD to actually live with us when they were kids. And man, I, I, I stuck to him like glue. I used to get all in their rooms when they were trying to do homework and I was around them all the time. And I must say, they kind of taught me a lot of things about how to be a man when I was in my teenage years, weirdly. And I kind of had this flashback today. Then I got into MITI, went to Boston and I joined a fraternity house and we moved right into the fraternity as as a freshman. So I was 18 years old living in a group with 50 men, average age 20, Max age 22.

7:07 Connor It was a bit like Lord of the Flies, you know? And I’m telling you, Connor, that’s when I, I really learned a lot of the ways of being a man. You know, I still remember this time where there was a fraternity party and I got drunk and did something kind of stupid. And a senior the next day, four years older than me, pulled me aside and said, I want to talk to you, Brian. And he laid it out for me.

7:32 And I was like, oh, wow, this is how men behave. You know, they pull you aside and they tell you what you, what you did to screw up, told you how they weren’t happy about it and they adjusted your behaviour. And at the same time, I was a pledge. So they used to make us do push ups and haze us, which a lot of people say is bad, but it’s actually part of becoming a man somehow. And I think if most men are honest, we haze anybody new to a group to see if they’re worthy of our group. So anyways, from there I went to Wall Street. And I know you lived in Manhattan for a while. I moved there in 93 and I went to a trading floor on Wall Street, which was one of the most brutal, nastiest environments I’ve ever been on.

8:13 I mean, it was, you know, 12 hours a day, physical, mental, you know, emotional intimidation and abuse because everybody was fighting for that year end bonus. And if they could intimidate someone or make someone look stupid, they would get paid more. So it was this crazy environment with like brokers and traders and everybody. The language was foul. You were just trying to one up each other.

8:37 So I got a dose of it there, came to London, got a similar thing in the city and then Connor. That all ended when I started this show 13 years ago and I started to look at life a little bit differently. Joe Rogan had me on his show and I, I saw that Joe invited me on, even though I, I look like competition. He was, he invited me on because he wanted to promote me. And I was like, wait a second, maybe this whole, you know, you win, I lose, I win, you lose was the wrong way of looking at life. So I started thinking more collaboratively. And then I had people like Jocko on the show and Dan Pena and all these people.

9:18 And if I’m honest, Connor and I look at London Real, it’s my search for an alpha male figure. And it’s not that my dad wasn’t that figure, but I think his men were always looking for those figures. But if you look at the guests on my show, it’s a lot of alphas. And maybe that’s me looking to find, you know, in search of more, I don’t know, leadership, knowledge, et cetera. So look, I don’t know if anyone’s ever given you that download, but this is the things I’ve been thinking about. And now, of course, my sons, I’m consciously trying to teach them to be the men they need to be in a world of uncertainty when I’m not there.

10:01 So, you know, I’m curious what you think when you hear me recount some of that because you know, you, you talk to a lot of people about this stuff, but what do you, what do you hear in that or what do you see in that?

10:15 Connor Beaton: Yeah, man, I think a couple of things stand out. You know, the, the divorce obviously is a big thing that a lot of young men go through that a lot of men have gone through and that can displace a boy from his father, just depending on, you know, I don’t know what that looked like for you in terms of how often you saw your dad.

10:37 But, you know, I’m a byproduct of divorce as well. My parents got divorced when I was three. And what ended up happening was that I didn’t see my father very often. You know, I saw him once or twice every month over the weekend. And so I didn’t really get the consistent masculine presence that I think a lot of boys actually need.

11:00 And you can see this in the stats in in America right now where one in four children are going to grow up without a father figure in the household. And that’s that detrimental specifically when you dig down in the stats, is detrimental specifically to boys who end up having higher crime rates and higher rates of ADHD and, you know, substance abuse and dropping out of school and ending up in gaol and all these types of things. And So what ends up happening is, and I’m not saying that this is your case specifically, but you did sort of earmark something that there’s been this constant pursuit of trying to find really whether we want to call them healthy male role models or alpha male role models or just men, that you can kind of hone your skills, your edge, your leadership, your understanding of who you are as a man. And, and that’s a very important attribute that in some ways there’s a couple things that have happened culturally within Western society that have strip mind, really healthy masculinity, really solid masculinity out of the structures and the systems that we inhabit. So one, we’ve removed a lot of fathers from the household directly or indirectly, which has a negative impact on boys. 2 We’ve taken out initiation processes or systems where a young boy would get initiated into manhood. And, you know, we sort of replaced them with the hazing of fraternities as you, as you described, which can be, you know, they can be good in some

12:31 Ways and they can be pretty rough in other ways. You know, because there is something about masculinity that requires elder hood, you know, that requires the transmission of maturity from the elder men down through the ranks. And when we don’t have that, what ends up happening is arise in, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of young man syndrome, but it’s this period of time between like 16 and 25 where the highest rates of male mortality occur, the highest rates of overdoses and substance abuse occur. Because men go into this stage that, you know, sort of like 18/19/2021 where we start taking a tremendous amount of risk. We start to sort of buck against the traditional systems and authorities that we have in our life. And we’re trying to what Carl Jung would call individuate. So we’re trying to find our own sense of individuality, sovereignty, you know, self understanding. And often times how we do that as men is different from women where we kind of need something to, to push up against, you know, to, to sharpen our edges against. And so when there’s no really solid good male role models to do that with, what we end up doing is trying to refine who we are against, you know, externalised authorities, teachers, coaches, which some places can be OK. But for the most part, we’re like, we’re missing that sharpening stone that a lot of men need in that in that period of their life.

14:18 And then we’re missing the the sort of elder men that would normally be transmitting what it looks like for you to step into that next stage as a man, whether it’s, you know, you’re going into the workforce, you’re, you know, entering the legal age, you’re getting married, you’re becoming a father, you know, all of these responsibilities in life. What’s happening for a lot of men is that there’s just this epidemic of vacancy. They, they don’t really see anybody that’s a good living example.

14:48 And I think you’ve probably, it sounds like you’ve done a very good job of surrounding yourself with men that can sort of fill some of the gaps that were maybe present for you earlier on in life.

14:59 Brian Rose: It’s weird. I mean, part of me thinks that men, men always searched that further knowledge, you know, throughout their lives. But maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m trying to do it. But like, I can. I’ve had over 1000 guests on the show, like 90 some percent are men and most of them have an alpha character to it. Now, alpha is expressed in different ways. It doesn’t mean they yell a lot and scream a lot. It just means they’re good at what they do, which of course, that’s probably who I would have on this show to talk. They probably have something to say. If you have something to say, you probably lived something, created some IP, etcetera.

15:35 But yeah, there’s definitely that. It’s interesting because in my 20s in New York City, I was basically, you know, trying to kill myself. And I almost did. I mean, I had two overdoses when I was 30 in 2001. And, you know, I, I, you know, and almost died. And so that was this period that you’re kind of describing more. I was just pushing, pushing the envelope, seeing how far I can push it.

15:59 Question is, is if, if I was in the Army or if I was in some other structure, would I have not done that? Perhaps if I was a father, would I have not done that? Perhaps not necessarily a given. You know, what was that structure 100 years ago or 200 years ago? Was it the military? Was it a little bit more of a, of a fixed way of going throughout life like a steady career path? That these are good questions.

16:27 I’m not sure.

16:28 Connor Beaton: Yeah. I mean, part of it is that we had, I’ll just come back to initiation. I think the structure is important, but part of it is that we did have initiation processes or that we were taking people through, you know. And so when a young boy came of age, the elders in the community, in the village, the the older men who had been through initiation would take him out of the home into the wilderness and take him through some type of initiation ritual or experience. And there’s a great quote by a Franciscan monk named Richard Rohr, who’s really, he’s got some wonderful writings about this, who says unless a man experiences or goes on a journey of powerlessness, he will always abuse power. And so part of the initiation process that we’re supposed to go through as young men so that we don’t fall into this very immature and sort of youthful mindset of becoming almost omnipotent, you know, like when you’re a young man. I was the same thing.

17:30 You know, I bought 1000 CC motorcycle when I was 18. I saved up cash in a Ziploc bag underneath my mattress, you know, and just squirrelled it away and then bought 1000 CC motorcycle because I thought I was kind of invincible and I wanted to test myself and push myself. And I was reckless, you know, drinking as much as I humanly could, having like competitive, you know, beer pong events, which, you know, I think a lot of a lot of guys fall into. But unless we go through these types of initiatory experiences where we are put intentionally in a powerless position, we don’t know what to do with the power that we have as men.

18:10 And we do have a lot of power intellectually, physically, you know, when you’re a, when you’re a young man, you are quite robust and potent. And so without those initiatory experiences, what I’ve noticed is that men will create, they will create their own pseudo or false initiations. And these pseudo and false initiations are what you’re describing. It’s bottoming out, it’s building our lives up and then absolutely destroying it. You know, I did the exact same thing.

18:41 Great career, travelling the world, wonderful, you know, girlfriend had the toys that the motorcycle, the the Mustang, which at the time was like the thing that I like, really wanted as a young man, interesting career. And then I blew it all up. And a part of that was that I didn’t have any initiation into manhood. And so psychologically, there was a part of me that felt like I needed to test who am I? How bad can can shit get?

19:11 And I can recover from it, you know, can I, can I enter into the territory of real challenge, like a battlefield in an arena, and can I emerge on the other side victorious? And so there’s something within the masculine psyche that craves these types of challenges. And when we don’t provide them for young men, what happens is that they seek them sometimes in maladaptive ways, through drugs, gangs, you know, street racing like I did, fighting at bars like I did, like all these, all these types of things where we then look for something to push up against and try and figure out our relationship to our own power.

19:53 Brian Rose: Yeah, I’ve often thought about my 20s, and now that I’m a little wiser and I’ve done a lot more introspection and, you know, some ayahuasca ceremonies, which can help as well to really get you to see things you wouldn’t normally see. I’d be a fool to not say that I sabotage myself through my 20s. I mean, what was I doing?

20:15 I mean, here I was. I had the MIT degree, I had the Wall Street job, and I could have just crushed it. And but I what I was doing was drinking myself to death and then drugging myself to death to, I just screwed it all up. And like one of my buddies from MIT, he didn’t screw it up. He like, crushed it and did all the right things, or at least he didn’t do the wrong things. And I looked at him today and I’m like, OK. Now, to be honest, Connor, I wouldn’t have changed anything, honestly.

20:44 And so that worked well for him. Now that in retrospect, I can see that. But I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t think I sabotaged myself, which I would have never, ever believed I could do that. Because for me, it was like, I go to MIT. If I get good grades, I’ll get a job on Wall Street. Of course I’m getting good grades. I would never screw that up.

21:04 You know, I would never think consciously I could screw that up. And then I get to Wall Street. Of course, I want to do as well as I can so I can make MD and start making seven figures and all these things. And of course I’m not trying to screw that up. But if I look back now, I surely was because I was doing all these things that just didn’t make any sense.

21:23 So yeah.

21:24 Connor Beaton: But but why do you, why do you think that you pursued that? Because I think what I hear in some ways is like this, almost like feverish. The, the word that that came to mind was like this, like maniacal. I’m, I have to drive myself and push myself to these extremes. Like where, where do you think from? You know, your own knowledge and being able to see your past and your upbringing.

21:49 Where did that that ferociousness come from?

21:51 Brian Rose: Yeah, I mean, that’s a whole another like interesting question, right. And being like, oh, it’s, you know, it’s because you know, you weren’t loved or accepted. And this was the way to get the love by proving that you were capable. And there’s that whole narrative which could or could not be true.

22:07 So that’s always possible. And the other thing was I would, I believe I would, I used to medicate myself. I’m like 7 years sober now, but I think I used to medicate myself to get away from that intense dude that like was constantly never satisfied all the time. So I don’t know, I think there was something like that also, you know, 1020, thirty years ago, we definitely had different relationships with alcohol and substances than maybe today. I don’t know. You know, the narrative of the hard drinking alpha male on this on the on the movie screen, it was crazy. I mean, that was all through the 60s and 70s and 80s. Now I look at it and it just makes me laugh because there’s nothing hardcore about, you know, drinking your sorrows away at the end of the day.

22:51 But but again, that was planted too. I’m bouncing around to a bunch of different points here, but it’s definitely interesting to think about some of the things you’re saying. And, and I agree that men will set up these scenarios to test ourselves. I could argue that I had some of that. I mean, I, I had to go to Boston alone.

23:10 I got tested in a fraternity kind of maybe I wasn’t left in the middle of the wilderness, but maybe I was constantly looking for more tests too. Have you ever thought about that? If you, even if you had the initiation ritual, maybe you have to continue to be initiated. Have you ever thought about that? Yeah.

23:27 Connor Beaton: I mean, yes, what I will say is there are some core elements to initiation that generally the initiation practises and frat houses don’t include. And then the one piece, there’s, there’s two pieces that I’ll just hone in on specifically because I see this all the time, right? Guys come out to our work and they’re like, well, but I was in a frat and I’ve gone through some initiation in a frat house. It’s like, well, they’ll hold on, but that’s missing. That’s missing some very core elements of what happens in initiation and has always happened in initiation historically. The main piece being real elders, right? Real elders, not guys that are like two or three years older than you or five years older than you. Guys that are like 50 years older than you, 40 years older than you, 30 years older than you. And that’s the thing that a lot of young men miss out on is this this kind of paternal, fatherly, grandfatherly, like energy. And it’s, in my opinion, it’s one of the reasons why Jordan Peterson has been so successful.

24:27 I mean, he is the archetypal structured father that a lot of young men have missed, you know, that have missed out on. And the second piece is this returning to the village or like when you go on an initiation experience, what’s supposed to happen is that you go out, you experience something and you return to the village a more whole and complete man that you’re actually in greater service to the greater community. And I, I think that generally speaking in fraternities, again, I’m sure that’s not the case in every single one, but I think generally speaking in fraternities that is also missing.

25:05 You know, you’re not you’re not going back to the university campus and trying to contribute something back to them or the greater community and society. Like we as men find purpose and function and meaning in being able to find competency, which it sounds like you’ve really tried to bring men in into your show who are extremely competent in some areas, which is one of the things that I think a lot of men are missing, which leads to depression and anxiety and purposelessness, but also being able to contribute something of substance and value. And so I just wanted to touch on that one piece because I think it’s important. And then I think the other thing is, you know, Friedrich Nietzsche had a great quote.

25:48 I put it in my book, and I wrote a chapter called The Shadow of the Father. And every man has a shadow that’s sort of passed down generally, generationally from his father, whether it’s your father was completely absent. Your father was sort of spineless and didn’t stand up for himself. And your mom ran the household. And he was just sort of quiet, meek man that sat in the corner and did what he was told. Or your father was a tyrant, you know, and was loud and dominating and you couldn’t get a word in. And so your personality never really kind of got to come out. I mean, there’s many different versions of it. But Nietzsche said what is hidden in the father is revealed in the son.

26:29 What’s hidden in the father is revealed in the son. And it’s this notion that what our fathers have hidden is generally the burden and the weight that we carry that we’re trying to grapple with. So if your father was somebody who was, and maybe this is too inflammatory of a term, but it was sort of a spineless, meek, you know, weak man, didn’t advocate for himself, kind of weak. It’s very likely that what’s hidden in you is a very deep rage because you’ve grown up around a man who didn’t actually show or embody what it looks like to be a man who knows how to deal with his anger, knows how to deal with his own power, knows how to deal with his own potency.

27:11 And so part of our work as men is to sift through that kind of masculine baggage that’s been handed down from our fathers or our grandfathers, whether that’s, you know, absent or rage or whatever it is, and be able to assimilate a more robust version of masculinity for ourselves. And I think that that’s the task that a lot of men are trying to do in our modern culture. But there’s just a not, there’s not a tonne of resources or systems or spaces that are encouraging them to do the really hard sort of deep work that that they know they want to do and embark on.

27:51 And the last piece is facing the shadow, right? What you were talking about is like there was this shadow inside of you, much like there was a shadow inside of me that was reckless and out of control and self-destructive and chaotic. And you know, and that’s what a lot of young men are contending with, regardless of what society says, a lot of young men are contending with a part of themselves that is just wild. And it’s not a bad thing. It can be extremely necessary for our culture and our and our civilizations in order to survive.

28:25 But we’ve demonised what Robert Bly called the the Wildman within. We’ve demonised the Wildman. We’ve locked him up. And what we’ve told men culturally and socially is, you know, if you have any problems in your life, it’s because you’re not being vulnerable enough. And so you just need to be more vulnerable. Well, that that might be the case sometimes that you need to open up and be more vulnerable.

28:47 But that certainly is not the cure all solution that has been pitched to modern men because I think they see the outcome of that in their life. And we I’m sure we’ll dive into that more at some point. But yeah, that’s what’s your thoughts on that?

29:00 Brian Rose: No, that’s a great point and I’d love to dive into that too, maybe a little bit later. I agree. Look, there’s definitely a time to be vulnerable, but it’s definitely not the cure all solution and sometimes it can be the wrong result for people and the feedback they get will be the wrong thing.

29:15 Interesting you talked about that because you know, I actually after the overdoses in New York City, I moved to London and at 30 I started rebuilding myself. And now what I do is I found a way to tame that that crazy guy and now I know how to deal with him. And I know with certain practises I can tame him. And now I’ve got this beast that I can that I got tamed or that at least I have somewhat in control or the illusion of control in my head. But he’s pretty well under control now. Otherwise I would know about it.

29:47 But in and in that sense, he’s that’s extremely valuable. You know, I always used to tell people like when you look at an addict or somebody with that personality, if you can control that, that can be very, very powerful because an addict will walk 20 miles in the snow to get a drink. You know, like it’s, there’s a lot of power there. If you can find a way to, to deal with that. And again, dealing with that is not suppressing it, It’s not admonishing it. It’s not calling it toxic.

30:16 It’s saying, OK, how can you find, find a way to take that edge and use it for yourself and not let it be used? Let it use it against yourself. At least I think that’s a lot of what I learned from like my 3030 to 40 going through that. And I agree with your conclusions on on ritual and with the fraternity. I think you’re right on both counts actually. And it’s an interesting point.

30:41 I hadn’t thought about, actually hadn’t thought much about this until we had this, you know, preparing for you. But I, I agree in the fraternity that’s happening with guys that are Max four years older than you and a lot of them are two years older than you. So, yeah. And even though the ritual a lot of times simulates dying, you’re not actually dying. You go through three or four months of some pretty surprising hazing and rituals and some things that aren’t comfortable and you’re not used to.

31:08 And in that sense, it’s very helpful. And I learned a lot about men and being a man, it definitely helped me compete and survive in a place like New York City and throughout my life, for sure. But you’re right, it’s not the same thing as perhaps what we had in the past. You know, something that Jocko says, which is interesting is you know, Jocko, he’s been on the show many, many times and 1st on here 8 years ago when he right when he was actually starting his podcast and becoming well known, we had him on really early, maybe a couple months after he was on Rogan for the first time. And Jocko says, look, he said men have always left the household.

31:48 Men have always gone to war, men have always gone to work. So he has an interesting take that it’s, it’s not necessarily a modern thing. But then again, if you go to the statistics about, you know, the fatherless homes, you’re right about all that. So kind of I’m in two minds. Part of it isn’t like, it’s not like throughout history, you know, if if you read, you know, the Iliad and the Trojan War, those men certainly weren’t at home.

32:13 But then again, probably there were more men at home. And like you said, seeing your dad every two weeks, it’s definitely better than seeing your dad every two years, but it’s not the same as having that constant masculinity around you, so. Yeah.

32:30 Connor Beaton: And can I speak to that just really briefly? I think, I think there’s a huge distinction between your father being off on a mission and living a purpose in life versus your father being taken from you.

32:44 And, and when I say taken from you, I mean, you know, that’s kind of a harsh way of saying through divorce, but to a child, that’s what it feels like, right? When, when a divorce happens and A and a child doesn’t understand what’s going on, a couple of things unfold. Number one, for kids, they’re just little balls of ego. And so they personalise that that’s happened. Oh, dad’s not here. What’s wrong with me that he’s left? And that becomes the way that a lot of young boys are formed in our culture and our society.

33:15 Dad’s not here. And it’s not that he’s off doing something and living a life that that is filled with purpose and meaning and symbolic of who he is as a man and his masculinity and that he’s transmitting that out into the world and and etcetera. It’s that he either did not have a choice in that or he is a mess and and has had to be removed from my life. And that’s very different because that causes a type of fracturing in a young boy. And what can happen, you know, as that goes on is he can hear a lot of comments from the family, from mom, like, oh, you, you know, you don’t be like your dad, don’t turn out like your dad, You know, like, oh, that part of you is just like your dad and sort of shaming, you know, shaming the young boy as he grows up. And so there’s a very big difference between, oh, my dad’s gone.

34:08 You know, I lead men’s weekends and I travel and go and do interviews in person and stuff like that. And I’m, I’m living a life that’s rich in, in meaning and purpose because I’m creating a life that is meaningful to me. And I’m embedding myself with something that that brings value not only to my family, but to me individually. And so my son, when I go away, you know, he’s 3 1/2 almost. Well, I guess he’s a little bit older than that.

34:35 He’s like 3 3/4. But when, you know, when I go away, he misses me. But when I return, he asks what I’ve been doing and I and I tell him. And as he gets older, what he’s going to see is that when Dad leaves and goes out into the world, which is what Jocko is talking about, that I’m venturing off onto a kind of mission where I’m going out into the world and bringing my skills and bringing my competencies and bringing my purpose out into the world. And I’m enacting that.

35:02 And that will encourage him symbolically to leave the nest at some point and do the same thing himself to take the the big risk of leaving home. You know, we, we live in a society in America that has the highest rate of young men living at home almost ever in recorded history. It’s insane, you know, young, young men today are less likely to move out of the house. They are less likely to have a, a partner, they’re less likely to have sex, they are less likely to go to university, they’re less likely to be employed and they’re more likely to die of an overdose.

35:32 I mean, we just go down the, the ranks and, and part of that is, again, not to blame it all on the all on this. There’s many different contributing factors, but part of that is we don’t have a lot of men and fathers going out into the world for a mission and a purpose and returning home. And instead what we have is a lot of fathers that are taken out of the household due to unforeseen or unwanted circumstances. You know, and like, I’m curious if you’re open to sharing it to hear a little bit more about what it was like for you when, when your parents split, because it sounds like your dad had a pretty big role in, in your life in terms of shaping who you were and, and your relationship to him.

36:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, so many things that to comment on there. Look.

36:19 So for some reason, when I was seven, I took it really hard when when my I still remember when my parents sat me down and said Dad’s moving out and I was just like, for me, I think it shattered any confidence I had in the nuclear family and that I would be taken care of. And so I got into this mindset eye of self-reliance, as in no one is ever going to be there for you and you better be there for yourself. And, and I, I took it really to an extreme. My brother was older, I don’t know if he did the same.

36:54 My sister was younger. I think they not the same, but for me, that was my reaction. So I became to this in my mind of, you know, no one’s going to be there for you. You have to be there for yourself. And so I took that kind of to an extreme.

37:10 It’s interesting. About seven years ago, six years ago, I went and drank ayahuasca and we made a whole movie about it. And that was that’s what would come up in the ceremonies, was this divorce and this kid that was, you know, closed himself off from the rest of the world so no one else could hurt him. And it was crazy. And then after that, that ceremony actually went and flew home to San Diego and put both of my mom and my dad on camera because we made a documentary film about it.

37:36 So I put them on camera and asked them about the divorce. It’s all very crazy and meta. And I actually had Joe Dispenza in here the week before I was supposed to go out there. And I, I was telling Joe I’m going to go out and confront my parents about this event that’s seemed to have shaped a part of my life. And, and he was like Brian, he’s like, what you’re probably going to realise is that you just been telling this story about your past and it’s your story.

37:59 You can tell yourself a new story. And it’s weird. When I actually talked to my parents, I realised that actually that was the best thing that ever happened to them was the divorce. And they were both going through their own thing. And if it hadn’t happened, my mom wouldn’t become this amazing independent woman and my dad would have, you know, been unhappy. And then.

38:15 So it was actually a great decision for everybody. And now when I look at it, it was the best thing that ever happened to me, too. So I’ve now found a way to kind of make peace with it. But at the time, as you said, yeah, it was hard to deal with and, and I, you know, went one way or the other. Now, now I’m I’m actually OK with it and I kind of understand it a little better.

38:39 They say that trauma is not what happens to you. It’s the fact that that you can’t process it, you know, And so I, I didn’t, I couldn’t process it. I processed it in my brain. And even though my mom tried to take me to therapy, I didn’t want to talk to anybody. And so, yeah, that was the way I took it.

38:56 And I think you’ve correctly explained that because, yeah, I guess my dad didn’t, wasn’t off at war. He was all of a sudden not there. And it didn’t make sense to me. So, yeah, I also had some really strong male figures in my grandparents and stuff. I mean, they were, one was a cattle rancher, 1 was a farmer and by definition they were kind of self-sufficient and kind of entrepreneurs. And I had a lot of that going on and my dad was a product of that.

39:21 So I had some really good male archetypes, but that was definitely something that happened. So look, I don’t know if you see anything there. I definitely have to. You have to send me an invoice for the therapy session as well, Connor, after this.

39:34 Connor Beaton: Well, you better, you better be careful, Brian.

39:37 Well, we’re, we’re just scratching the surface. I mean, no, I, I think what you’re saying is, is very applicable and it’s cool to hear the journey. And I, I think I, you know, I really appreciate the, the transparency and, and how Kennedy are with it. And, you know, our fathers have a very big role in our life. And I think that a lot of men try and discount the impact that they’ve had. And try and sort of brush it under the rug. It’s like, no, it wasn’t a big deal. And or you know, it, it really was a big deal, but only when I was, you know, whatever, seven or three or 12. And it’s like, well, yeah, but that seven or three or 12 year old is still inside of you.

40:20 And if you haven’t dealt with that part and you haven’t found a resolution to it like you have and gone on some type of journey to understand the impact that it actually had, then the impact is going to show up and it will influence your life and your behaviours and your relationships in ways that you do not like or understand. And so, you know, Jung had this great quote where he said until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct our life and we will call it fate on some ways. What he was talking about is the pain that we have from our youth that we didn’t comprehend and understand at that time. And that pain that we have in our childhood. Unless we begin to understand it when we are more mature and we have the cognitive ability to sift through it and we have the emotional intelligence to be able to process through it, then it will influence and impact the way that we show up in finances, in our health, in our relationships, sexually, in all of those areas.

41:18 And so, yeah, I mean, it’s a it’s a very important part. And, you know, I think for me that maybe the last thing I’ll say is I was very fortunate to have had elder men in my life. You know, like my grandfather fought in World War 2. Phenomenal man. Just like a really wild character. You know, like there’s there’s this book that I’ve referred to before called Iron John by this guy named Robert Bly. It’s sort of a staple within the men’s work field. You know, he was part of the Mythopolytic men’s movement back in like the 80s and 90s.

41:54 And in the book, there’s, there’s this Wildman named Iron, you know, Iron John, there’s this Wildman that kind of comes out. And my grandfather was totally the embodiment of that, you know, this wiry, super, super strong, piercing, blue eyed, like kind of just kind of kooky. Sometimes he’s like kind of kooky. I remember coming out one morning and he’s standing there, he’s got a cup of coffee. He’s in his fruit of the looms underwear. There’s a big window that overlooks the, the road and he’s just standing there doing calf raises at like 6:00 in the morning, sipping his coffee in his underwear as people walk their dog outside.

42:32 You know, and that that was just him. Like, he just didn’t really care. He was sort of unapologetic. He was who he was. And he taught me a lot. I mean, he taught me how to shave, change the oil in the car, how to mow a lawn, how to fix the lawn, like those types of things.

42:46 And I’ve been fortunate because the mentors in my life have always sort of been in that age range. You know what, after I hit rock bottom, I had a, a, a mentor of my name, Bernard, who is in his early 70s and I spent two years working with him and I paid him when I could. He taught me union psychology and I sort of studied with him and apprenticed with him in like a very old school way. And when I couldn’t sort of when I was broke because I was young and didn’t have any money, I would chop wood and I would help him with his asparagus farm. And it was this very old school type of apprenticeship that we don’t really have today.

43:28 And I’ve had a number of those mentors in my life where I’ve been fortunate to have this sort of old school experience based apprenticeship that I think we as men really long for deep in our core, you know, we we crave for this type of how we want to call it nourishment teaching. You know, it’s in the arc of almost every hero story where he finds the sage, older wise man that teaches, you know, teaches him how to wield a sword or go to battle or a skill that becomes sort of at the forefront of his being and helps him alchemize some of the crap that he’s been dealing with. And that is where a lot of young men are, in my opinion, is that they have a pain inside of them and they don’t know how to deal with it, or they have an intensity inside of them and they don’t know how to deal with it. And there’s no one really around saying this is how you can direct or or navigate that intensity that lives inside of you.

44:30 It’s like the first line in my book is a man’s work begins with pain, man’s work begins with pain. Because if you don’t know what to do with your pain as a man, it will run your life. It will absolutely run your life and your relationships. And so we have to do a better job of as men. And I think you’ve done a, a good job of it with your show and in many ways of bringing on men to, to tell their stories and to talk about their journeys and say, this is how I dealt with my pain with my shit for like, you know, the, the clinical term.

45:01 So yeah.

45:02 Brian Rose: Yeah, really fascinating stuff there. Yeah. I had some grandpas that were big in my life. And so if I now look back at these guests on London Real that have been my mentors and the ones I’ve learned from a lot of them are in that age group, then that’s probably not a coincidence, is it, Connor? So and I find myself sometimes I can see it while it’s happening. So like, you know, Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad is probably one of those figures in my life. I still sometimes have to pinch myself that I get to hang out with him and, and spend time with him because he’s such a legend.

45:38 But I’m also really comfortable with that older man relationship, you know, because my grandpa had it and my grandpa was in a wheelchair. And I would kind of learn from him, but also take care of him, but also learn from him, but help him in the car, but then sit there and listen when he would tell me how to do a horse trade or, you know, I can see him. And he was a successful rancher and entrepreneur and I can see a lot. And so it’s weird. I’ve attracted a lot of those relationships with this show because this show is like my life. Not even to the power of 10, to the power of 100, because I’ll just attract these people.

46:15 And so, you know, one of my most famous guests on the show is a guy named Dan Pena. He’s known as the Trillion Dollar Man. And 10 years ago he came on my show and, you know, I didn’t even want him on my show because I had run away from the city and making money. And I thought that was kind of bad. And I was off doing my independent media thing.

46:32 And here was a dude with a castle in Scotland, you know, who had a book called Your First 100 Million? And he was a high performance coach and he came on the show and I was just like, who is this guy? And I was kind of making fun of him. I’m like, you’re like a James Bond villain. And he was pushing me a little bit.

46:49 And we ended up starting this 10 year relationship. And what’s really fascinating, Connor, is that it’s one of my most requested and talked about guests. And when people stop me in the streets, I’m always surprised because they want to talk about Dan Pena. And this is where it gets really weirdly meta, Connor, because I think and look, my audience started off 90% men. Now it’s probably 70% men. We still have a lot of amazing females that watch the show and in my community actually, and there’s probably all sorts of reasons for that as well.

47:19 But they all want to know about Dan Pena because our relationship is is one that’s honestly biblical. And again, back to what Peterson talks about, it really is the, the prodigal son. It really is the the son and the father. And, you know, I, I went up to his castle and I was even joking. I feel like Colonel Kurtz, you know, I felt like, you know, you know, the movie Apocalypse Now where Charlie Sheen is going up there and he’s in awe of this man, but he also has to kill this man. And I used to joke that’s what I’m doing with Pena. And it’s like I’m trying to resolve all these father issues and he’s pushing me, trying to mentor me, and I’m pushing back. And a lot of people don’t see what happens behind the scenes when I’m writing in these four page long emails telling him how to fuck off and telling him that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing and blah, blah, blah.

48:04 And I’m pushing back, pushing back, you know, and I’m in my 40s now still doing that. But it’s interesting because that’s one of the most watched guests. And I think Connor is because it’s a demonstration of a lot of unresolved issues people have with their fathers. And when they look at me and paying you, they see that maybe even people with unresolved relationships with their sons. And they see our relationship and they’re like, oh, wow, I see him pushing you and I see you pushing back, but I see you changing. And he is, you know, he’s a crazy archetype. I mean, he’s cuss is like a sailor and just he’s to the Max. And so he probably pushes everybody’s buttons in there. Anyways, that’s a lot to download, but I’m curious if what you see in there.

48:48 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I mean, it’s, I have this saying that really good men’s work is a result of us exploring and working on the wounds in our masculine core or a masculine heart. And it’s amazing how powerful that can be. And I think what I’m really getting and sort of extracting from this conversation, like if we were, you know, if if you were sitting on my couch or if we were having an actual session, is, is how powerful the role of the dynamic between you and your father has been. And that in in some ways, as you’ve grappled with that, it’s sense you on a trajectory that has been incredibly powerful and unfolded your life in a way that you can’t could probably not have imagined before, much like myself. You know, a lot of the reason why I’m I am who I am today and why I’m successful in the way that I’m successful today is because I decided to, to grapple with and tackle the, the pain within.

49:56 I mean, I call it my masculine core, my masculine heart. But but I decided to grapple with the challenges that were there between me and my father and my stepfather, who I did not get along with. And I tried to push out in every way, shape or form. And we had a very animosity filled relationship for a long, long time. But that’s, that’s what we as men do.

50:19 We grapple with one another. And when we stop doing that, we lose an edge and a potency within ourselves that diminishes our ability to see what our purpose and our function and our mission is in life. But when we begin to push a little bit on that edge and we and we move towards the men and it’s like, oh, that guy has something to teach me. And I can be humble enough to say that man, regardless of, you know, his ethnicity or his age or his background or his experience, he has something that I need to learn from.

50:51 And we can listen to our gut and our core. It’ll push us in a direction that we can’t possibly imagine. It’s like Peterson says, tell the truth and it’ll and it’ll be one of the greatest adventures of your life. I think that I would, I agree with that 100%. I think that when we move towards the things that have wounded us as men, that can bring us on one of the greatest adventures of our life as well. And because it puts us into contact with confrontation. And we as men do not change unless there’s some form of confrontation.

51:23 And we’re living in a society, in a culture that is constantly telling men move away from confrontation, right? We have a whole generation raised by what I call pillow parents, where like any time there’s a risk or a challenge, the parents just throwing the soft pillow underneath like, don’t worry about it. You don’t have to do it. You know, it’s you gave it your effort and dah, dah, dah. And so we have a very, we have a culture of moving away from confrontation, moving away from things that are hard when as men, those are often times the things that we need to learn how to do, how to be with, how to grapple with in order to develop our character. So I think that’s what I really hear is that you’ve gone on this, this journey of discovering who you are as a man by directly and maybe indirectly dealing with some of the the pains that you experienced growing up and trying to sift through that and make sense of it. And maybe it didn’t occur like that at first, but my story is very similar to yours, You know, drugs, drinking, womanising, street racing, bar fights.

52:25 I mean, just a tonne of of I don’t know if I want to say aggression, but just like I was hurting and in pain and trying to figure out who I was. And I think that’s the state of a lot of men today.

52:36 Brian Rose: Let. Me, let me ask you a question. There’s a there’s this phrase it takes a village and I guess it’s short for it takes a village to raise a child. And so you’re talking about the father and, you know, the shadow of the father being passed down and the childhood, which I think is important.

52:52 And I’d love to talk a little more about that. But something I think about sometimes is that say you had the picture perfect and there is no picture perfect father son relationship. Part of me still thinks, either in my case or in many men’s case, that it still takes a village of men to raise a man and, and maybe women, but maybe differently. You know, I look, I love a strong woman. I love a powerful woman.

53:17 I love any, I love any powerful people or people that have respect for themselves and things that they want to do that you can learn from. But part of me also wonders that even if I had this ex, you know, perfect relationship with my dad, you know, I would have liked to hope that I would think that I would still go out there and try to learn from a Dan Pena and a Jocko and a Jordan Peterson and a Dispenza. Because it does take a village. And they’re each going to bring something different to me. Also potentially at a different point in my life because I’m going to need something at 30 and 40 and 50 and 60, and I hope at 70 and 80.

53:55 I think it was maybe young who said when you think you don’t have any more shadow issues, that’s when you definitely have shadow issues. So I, you know, I don’t think it’s ever fully resolved. I don’t know how you feel about that, but what are your thoughts on that? Because I know you spent a lot of time, I guess with men looking into the relationship with their father, which I think is really important because that’s the first point of contact. But I mean relationships with with men in general. I’m thinking is is also very important for a man.

54:26 Connor Beaton: Absolutely, yeah, Yeah.

54:27 I mean, you know, like I said, my son’s 3 1/2. One of the things that I I’m trying to be very intentional about is having really good men around him constantly because I want him to learn from other men because just the nature of the father son dynamic, there are certain things that he’s not going to want to learn from me. You know that he’s I could tell him the best advice in the world and exactly what to do and you know, he’ll be a 14 year old boy someday.

54:55 That’s just like flips me off and is like after you, dad, I’m not listening to you. But if he hears it from a man that he respects and appreciates that’s around me, then he’s probably more likely to receive that. And so, you know, this is this is another challenge that I think a lot of young men are facing right at the, the, the media talks a lot about how men are in crisis and young men are in crisis, but we, we, they’re very slow governments, media, they’re very slow to actually say what should be done around it. And one of the main challenges that a lot of young men are facing is that there is a, a bit of a crisis of loneliness within young men, that men statistically have less friends, less male friends than ever before. And I think part of that impact is, is on the young boys that are being raised by those men.

55:46 You know, if, if, how? Because again, in my work, what I’ve noticed is that masculinity is something that’s often transmitted. You know, you see it, you feel it, you experience it, you’re around it, you’re grappling with it and sort of pressing against it and sharpening your your own masculinity and your own masculine nature against other men. And so if you’re a young man and you grow up around a father who just has no friends in his life, then you’re not getting opposing views and you’re not getting opposing ways of being as a man. Like heard example from myself, my dad has two brothers and one of them is this very gifted photographer. He’s a brilliant creative mind.

56:29 He’s like, like wildly brilliant. He’s worked in Dubai. He’s like done all this architectural work for, for the, for the people out there. And but he’s this brilliant photographer. And I remember being a young man, seeing his passion for photography and over time it just started to wear off on me to the point where one day I, I picked up a camera, I bought myself a camera and it’s become one of my greatest passions and hobbies. You know, I, I don’t want to have a career in it, but it’s become something that I really love doing. And so we have wonderful family photos as a result of that. But it’s because he was in my life, he was present in my life quite often.

57:08 And so, you know, I think we do need other men around. We are going to have to, you know, go through life in ways where other men can contribute to us. And I think it’s a a shame that so many men are they reject what other men have to say. They don’t want to be pressed. They don’t want to be pushed. They don’t want any type of confrontation. So one of the, one of the things I think is, is very helpful for any aged man to do is to get around other men who are willing to challenge you, who are willing to be a little adversarial and push back and, and to hold you to what I call the, the to, to, to call you forward, right? To call you forward into the type of man, father, husband, business leader that you say you’ve wanted to be. And if we don’t have those men in our life, then we’re really self reliant and we’re missing out on a a bunch of data and information that we could get.

58:08 We’re missing out on accountability. So get yourself around men who are willing to push back, kind of like what you’ve talked about with Dan Pena. I’m sure that there’s men that are in your life that are roughly the same age as you that do something similar, that push back sometimes that challenge you, that give you opposing views. And, and we as men, we need that. We crave that and we’re, we’re better off because of it. So it takes a village to raise a kid, but it also takes a village to sharpen a man.

58:34 And one of the things that we’re doing as men as it is a disservice is isolating ourselves from other men that could contribute to our lives and give us an opposing view of perspective or, or challenge us. Have you seen that as well?

58:48 Brian Rose: Yeah, though it’s just really interesting that you talk about that. Yeah, with my sons right now, they’re, they’re actually learning martial arts from my martial arts instructor. And he’s, you know, Needless to say, a pretty strong man. And we both decided this would be a great practise for them for so many reasons.

59:06 You know, taught me a lot when I actually moved here. That’s when I started training with him some 20 plus years ago. And it really changed the way I look at life because martial arts, they’re so important because of course, you’re, you’re overcoming and mastering yourself. But then there’s always someone there to push you as well, to roll in jiu jitsu or to get in the boxing ring. And, and thereby, almost by definition, someone is trying to push back, you know, And so you just get used to that fact and get comfortable in that environment.

59:35 And it was it that helped me a lot, even in the city here as a banker, when people would try to physically and emotionally intimidate you and you would just feel a little more secure. So I do agree it it’s it’s really intelligent to get those male relationships in your life. You know, it’s interesting. We haven’t really talked about the state of men today. And you see it more in America than I see it here.

59:58 I feel like America. Is worse than here. Also I’m in a bubble here too Connor because I’m I’m doing my own show and I got people like Penya and and Kiyosaki that come on and don’t give a fuck and say whatever they say, which I know is not the normal out there. No one comes on my show and even says the phrase toxic masculinity. And so I don’t think I even understand what most young men have to deal with when it comes to suppressing all of their, you know, inner feelings. All I can do is create my own media that goes against that. But I don’t realise what you said. And then that leads, of course, to isolation and all those other things.

1:00:37 And I don’t know what to do about that. Part of me believes we’re seeing new figures emerge, maybe in the past five years that are being celebrated like the Jockos and the Jordan Peterson’s and maybe the Rogans and others, where you actually at least have some champions that people can look to. But at the same time, maybe the mainstream media and big Tech and most of most of the media is giving the opposite message. So even though I can point to a few, you could argue that 90% of the men out there aren’t consuming that content and I don’t know what to do about it except go back to the family and the father figure or the Jordans, the Peterson’s of the world.

1:01:17 I’m curious what you think about that or and and am I getting it right?

1:01:22 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I, I think you’re, you have the, you have the pulse, you know, you’re on the pulse of something that’s happening. I think I’ve said this before, but I think we’ve entered into a time for one of the first, one of the first times in modern history, or maybe history in general, where what it means to be a man, what it means to be good at being a man, and what it means to be masculine is not being defined by men. It’s largely being defined by culture and women. And so a lot of men have outsourced. And this isn’t an attack on women. It’s not an attack on on feminism or anything like that. It’s just a, a statement about what’s happening for men where there’s an outsourcing of their masculinity, an outsourcing of the validation and the verification that they are a good man to external sources, to culture, to society, to women, to structures within our culture and society. And so, and, and part of that is that we have demonised the male role model, right?

1:02:25 So like the guys that you listed off, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of people within, you know, North America, within Western culture and society that would say, well, none of those men are good examples of male role models. They are all toxically masculine, you know, and this is the narrative that’s being really put forward in Western culture, specifically in America, right? I mean, there was an article about how working out was a a right wing thing to do, right? Being in shape was somehow toxic and misogynistic. And you’re like, you’re like, how did you get to the place where working out is misogyny?

1:03:03 You know, like what, what happened? So, so there’s, there’s kind of a dissonance. And I think what a lot of young men are experiencing is a couple things because I’m fortunate enough to talk to men of all age ranges from all over the world, like my on my show, people from Australia, guys from the UK, guys from Europe and Africa and Asia, like they all TuneIn. And so I get to hear a very broad spectrum of what men are dealing with and being challenged by, which I do not take for granted.

1:03:34 But what a lot of young men say when when they reach out to me or when I read their YouTube comments or whatever is a, a couple of things are happening. Number one, I don’t feel like culture and society wants or needs me at all. I don’t feel needed or wanted. I don’t feel like women need or want me or even like me because I’m male. I don’t feel like culture needs or wants me and I don’t feel like society sees the challenges that I’m facing inherently.

1:04:03 And and then the last piece is I don’t feel like I can talk about my issues as a man because it’s somehow makes the issues that women are facing be threatened, right? And so this sort of cognitive dissonance happens where we can’t talk about men’s issues without sort of acknowledging that women have their own issues, or we can’t talk about men’s issues and advocate for what men are going through without a lot of women coming out and saying, you know, well, women have it bad too. You know, women have their own challenges. So those two things can coexist.

1:04:38 And I think the last thing is a lot of young men are growing up in an economy that is different from their parents. And so they’re struggling to get the job, they’re struggling to get the education without being bludgeoned to death by, by debt. You know, in America, like getting a four year degree, you’re going to come out with $150,000 worth of debt for a, a job that’s going to pay you 50 grand. So I think a lot of young men, they feel very disincentivized to do the things that men have normally done, which is persevere, work hard, develop resiliency, you know, go and do hard shit because the outcome is like, well, what am I going to do all that for? I’m going to do all that for debt women that don’t like me. And, and you know, a society that’s telling me that I should just sit down and be quiet and fade off into oblivion. So I think a lot of young men are frustrated and you can see it online, you can see it in the conversation. And and I get it.

1:05:38 You know, I get why they’re upset. It’s, that doesn’t mean that, you know, it’s OK to speak in ways that are, are hateful towards women or minorities or anything like that. But I get why young men are really upset and sort of disenfranchised and pissed off. And they’re checking out, they’re really checking out from society at large. And you know, something that Scott Galloway said is that we’re producing the most amount of of men who are ineligible for women to date and ineligible for the workplace in modern history. And that’s a problem because when you have men who aren’t making money and don’t have viable mating prospects, they’re usually angry and dangerous.

1:06:25 And so we need to do something to bring these men back into the fold. And I don’t want to paint like a really dramatic picture, but a lot of men are, are just, you know, disenfranchise and and upset.

1:06:38 Brian Rose: Wow, Yeah, look, that all makes sense. And the the men that I mentioned that are my mentors, they’re all being literally cancelled by big tech. And so those those messages are being suppressed.

1:06:51 And so you’re right culturally and are, you know, gatekeepers in Silicon Valley, which represent part of that culture. And women, like you said, to a certain extent, are defining the new masculinity. And that’s a dangerous place to be. And I can see why men feel that way. And that’s a dangerous outcome.

1:07:09 I think it was Peterson or a few other people said that the most dangerous man is actually the man that you want around is a dangerous man who can control himself. What you don’t want around is someone who is, is that angry, you know, frustrated person who feels powerless that is actually a more dangerous person. And I think we’ve seen that, you know, and I think you see that in the school shooters and all the people that are kind of go off the reservation.

1:07:39 They’re not that that strong alpha that has it in control. They’re people that are disenfranchised and frustrated with the system they’ve been given. Because if you’re, I guess, a young man today, you’re given this conundrum, like, what do I, what am I supposed to do? Now? You might listen down.

1:07:54 My mentors would sit around and say, OK, be a man and go this way and hold the North Star. And if you do that with congruency, then you will find what you need. But first of all, no one’s telling them that. And also that takes some fortitude and that takes a commitment. And, you know, and, and so it’s not obvious that that’s how the people are going to actually go there and get there. And then with some point, we need to talk about women and relationships as well.

1:08:21 You know, I believe that that we have been feminised and I understand that maybe for a woman, it sounds like a good result. And maybe in the short term, if you can, you know, control a man, it might seem like the best result. But then of course, in the long run, that’s the worst results. It’s a bit like us getting these, you know, non dangerous men that are dangerous. It’s like if you control your man, you’re going to get ultimately someone that’s very frustrated, that’s probably going to be more dangerous for you.

1:08:55 So I’m curious of your thoughts on some of that, and I’d love to dive into this stuff as well.

1:09:01 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I mean, oh, there’s a bunch of threads to pull on there. I think, you know, a lot of men feel like modern society is kind of like the myth of Sisyphus, right, Where you’re just pushing the boulder up the hill and it’s rolling back and crushing you and pushing the boulder up the hill and it’s rolling back on you and crushing you. And, and, you know, that used to be that there was this, you know, there was this not prize at the top, but there was this dream, you know, that’s like you were pushing the boulder up the hill for a purpose.

1:09:35 You were contributing to something bigger. You know, your country was better off for it. Maybe your your wife and your family was better off for it. But all of those things have kind of come under not, not under attack. I don’t want to make it sound like that, but I, I think that all of those things have become outcomes that men see as problematic, You know, and because what happens is they look at modern dating as an example and they, you know, they’re told like, well, work really hard because you want to get a good relationship and you get married and have kids. But a lot of guys look at things like dating apps and they’re like, well, but I’m not getting any attention on dating apps. It’s the top five to 10% of guys on dating apps that are getting attention from 95% of women.

1:10:20 And the bottom 50% of men, bottom 60% of men on something like Tinder, they’re not getting anything. They’re not getting swipes, they’re not getting conversations. And so there’s kind of this big move towards the whatever we want to call it, the right, the red pill notion that that young men, no matter how hard they work, they’re not going to be able to get the job. They’re not going to be able to get the career. They’re not going to be able to get the woman that they want or would love to be with. And so why bother even try?

1:10:52 And then I think you have largely a social place, like a social conversation that is very opposing views, right? You have the sort of like hyper masculine, just fucking, you know, man up, pick up your bootstraps, like be a man. Stop being such a pussy. You’re sort of yelling at them. Make the money, get the Bugatti, fuck the whole system, escape the matrix. And for a lot of men, for some men, that works. They’re like, yeah, this is it.

1:11:25 This is what I’ve needed. I’m going to get my shit together. For a lot of men, they’re like, that doesn’t feel real or authentic to me at all. You know, that feels kind of one-dimensional. I don’t feel like I’d have substance.

1:11:36 I don’t feel like it’s going to help me solve my problems. But then on the other side, it’s, it’s OK. Don’t do anything, you know, just be more vulnerable. Talk about your feelings and your emotions more and everything will be fine. But then they get in a relationship and they do that and she runs off, you know, with the bartender. And so and so I think for a lot of guys, there is this paradox in many areas where where they’re kind of stuck and they’re like, well, who do I turn to? What, what should I do?

1:12:04 What is the right thing? And I, you know, I think for me, I’ve voiced like, if I was a young man in today’s culture, if I was a 20 year old in today’s culture, I probably would get be wrapped up in the Andrew Tate’s of the world that are, are saying just make money, get in great shape, have as many women around you as seemingly possible and don’t worry about the rest of it because that’s very appealing to the young male psyche that just wants to be successful. So I don’t think I’ve necessarily answered with a, a solution, but I’m, I’m really trying to lay out and map the problem for people because as the, as the, as the saying goes, unless you understand the problem fully, you’ll never come to the solution. And to understand the solution is to understand the problem. And so I really want to contextualise what the landscape is like for young men because they’re, they are struggling. They’re they really are.

1:12:59 Brian Rose: Yeah, I can feel that. And I can see how this one-size-fits-all isn’t going to work for everybody. I get that. You know, the Tates and even the Penas and maybe maybe even the Petersons aren’t going to work for everybody. Although he has a more nuanced message and a little bit of a different message.

1:13:14 But yeah, I could see that it’s just not going to resonate with everybody and they’re going to need different ways of maybe trying to get them on this path of improvement. You know, I, I, my boys are 7 and 8. And so I’m, I’m literally thinking about this and trying to create men right now. And, you know, sometimes I have conversations with them and I while I’m having it, I think, wow, if anybody heard this and this was like on, you know, the New York Times front page, they would just, they would be shocked, you know, you know, and we read Jocko’s actually got a series of kids books called The Way of the Warrior Kid.

1:13:49 And we read these books and they’re really good, I think, and we read them on repeat. And you know, it talks about this young boy. He was it marks like a wimpy kid. And then his uncle Jake comes for the summer. A very interesting, you might like it because it’s not his dad, it’s the uncle Jake and it’s a role model and and he learns about how to overcome a lot of his phobias and fears. And then there’s different books for new adventures and new adventures into the shadow as well. And my, and we read these and so my boys get to see this stuff and we talk about this stuff.

1:14:20 And I start having conversations like, you know, you know, about being a leader and what does it mean to lead or lead your life or what are the kind of things that as a man, like what do we do and what are we going to have to do? And they’re still young, but I’m still having these conversations and I’m probably being a little more honest and direct than a lot of parents and especially maybe a lot of men that grew up in the last 10 years because I’m a little older and I see it. And so look, being a man is a difficult thing to do, to do well, You know, it’s maybe like anything you specialise in, it’s, it’s men have very distinct challenges than women.

1:14:58 And there’s nothing simple about being a man. You know, it’s, it’s the ultimate maybe conundrum. Like you got to do this, but you can’t do this. You have to be strong, but you can’t be harsh. You know, you have to be able to emote, but if you emote at the wrong time to the wrong person, then you’ve lost all credibility. It’s, it’s a fine line.

1:15:15 It really is. And it definitely takes training and a lot of thought and maybe a lot of preparation. And you’re still going to bump around. But, you know, my boys are, they have me. And then I have all this other knowledge.

1:15:29 I’m thinking of someone else out there that is literally doesn’t have any of that. How are they going to learn this stuff? And it feels like things are getting ramped up now. Of course, you got a very interesting presidential election happening and new narratives out there. But, you know, Big Tech is still pushing this cultural, feminised version of men, and it’s probably going to continue to push it.

1:15:51 So, yeah, it becomes a real challenge. And like you said, the opposite. I’m not a fan of as well, you know, just be vulnerable and talk about your emotions and cry. That’s not the right thing to do all the time as a man, you know. Yeah, it can be powerful if you can get emotional. Goggins got emotional when he accepted his medal. And every now and then, Jocko will get a little emotional when one of his guys is dead and he’s got to talk about it. But he’s not crying every day about his problems because that wouldn’t work.

1:16:19 So it’s very nuanced, like getting that right. And I’m, I’m trying, I’m trying to get it right. And that’s what I’m trying to teach these young men. But it’s it’s hard for me to do with just two.

1:16:30 Connor Beaton: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, one of the things, there’s a couple of things, because I think it might be good to just talk about, like, what do we do in the landscape of chaos that a lot of men find themselves in, regardless of their age, right. I mean, I, I work with men that are in their 60s and they’re like, I feel like an adolescent man. I don’t feel like I actually grew up. So what do we do, right?

1:16:53 One of the things that I talk about and teach is developing self leadership. Like being able to make good decisions for yourself in a way that’s going to produce self respect, making making decisions, making choices that are going to align you and create congruency within you with your core values, your morals and your ethics, right? One of Peterson’s things was like, stop, you know, tell the truth or at least stop lying, right? So that’s another way to start developing self leadership is a lot of young men can’t tell what’s true for them because they’re lying so much or or even just men in general, right?

1:17:33 Where we have lies through a mission, right? It’s like, well, I just won’t say it. This is a lot of nice guys, right? A lot of nice guys are like, well, I just won’t say the thing. And so maybe that won’t get me into trouble with my wife or my girlfriend.

1:17:45 And and so they subtly remove what the truth is, getting your body into shape. Do not underestimate the power of that because it takes discipline and it requires resiliency. And it’s such a simple thing that a lot of men, a lot of men that struggle are undervaluing the importance of it. And they’re, and they’re struggling with getting that in order. And it requires that you actually rectify your relationship to discipline. For a lot of men, discipline is punishment, right? And so anytime that they don’t do something or they fail to do something that they said they were going to do, they just beat the crap out of themselves.

1:18:25 And that punishment doesn’t actually support them in developing a more resilient character. It doesn’t help them develop a path, you know that they’re that they’re walking on. And it actually erodes a sense of self-confidence. And I get this question all the time. Like how do I be more confident as a man? I get it from men that are 70.

1:18:46 I get it from men that are 18 and everything in between. Confidence is really about competency. If you can consistently work towards a goal, work towards an aim, work towards developing a skill, and you can start to feel like you are competent at something, you will naturally and inherently develop confidence. It confidence is a byproduct of competency. It’s not something that you want to try and develop on your on its own right? It’s sort of this, it’s this byproduct feeling, right? It’s like when you do something hard and you do a Tough Mudder or you know, you bench press, you know, you, you, you hit your bench press PR.

1:19:30 The result of that is joy and happiness. But if you’re pursuing joy and happiness, it’s very hard to acquire. So confidence is the same way. It’s very hard to acquire if that’s the goal or the outcome. So a lot of men benefit and start to see real shift and changes when they are starting to try and develop some type of competency, whether that’s relationship, communication, asking for what you need, asking for what you want, and beginning to slowly turn yourself into somebody that you respect.

1:20:00 The other pieces that I’ll just sort of layout and there’s much more than this that we could dive into is begin to confront your shadow. What are the things that you have hidden about yourself? What are the things that you dislike about yourself? What are the things that you don’t want other people to know about your life, your behaviour, your finances, your relationship? You know, the, I mean all the way down to like the, you know, how, how much porn you watch, which is a big problem for a lot of young men and just a lot of men and in general.

1:20:31 So start to confront your shadow. And as you do that, what you’re going to notice is that that confrontation develops mental clarity, mental robustness and strength. And you have to start to, you have to start to practise in doing that, becoming a little bit more, a little bit more stronger mentally and a little bit more healthier mentally because mental health is just about flexibility. And when we are in a bad place as men, we are very rigid. All the men that I’ve ever worked with, they don’t have a good level of mental health because they’re mentally rigid. The more mentally rigid we are, the less mentally flexible we are, the more mentally unwell we will feel. And then the last piece is you have to have to address the way that you talk to yourself.

1:21:22 One of the most, one of the biggest challenges in the work, in the line of work that I’ve done in working with 10s of thousands of men over the last decade plus is I’ve had a very unique look into how men talk to themselves. And it’s brutal. It is brutal. So many men are living a life of self abuse where anytime they get something wrong, they are beating the crap out of themselves. They are so harsh on themselves and nobody knows. And so there’s this kind of complicit nature with your own self destruction because the way that you are allowing yourself to talk to yourself, you would never talk to anybody in your life.

1:22:07 You wouldn’t talk to your girlfriend like that or your mom like that or your buddy like that. But the way that we allow ourselves as men to talk to ourselves is borderline disgusting. And so we need to start to develop more rules, more compassion, more empathy. When we are speaking to ourselves, we have to confront what’s called the inner critic, this part of us that wants to be ruthless and RIP us down and tear us apart and begin to repurpose that part because that part is like a loyal soldier. This is in psychology, you know, in in internal family systems, something called IFS.

1:22:48 And I’ll just end off with this last piece here in IFS. There’s all of these different parts. And the inner critic for most men is like this loyal soldier that when you were a kid, maybe your dad was hypercritical and you wanted to make him happy. And So what you did was you started to deploy the same tactics that he would use. What’s wrong with you? Where’s you got 95% on the test?

1:23:12 Where’s the other 5%? How come you didn’t get 100 and that hypercritical nature that he started to deploy, you’ve adopted as a means to try and motivate yourself. It’s what I call dark motivation or shame based motivation. This is how the majority of men are trying to produce results in their life. They are trying to shame themself into motivation. And it might work for a period of time, right? For some guys that shame based motivation like you and I have been talking about, it can get us to some places, but eventually we’ll we’ll bottom out. It’s not that sustainable long term. So we have to be able to confront that inner critic and give that that loyal soldier that’s trying to help us produce results, that’s trying to motivate us. We have to give that loyal soldier a new job, a new direction, a new mission and actually have that loyal soldier work with us towards our whatever we want to call best self, higher self.

1:24:10 You know, the man that we’re trying to be, the husband that we’re trying to be, the father that we’re trying to be versus working against us actively by constantly tearing us down. So those are some of the things strategically, externally, internally that men can start to do. There’s others, but I’ll maybe pause there and see. I’d love to hear for you, like which one of those have you noticed effective for you and and something that a lot of men have struggled with, like which one of those have you seen men really struggling with?

1:24:39 Brian Rose: Look, I think those are really important, those 3 super important.

1:24:43 And again, big chunks of my life were somehow dedicated to each one and still are, and with with incredible results. So, you know, it’s funny because in 2001, in addition to almost killing myself in New York City, I was watching the movie Fight Club on repeat. And it’s funny because I’ve now had Chuck Palani at the author on the show a couple times, which is very surreal. But there’s a line in there where Ed Norton says to Pitt, he says, I’m a 30 year old boy.

1:25:11 And of course I used to repeat it all the time, you know, in New York City with, you know, in the because I watched the movie like 100 times on repeat back when DVDs were the thing. And so I kind of felt that way when I finally got out the hell out of New York to survive and came to London. I started rebuilding myself. And one of those was a physical practise. So I started training martial arts. And then I really got into that.

1:25:35 And that’s one of the things that really saved me. So I agree. One of my guests said one time, character is built when no one’s watching. And I think that’s an illusion to some of the things that you said. You know, people look at a Connor McGregor and they’re like, this guy is just confident and he can turn it up whenever he wants. Now, maybe there’s exceptions out there, but for most people, you have to earn confidence because your brain is always watching you and it becomes confident when it’s proud of you and your decisions.

1:26:05 And that’s back to the characters built when no one’s watching. You know, all the things that you do because you told yourself you would do them is how you can start to be proud of yourself. And that’s what I just started building up when I was say, 30 to 40. And it does work. So I’d say for anybody out there, getting that type of a physical practise is really important because there’s so many things in that physical practise. It’s just this commitment.

1:26:29 There’s doing things when you don’t feel like it. There’s getting results, you know, there’s all sorts of disciplines in there. So I think that’s really good. I dove into all my shadow issues, you know, and even though I kind of stopped doing drugs back then, I was still drinking daily. And it was the thing that really bothered me. And it chipped away at myself esteem over decades because Connor, I was supposed to be one of the smartest people in the world and I was successful in a lot of areas of my life, but I couldn’t stop fucking drinking and it would kill me and I couldn’t figure it out.

1:27:03 And I tried and this and that. And funny enough, I think starting the show helped me because I think what I really needed was connection and a community more than anything. But I remember when I finally did it, it was, it was such a powerful thing that I could take something that had dominated me for so many years. And now I was free of it. And I, I went, I went down to, to each thing.

1:27:24 I mean, first I was like, I’m off the drugs. Then I figure out how to stop smoking and then I figure out how to stop drinking. And, and these were really powerful things that I overcame. And yeah, I, I would talk about them later to other people, but it was more just me. And I mean, I remember, I mean, I had that heroin overdose in 2001 in New York City. And I remember, you know, it’s one of the most proudest moments of my life, getting off that nasty garbage and that I’ll always be proud of myself for that. Always.

1:27:51 And for the next 5 years, 10 years, it was something that was always up there in my mind, even though I actually didn’t tell a soul for about 15-16 years until I made a movie about it. And so I would agree with you, if you can go into those shadow issues and conquer them, massive self esteem can be built really powerful. And then the last thing interesting that you said, I mean, I was the classic guy that would beat himself up a lot. But lately I’ve been doing kind of the opposite and more of this, you know, positive self talk and affirmations and and also kind of walking meditations from like Dispenza. And now I’m really changing my state in a super ultra positive way and looking at myself in this really benevolent positive way.

1:28:32 And so, you know, sometimes when people say, oh, they’re a narcissist and they’re this and they’re that. I mean, I taught in my Academy for eight years and I was like, man, probably like you, most of my students are, are coming from a really low level. You know, you should never berate someone for thinking highly of themselves because it’s such a rare commodity. So I want to give people as much self esteem as possible. I want them to to affirm themselves and to talk about themselves in a highway because that inner critic can be really harsh.

1:29:02 And I think social media makes it worse because you pull up at you open up Instagram, there’s always someone that’s making more money than you with a hotter girlfriend than you, with a better body than you, with an N&N&N. It’s there every every time you look, you’ll find someone like that. Whereas you know, when when I grew up, you know, it was just the people around you that you might see or someone on a magazine and they didn’t really qualify. So yeah, I, I think your three pieces there are really important.

1:29:32 And by no means am I done on those journeys as well. I still have a lot of work to do, but I think those are really powerful. I want to ask you about relationships because I don’t want to not talk about this in what will probably be one of another conversation, because we’ll have to have another conversation for sure. But talk to me about relationships because I’ve talked about, you know, fraternities and mentors and all them pushing myself. But I would argue that you could make through all those battles and now you get in a relationship with a high value woman and all that can cut the window when when she decides to push a few of your buttons or as the pickup guys would say, put you through a shit test and now you’re looking at a completely different being over here.

1:30:21 Now you have female energy and now the female energy is is pushing you and finding out are you really a male and pushing you in a different way and also maybe giving you the opportunity to be a different type of person. Not necessarily a bad thing, but this is what relationships are. And you can really find out quickly that the male you thought you were maybe isn’t the male you thought you were. Because you can hang out with the tough guys and the mentors and you can roll on the jiu jitsu mat.

1:30:49 But with a woman, you might find that, wow, I’m not as strong as I thought I was, or I’m not as ready as I thought I was to really be a man. And I think that’s a great test for a man, is can you continue to be a great man around a woman? And I mean that in a really positive way. Now, a lot of women would say, OK, that behaviour is is negative, but I don’t maybe it’s negative from what they think they want or they’re told they’re going to get. But I think I also think that all women react to a strong male the same way.

1:31:25 And that that’s that’s the hope I want to give men out there. Because if you do pursue this path and become a strong, grounded, centred man who is dangerous but can control it, who is proud and ultimately masculine, but but can keep all that stuff in check, I think women find that incredibly attractive if you can be that guy. And, and so I do think that’s true, especially in person on a dating app, maybe not, but I think that’s probably maybe not the best way to, to go about it. So I’m curious of what you thought of what I just said and of relationships.

1:32:01 Connor Beaton: We probably need 16 hours to talk about relationships, but maybe we can touch it today. Yeah, I mean, we could, we could go down some wonderful rabbit holes here. I’m gonna here, I’ll say a couple of things, OK? I’m gonna tie the I’m gonna tie in some of the things that we were talking about before. 1 We’re wounded in relationship and so we have to heal in relationship.

1:32:19 So almost all of our psychological and emotional wounds are wounds that were placed there through relationship, parents, friends, grandparents, etcetera. And so it’s just natural that when you get into a relationship with someone that you you really want to be close with, this sort of paradoxical thing happens. The more I love you and want to be with you, the more that my hidden shit will come to the forefront. It’s just a natural byproduct of human relationships. It’s always been that way.

1:32:58 Probably won’t change anytime soon. The other thing I just wanted to tie in is, is around addiction. I think it’s Gaber Mate said that the antidote to addiction is relationship. In in my framework, I worked with a brilliant man to create his own attachment model and developmental model. His name is Dewey Freeman.

1:33:20 And in his model it’s wonderful because it’s so simple in the sense that when we don’t have healthy attachment growing up as kids, what we have to attach to is a substance or an object or a behaviour. OK, So if we don’t feel safe to attach to a caregiver or a parent in a really consistent ongoing way, or we have one attachment but not the other one, and we crave for that one and we can’t attach to the other parent, what we will attach to is a substance or an object or behaviour. So a lot of people have substituted relationship, healthy relationship with the weed, the porn, the booze, the drugs, the gambling, the whatever it is, whatever the addictive behaviour is, that’s simply a substitute for behaviour.

1:34:08 And I think your journey in many ways is, is a beautiful articulation of the power of infusing our lives with deeper relationships because then the necessity and the need before the addiction starts to fade and we’re able to start to, to remove it. And you know, the, the, the tragedy of addiction is that there’s no way to remove the addiction without replacing it with some type of generative behaviour and relationship. So I just wanted to put that there because I think for a lot of people in today’s cultures that are lonely and that are over indexing on some of these behaviours, they’re, they’re struggling because they are isolating and using these these substances and these behaviours instead of being in relationship.

1:34:54 Because the truth that we’re going to talk about is relationships are, are brutal. Sometimes they’re hard, they’re risky, they they’re vulnerable. I think in our modern times, they’re sort of confusing for a lot of folks. You know, I see a lot of women that are, they’ve sort of become the archetype of the man that they really want to date and marry and they’re sort of embodying this man that they really want to be with. And so there’s not a tonne of space. And this isn’t, again, it’s not to attack women or make women wrong, but they’re sort of embodying this masculine version of the man that they really want to be with. And then either when he comes into their life, they don’t know how to shift out of that space for themselves, or they attract repeatedly men that are filling the gaps for them. So they attract much more feminine men who are softer and they have much softer characteristics and traits and and maybe that doesn’t last long term. And so we have a bit of a conundrum in modern dating in the sense that, you know, women are in in the majority of metropolitan cities within America, women are out earning men under the age of 40.

1:36:13 And so, you know, and, and again, another example, 42% of American households, women are the primary breadwinner. So the dynamics that that couples are in now and that relations are in now are just so wildly different. And we haven’t collectively had a conversation of what does it look like for you as a woman to be the breadwinner and be happy and satisfied in the marriage or in the relationship with the man who’s maybe making half as much as you or 70% sentence you?

1:36:44 Is that something that you really want? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. O And then on the flip side, for men, there has become more and more and more animosity towards women. And so one of the big thing that I usually say to guys is you have to one, begin to develop yourself into a man that you respect. If you respect yourself, you will attract more quality, more, more high value women. You just naturally will, if you respect who you are and you’re living your life in a way that’s in accordance with your values, your ethics, your morals, how you want your life to look, you will naturally attract women in that you can see that resonate with it, are attracted to it.

1:37:25 You know, we could call you a high value man, etcetera. But the other thing is outside of that, really starting to check your resentment, your animosity towards women. You are you sort of victim puking around women. A lot of guys are like, you know, the whole dating scene, it’s the result of women. It’s all women’s fault.

1:37:46 It’s all feminism’s fault and there’s no self reflection and self accountability. And it’s a very childish way to approach the dating scene. And you’re going to attract women that you’re either going to find yourself in isolation, you’re going to attract women that that reinforce that, right? It’s going to attract these women that maybe don’t treat you so well. And then the last thing is starting to see your own fear of women, men in men’s shadow, is a fear of the power of women. And it’s a very different fear than women’s fear of men generally.

1:38:21 Women fear men from a physical standpoint and from a providing standpoint, and men fear women from an emotional, psychological standpoint. Most men know that women have the power socially to hurt their reputation, hurt their financial situation. But what the big one is that a lot of men don’t like to look at or admit is that they can be devastated emotionally by a woman. And that is a very vulnerable place to be. So if you as a man are willing to look at how are you actually afraid of women? What fears do you actually have about women? Are you afraid that they’re going to betray you, that they’re going to use you, that they’re just going to use you for your money, that they’re going to manipulate you, that they’ll never be loyal?

1:39:03 Like what are actually the inherent fears that you’re carrying into the dating or that you carried into your marriage? Because without some type of understanding of the fears that you have carried into dating in your marriage, you are going to play those out. And that will become the reoccurring conflict that continues to happen with you and your girlfriend and your wife. Or it’ll be the reason why you can’t seem to find a woman that actually embodies the characteristics that you’re looking for in a partner.

1:39:34 So those are a couple things that I would I would really start with.

1:39:38 Brian Rose: Yeah, there’s a lot of powerful stuff there, a lot of powerful stuff. And I agree. If you, if you go into relationships expecting something or thinking something, then you’re going to manifest it. You know, somehow or I, I remember hearing some line and whether it’s appropriate or not, I’m going to say it, but it was a, some guy, a friend of a friend was in San Francisco and he’s like, yeah, all the girls in San Francisco are, are Cocors. And the other guy said, well, if you think that, then that’s all you’re going to find when you go out. You’re going to see it everywhere. And so you’ve now just everything’s becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.

1:40:13 And I think that is true. You know, if if you have this certain thing, then that’s all you’re going to see. And so, yeah, you have to look, look into yourself. And I agree, the, the victim thing, you have something you have to be careful with as well. Oh, there’s, you know, they’re all like this. They’re like this.

1:40:28 And that’s just not true either. If you really are confident in yourself and you believe that you’ve built a man that you’re proud of, then I firmly believe if you’re in a maybe a real social situation, I don’t know what it’s like online, then you know where people are really communicating. However it is, I think then you will find all sorts of amazing things. But then again, you have to go and and figure out what you are bringing to the table. And I guess that has to do with old relationships and maybe mother relationships and all these types of things that that you have to look into and figure out what you’re bringing to it and how you’re going to potentially sabotage that relationship. And then of course, the woman as well, you know, she might say she wants XY and Z, but also she needs to feel like she’s with a man who instils confidence and who has a plan and who has all of these things.

1:41:30 And so if you don’t ultimately have that, then she’ll she’ll go, like you said, she’ll go hang out with a bartender, whether she knows why she’s doing it or not. That’ll happen. Just like the man, you know, hanging around another guy that all of a sudden shows you that he’s not worthy of the character. You’ll find yourself going somewhere else as well and not spending time with them. So I I think those are, those are powerful things.

1:41:58 Connor Beaton: Yeah, I mean, I, I recorded this episode called Women are delusional and men are disenfranchised. The problem with modern dating.

1:42:06 And it really, I mean, it sparked a lot because it was kind of saying, look, every everybody, both both parties are contributing to the problem in modern dating right now. There are some women that do legitimately just have completely unrealistic expectations for the landscape that are out there and are trying to, you know, the the ideal man that they’ve created in their head doesn’t exist outside of their head. It just doesn’t exist outside of their now that’s not all women, right?

1:42:34 And so if you think that all women have these delusional ideas of what they, you know, can get from men, then that’s probably saying more about you and how disenfranchised and bitter and filled with animosity and resentment you become towards women in the modern dating scene. And so, you know, I think, I think men and women both have a responsibility to kind of check themselves and, and enter into the dating scene in a bit of a, a different light because otherwise you’re just carrying your, your bitterness in. And one of the things that I’ve told to a lot of a lot of men is, you know, one of the cheques, like if I was single today, I’m not unmarried, happily married, I’ve got two kids, I love my wife, she’s wonderful.

1:43:19 But if I was single and I was out in the dating market today, one of the questions that I would probably ask women on a, you know, second, third or fourth date is what do you think about men and masculinity? And then I would just be quiet and listen. And if she started telling me about, you know, how men are bad and men are evil or, you know, that there’s no good men anymore, it would be a red flag for me, you know, Or if she started going off about how the patriarchy needs to be dismantled and is the fundamental problem with existence, I would probably, it’d be a red flag for me. But if she started to tell me about how, you know, she respects men for certain qualities and, and, you know, really has had some good partners and is able to see that maybe some of those relationships ended because of things that she contributed to the dynamic, then I would probably lean in and I would listen and I would, I would, you know, maybe pursue that further.

1:44:14 So there’s very simple things that we can do to get a gauge of like, you know, does a woman is a woman interested in who I am or does is she going to treat me like the image that she has in her head about men? Because there are some women who have been hurt by men who just fundamentally haven’t dealt with it. Mistrust men entirely, think that all men are bad and wrong. And when you get into a relationship with that, you are always going to be the problem.

1:44:42 And for a lot of nice guys, they get into those types of relationships because they feel like there’s something wrong with me, I’m the problem. And so then we attract those types of women and those types of relationships. So. Yeah.

1:44:57 Brian Rose: How much do you dive into femininity?

1:44:59 Because, you know, that’s a huge part of the equation. Obviously we all as men had relationships with our mothers and with women in our life that also shape our character. And if you’re heterosexual, will shape your future relationship significantly. It’s a huge part of the equation. And now that I have kids and I’m raising them, I see more clearly the the power of the male energy and the female energy. It also allows me to parent as a father, knowing that I’m bringing something unique to the table and some that’s necessary. And they’re going to get plenty of female energy from mom, which means that I can concentrate on my my hardcore male energy. And I see that.

1:45:41 And I also, strangely enough, can really value female energy in the room and in all sorts of things in business and all sorts of ways where it’s like, wow, this woman does a better job than I could at this or this woman. I’m so glad she’s working for us because none of the guys can do that job. Or I’m so glad we got some female energy in the room right now because we really need that. And then sometimes there’s crossover too. Sometimes, you know, it’s like, all right, you know, I, I, I better channel a little female energy vibe here right now with the boys because right now, this is not the time to be hardcore.

1:46:18 And maybe vice versa. So is that something you think about? Because it feels like it’s, you’re going to have to think about that for your work.

1:46:28 Connor Beaton: Yeah. I mean, I think there’s sort of two parts for it. One is beginning to cultivate a kind of reverence for women and for feminine energy externally, right? Whether that’s, you know, you’re setting your relationship right with your mom, having reverence for the women that you’re with or dating or working with and really beginning to admire respect.

1:46:53 I’m just going to come back to the word reverence, like have reverence for what they bring that might be different than you and and the qualities and the strengths that might be different but are equal in many ways. And then the second thing is beginning to understand your own relationship to the feminine within you. So one of the challenges that’s that’s happening in our modern culture is that men are either hyper feminised and they’re what I call very feminine forward in their identity and their nature and their characteristics, or they have almost completely like disconnected and disassociated from any type of feminine qualities or traits. And that’s not healthy either.

1:47:34 You know, if you look at like the Spartans, for example, part of Spartan training for the warriors that were, you know, supposedly some of the greatest warriors in existence, part of their training was learning how to use a sword. You’re learning how to use a shield, go to battle, combine, you know, lock arms and Shields together and yadda, yadda. But the other part was learning how to play the lyre, how to write poetry, how to dance. Like these were some of the greatest warriors in existence who were also having to learn some of these more feminine traits.

1:48:05 And so I think this really is, I don’t want to use the word balance, but I think for a lot of men, it’s about cultivating and developing both. Being able to develop some of that more masculine assertiveness and directness and kind of being unapologetic sometimes and holding your ground and being confrontational, but then also being able to embody a more nurturing, caring, compassionate way of being. And for a lot of men, where that starts is with themselves. You know, like I said, so many men have such a harsh inner dialogue.

1:48:40 And what is actually necessary is a type of mothering of themselves, which means that they start to bring some compassion into how they speak with themselves, not letting themselves off the hook, not like, you know, diluting their sense of accountability, but not beating the living crap out of themselves every time something goes wrong, wrong and beginning to have some type of selfemathy and selfcomassion and self understanding. And you might find value in. That’s why I do photography, right?

1:49:11 It’s a very creative outlet for me. You might write poetry, you know, I try and write as often as I can because I like it. It’s a beautiful expression. I mean, there’s many different ways you might want to dance, you might want to sing, you might want to, you know, pick up an instrument and learn how to how to play the piano or the violin or the guitar. But having some type of an an outlet for you to cultivate your own relationship with your own feminine nature internally, because if you don’t, you will externalise that and you will project that on to the women that you date. That’s a whole other conversation that I write about in the book.

1:49:49 But if you don’t have a relationship with your own feminine nature, you will try and get those things from women. And So what a lot of guys do is I lack self compassion. I’m super harsh with myself. I treat myself like crap. And then they get into a relationship with a woman and what do they do? I need you to love me.

1:50:06 I need you to be gentle with me. I need you to be soft and compassionate with me constantly and never disappointed because I am so brutal to myself that I cannot bear you being disappointed or harsh with me in any way, shape or form. And so when we develop that within, then we need it. Less outside of ourselves.

1:50:27 Brian Rose: Powerful stuff there, Connor.

1:50:29 Super powerful. Weirdly, I, I started dancing about six years ago and it, it’s been this crazy adventure for me into the feminine. Now, some people might not say break dancing is feminine, but it’s this form of self-expression. When I was a kid, I was terrified to dance. Like terrified as a young, young kid. I just couldn’t even comprehend being judged on something like that, you know, And it was always more of the male stuff. And I’m going to study hard.

1:50:57 I’m going to do this, this so, but it’s been fascinating to watch myself go down this road and just to try to be comfortable expressing because when you express yourself like that, you, you open yourself up to being judged maybe. And, and so it’s, but it’s been beautiful and I, I love it. And now, you know, we make films and like we create art and you know, now I wear colours I used to never wear. It was always black and blue. And now all these crazy things that I’m like experimenting with now and having fun with and like, sometimes I just wear these crazy ass colours and I’m just like, yeah, I’m just like brightening up the room a little bit. Let’s go.

1:51:36 And so it’s, it’s this fun side that I’m exploring and I’m so glad because it, that was all locked down before, you know, it was all like serious and let’s go get it. And and so I’m really glad you brought that up. I also had really powerful women in my life as a kid, grandmas who were just amazing, and grandmas who, like, without him, I don’t know what we would have done, you know, just taking care of business, handling things, just everything was just on point. So that’s an important, important thing for sure. And to be able to see the feminine energy. And then, yeah, I mean, like, what does Mom do when you hurt yourself?

1:52:13 She gives you a big hug. And one thing I see, when my boys hurt their thing, they run right past me. You know, they’re not looking for me. They want mom. And sometimes maybe you need to recognise that about yourself and maybe, you know, give yourself a little bit of that as well.

1:52:29 Look, we’re, we’re running out of time soon. We’re going to have to definitely do Part 2 here, Connor, at some point. Curious if you can tell people some takeaways because look, I think it’s super helpful that we talked about our ourselves here because I think sometimes that can be extremely didactic as opposed to talking about the state of being or the cause and effect or what people should do. But I’m guessing there’s men and maybe women listening to this that still don’t know where to start.

1:52:58 Now. You gave people three really good things earlier as far as you know, your physical and working out and going into the shadow and then also yourself talk. I think those are all really, really important. But for someone out there who just really feels lost, who looks at that dating scene and they see a pool of women that have these crazy expectations, they can get immediate affirmation online by posting any picture. I have Sadia on as a guest sometimes, and she just talks about how a woman can get immediate validation on social media for men all over the world. It’s something we can’t get as men. And then, of course, men can turn on the porn and really have a relationship with any type of woman around the world. And these two people are doing that. We’re getting further and further apart. Now, whether you agree with everything she says, that’s up to you, but she has points there. If you’re a man in this situation, what are some of the things you can tell them to do to go forward? And then also if you could tell people how they can also follow you and learn more about your stuff.

1:54:00 Connor Beaton: Yeah, absolutely.

1:54:01 I mean, So what I would just start with is get off the dating apps. You know, get off the dating apps. They they’re really they’re really brutal for a lot of men. And if you’re not in that top sort of like 5 to 10% of guys who is just and you’ll know it, right, You’ll know whether or not you are that guy. And both of them have pros and cons.

1:54:22 You know, like the guys that are in the top five, 10%, having commitment is pretty hard because you, you know how much optionality you have. And it’s like going to Cheesecake Factory where you’ve got a freaking menu that’s 12 pages deep and you’re like, what the hell do I want to eat? I’m starving. I want to eat all of these. And so you never commit to a single choice and it becomes almost paralysing, right? It’s a choice paradox.

1:54:48 So, you know, whether you clean house on there or whether you don’t, I would say get off the dating apps. It’s one of the first things that I would do. The second thing that I would do is I would reorient my life towards designing and building myself into somebody that I respected. It’s one of the best things that I’ve done for myself. I did not respect who I was.

1:55:09 I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t like who I was because I was making decisions that were terrible. And so I would really start to direct a lot of the energy and attention that most of us are putting out online, right? That are putting out on these social media platforms and dating apps, constantly swiping through, hoping that somebody will just give you a conversation or a date. I would redirect a lot of that energy towards building myself into a man that I actually liked and respected.

1:55:38 Because then at the very least, when I start to date, when I start to have more conversations with women, I’ll have a sense of my own gut, you know, my own inner voice that says, Oh no, she’s not for me. Or Oh yeah, I think that actually might be something there. And that’s lacking for a lot of modern men today. I, I think the other thing that I would do is like I said before, really start to understand your innate fears of, of women and your innate bias, like biassed stories about women. Anytime that you say all women, it’s probably not true. It’s probably a representation of how you operate and feel internally and the sort of animosity that you that you might be carrying.

1:56:26 So those, those pieces and then get out, like go into social situations, build your social situations. There are a tonne of men’s groups and you know, men’s organisations that are out there. You know, we have like with the, we have something called the Man Talks Alliance. We’ve got almost 1000 guys from all over the world that are doing this type of work. And those men are fathers, they’re leaders, they’re husbands, they’re business owners, they’re entrepreneurs, they’re guys just, you know, driving garbage trucks and it’s just every walk of life. But they’re supporting one another and challenging one another.

1:57:00 And so, you know, I think we’ve the reason why I say this is that we’ve under indexed and undervalued how much women look at the men that we surround ourselves with. That is a sign to a woman of a high value, high status man, the quality of the man that you surround yourself with. So surround yourself with better men. It doesn’t mean that you have to, you know, you that you have to eradicate the guys that you spend Friday nights with and go bowling with and that kind of stuff.

1:57:31 But it does mean that you start to elevate the level of the men that you surround yourself with. And so really, really prioritise that that will fundamentally change your life. And then where you can find me is just man talks everywhere. MANTALKS man talks on Instagram, on YouTube, mantalks.com. That’s that’s pretty much me everywhere.

1:57:51 Brian Rose: Love it. That’s amazing advice. I couldn’t agree more. And look, I’m an introvert, naturally I have to push myself to get into social situations. So if that’s you, I get it. But just start small and do it.

1:58:04 And also all introverts know that when you do stay home for the night, you always feel a little stupid and so get out there and try it. Even if it’s a one person or two person, even if you go to the gathering for 10 minutes and duck out, you can condition yourself to doing it. And that’s where all the good stuff happens. That’s where characters built. That’s where relationships happen. I agree.

1:58:22 Get off those apps because one interaction in real life is worth 100 interactions on an app. And if you can actually make an interaction in real life, it builds all that good stuff, the self esteem and and all that. So maybe there’s hope, Connor, we’re definitely going to need more people like you and we’re going to have to push hard on this narrative if we want to make sure we can create the men that this world needs. So thanks for doing what you do. I’d love to have you back sometime and continue this conversation. I, I think this is going to help a lot of people to, to have these talks and to know also that all men need to explore these issues.

1:58:58 And I, I need to as well, you know, and I need to constantly be exploring these things because there’s constantly things that are colour colouring my view of the world and that are causing me to bring the wrong behaviours to all sorts of situations and the manifest things that don’t serve me. And it’s, there’s a tonne going on there, regardless of all the work that I’ve done. And it’s funny because I went, I went to an ayahuasca ceremony last year and it had been 5 or 6 years and I knew I needed to go, but it’s always hard to go because it’s always challenging. And my martial arts instructor was like, what, why you going, Brian?

1:59:33 And I said, I’m going to create the man that I need to be 5 years from now for my, for my, for my community, for my family. I’m going to create that man, the man that needs to be a better leader, that needs to be a more congruent person. So I’m going to go do this thing that’s going to be hard. It’s probably going to suck. It’s really unknown because I know it’s going to create the man that I need to be in the future. And that’s why I’m going back next month, because I know if I don’t do that, I’m not going to be who I want to. Going to be and who I need to be for the people around me. So for everybody out there, I’m I’m still putting in the work and I’m I’ve known by no means have it figured out or where I really want to be.

2:00:17 And so I encourage everybody to go out there and do those things too. For sure. Connor, thanks so much. I really appreciate this conversation.

2:00:24 Connor Beaton: Likewise, thanks for having me.

2:00:26 Brian Rose: All right, Great stuff. Thank you. Everybody follow this man. We’ll see you next time on London. Real bye.