Bedros Keuilian Podcast Show - 184. How to be a Real Man

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

How do you show up as a man? Do you suffer in silence, always walking on eggshells, act passive-aggressive, and eventually become hostile towards those around you?  Instead of dealing with your issues head-on, do you suppress those feelings and bury them deep down inside, hoping they'll go away?  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that this is unhealthy and not a real man's behavior. The truth is, your current status is no way to live life and will eventually collapse around you.  In today's Empire episode, Bedres Kueilian explains the characteristics of a real man, what you can do to gain confidence in your own skin, why looking for validation from others detrimental, ways to address the trauma in your past, how to destroy a negative belief system, and so much more. "Go and do the deep work. Go figure out what your limiting factors are. Fix them. You're not broken. You're just not completely healed yet." -Bedros Keulian  Here’s what you don’t want to miss: 6:45 Why most men lead lives of quiet desperation 7:39 How men can heal the trauma in their lives 8:49 Why men self-sabotaging and never deal with their issues  11:26 How to hunt and destroy negative belief systems 12:10 How medicating will destroy your drive and creativity 13:11 Why you might need to suck it up and get therapy  14:30 How being broken will impact your entire life 17:26 How your sense of self-worth developed as a child 18:50 Why real men are savage but also servants 21:05 The types of men with emotional scars  21:50 The kinds of conversations that cause a ripple-effect Connect with Bedros Keuilian:   Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bedroskeuilian/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bedroskeuilian/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/user/KeuilianInc Twitter https://twitter.com/bedroskeuilian LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/bedroskeuilian/ Buy Man Up and get Bedros' High-Performance Leadership Course for FREE: https://manup.com/ Subscribe to My Channel for weekly videos: http://www.youtube.com/bedroskeuilian/?sub_confirmati

Go and do the deep work. Go and figure out what your limiting factors are. Fix them. You're not broken. You're just not completely healed yet. Hey, what's happening? Let's talk about how to be a real man. Ladies, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh man, he's talking about being a man, pay attention, trust me, because you're going to want to listen to this. Otherwise, you're going to end up with a dumbass man. And if you end up with a dumbass man, then that's going to lead to a dumbass relationship and dumbass relationships usually end up into dumbass divorces. So here we go. How to be a real man. But seriously, guys, I came up with this idea of how to be a real man because this young man sent me a DM on the old IG and he was like, hey man, I want to be a real alpha man like you.

And as much as I love the compliment, I, listen, I don't know what an alpha man is. And I don't know I'm an alpha man and I appreciate the compliment, I think. But more than that, I think I'm just comfortable with my own skin. And if that's what an alpha man is, then color me an alpha man. But I can tell you that I was not this person that I am today. Now at 46, something happens, right? As you get into your 40s, I can tell all of you this, men, that as you get into your 40s, there's a level of evolution that takes place where you kind of begin to,

to kind of just you become, you're fresh out of fucks for anything. You don't, you don't give a fuck about drama. You don't care to get involved in drama and gossip and you don't really look for other people's validation and approval. Like that started for me in my mid-30s, but as I really started to get into the tail end of my 30s and into my 40s, I was like, you know what, I'm fresh out of fucks for everything and this is who I am, like it or not, feel free not to hang out with me. And there's a sense. sense of confidence that you gain when you are comfortable in your own skin. And I think what people talk about in terms of alpha or I want to be a real man like you is, hey, I just want to be

comfortable in my own skin because it looks like you're happy and it looks like you have peace of mind and it looks like you're doing well in life. And check, check and check. I'm doing all of those. And I'm grateful for all of those things because I also know life comes to us in phases and seasons. So, listen, last year 2020 was certainly not a season of winning in terms of business. I absolutely was winning in life. I was still happy. I still had peace of mind. And I have an amazing family and great friends and great company. But there was this moment in time, especially around, well, April, May, June of 2020, where I was like, shoot, there might be be a chance that we kiss Fit Body Boot Camp goodbye. Our international franchise may not be an international

franchise. And it's weird when you get to a place like that because I was like, well, shoot, that was, if that's the worst case scenario that happens, like, you know what, I can accept that. And Fit Body Boot Camp is not my identity. My cars and my homes are not my identity. My private gym is not my identity, the lifestyle that I live is not my identity, my supplement company, software company, the project, my book, none of that is my identity. My identity is the person that I am and the reputation that I have and the way that I show up to you. That's my identity. So I could lose it all today and I don't feel any different and I wouldn't feel any different so long as I have my loved ones around me. I can rebuild. Now go back to 30 years old and

And if I was 30 to 35 years old and this whole COVID thing happened then and I was CEO of FitBody Boot Camp, it would be a very different feeling. I would immediately lose happiness. I would immediately start feeling depressed and anxious and make no mistake about it. It's not like I was like, yeah, I'm high-fiving myself through 2020. That wasn't the case. I still had moments of fear and uncertainty and doubt. but I had this constant feeling of peace and happiness knowing that nothing that I lose in this process is a byproduct of what I did.

I'm going to try my hardest to keep it all and to serve my franchisees and to continue to grow the brand. But depending on what happens with the world, if we lose it all, I'm okay. And that was a really cool place to be in 2020. Like I said, if this happened, you know, in 2010, right? just 10 years ago, I was at a very different place where my money and my business was a direct connection to my identity. But with that said, let's talk about being a real man. So I kind of, if I'm looking down here, if you're watching this on the YouTube's, you're going to see me

looking down every now and again. If you're watching or listening to this on, you know, on the podcast platforms and you're good to go. But I wrote this post and I want to kind of unpack it, if you will. I said how to be a real man. To be a real man, you can't show any emotion or vulnerability. Make sure to avoid all deep and meaningful conversations, stuff all your feelings deep down inside, and keep your head down and just grind through life. To be a real man, walk on eggshells around everyone and avoid confrontation. Be passive aggressive until you get so pissed stuff that you explode and yell at your wife. Don't ask for help ever because that's a sign of weakness. To be a real man, never do the deep work that's going to heal you. Instead, avoid and

ignore and distract yourself so that you never have to work on the things that are limiting your success and your happiness. I said, never address your vices or your addictions and always pretend that everything is okay and just continue to suffer in silence and quietly die within. Now, I said, as you read this, you see how stupid this is, right? Like, this is not how to be a real man. Yet most men are this way. Most men are this way. In fact, there's a quote that I want to read to you.

This quote, let me find it here. David to Drow is the author of this quote. He says, the mass of men, the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. And that is so true. Most men lead lives of quiet desperation. They're suffering in silence,

and they're walking on eggshells, and they're passive aggressive, and they're just letting things build and build before they explode in an uncontrollable rage, only to feel regret for that later, whether it was at their kids or their spouse or their or their friends, maybe their employees or even your business partner, right? But what if, just what if real men had a very different way of being?

What if real men were people that were vulnerable? What if you could be vulnerable? What if you can have open conversation? What if you can do the deep dive and do the self-work and really heal the areas of your life that you were traumatically damaged in, right? Maybe you had physical or emotional abuse from parents or school teachers. Someone beat you. Maybe someone emotionally wrecked you.

Maybe you were physically sexually molested or raped. And maybe you were just called names. Whatever it was, you've probably had some traumatic impact that you haven't dealt with and that you suppress. And that as men, we put in a silo. and we just forget about. And we think that if I just keep my head down and grind through, I'll be okay. The only problem is you're not okay because you haven't processed through that shit. And that shit tends to want to come up and show its ugly head at the most inconvenient of times,

such as in your relationship on vacation with your spouse, your family, your kids, right? Or as your business is thriving, all of a sudden you find yourself having these anxiety attacks or going into a deep depression and you can't figure out why. Or maybe as people are giving you compliments and you're getting great opportunities, you find yourself self-sabotaging yourself and you're like, why did this just happen? As you look back, you realize I did this to myself. Why?

Well, you probably subconsciously realize that you don't deserve love and that you're not lovable and you are broken and you are unworthy of success. But really are you? No, you are just hurt. you have a negative belief system about yourself that you've never taken the time to fix because, well, something happened to you, some traumatic event happened to you as a kid. And, well, it's left scars on you, hasn't it? Let me tell you about someone, a guy that's gone through the project, and I'm not going to mention

any names or any class numbers, but, man, this guy, just a beast of a dude, jacked, ripped, great shape, but immediately when I met him at hour number one of the 75 hours of the project, like he couldn't make eye contact. Like he was just looking at my feet, looking over my shoulders, he's talking to me and yes through this and yes through that. And as you could imagine, I began to wonder like, what the hell is up with this dude? Now, what many people don't see about the project when we put out all these cool videos about the project, it just looks like it's a big 75-hour physical evolution, right? That, you know, there's going to the beach and you're being tortured by the Navy Seal Ray in the beach and then you're crawling in the mud pit by the Marine

who's just like yelling at you and squawking in you and having you start all over again and ice baths and you're pulling trucks and you're hiking for miles at a time with logs and stuff, there's more to the project than that. What we don't show in those videos because I like to keep those private are the four, six, eight-hour chunks at a time where we do a deep dive on the emotional work. If you really want to know what the project is about it, it is about helping heal men so that they can become more vulnerable. they can become servants of humanity.

You can have a deep conversation with people around you without your butt hole puckering up because it's okay, it's cool to talk about what happened to you. And quite honestly, no one really cares about what happened to you other than you. Right. And so I share this with you because in the process of helping men heal through journaling and going through this one of the evolutions that we have is a sit down, write, as I facilitate this thing, where it's going. called the hunt and destroy, where we hunt and destroy the toxic negative conversations and

belief systems that these men have carried for themselves, right, for so many years. And listen, I'm a byproduct of that. The reason we started the project is because it took me these massive anxiety attacks. If you read my book, Man Up, you know that it took these massive anxiety attacks to cripple me to get me to go to a doctor, only to get put on Xanax. And of course I used and I truly thought stress was the problem right my business was growing quickly I had a lot of irons in the fire and I was just so stressed out docked and I for the first time ever I'm having these massive panic attacks and anxiety attacks and I don't know how to handle them and they're crippling help give me drugs and of course they gave me Xanax well

I guess what happens when you when you take Xanax you kind of get numb you lose your creativity you don't have much fire and thunder and desire to really work. And so I lost all of that. I lost my drive. And so I was like, hey, after two weeks, I told the doc, I'm like, I can't do this. I can't take these drugs that are numbing my creativity. So the good news is I'm not having anxiety attacks. The bad news is I feel like a wreck.

I just feel like I'm not contributing to society. I'm not doing my work. And I don't know how things are, excuse me, how things are going to continue to grow in my business and how I'm going to continue to make an impact in people's lives if I don't work at the capacity that I enjoy working at. And so as I tell the doctor that I don't want to take these drugs anymore, he says, well, it's simple. You're going to have to work with a therapist if you want help with your stress and anxiety and panic attacks. Well, listen, you tell a guy that he has to work with a therapist. Come on, man. Like, really? I'm not broken. I'm not messed up.

As it turns out, I was exactly that. I was broken. I was messed up. And I'm going to to get back to that guy in just a moment that I told you about. I know I kept an open loop for you. So hang in there, guys. So long story short, I sucked it up and I found a therapist. His name is Kevin. And I worked with Kevin for just over 12 months, every week, every Monday for 12 months. First, we started off working on my stress, my anxiety, the things that led to a panic attack. But very quickly, as Kevin gained my confidence and my trust, I began to open up about what had really happened to me as a kid. And I've shared this before. Between the ages of four and six, I was molested by two older boys back in the old country before we escaped Soviet Union and

came to the United States. And so you can imagine having been molested consistently by two older boys left a lot of emotional and mental scars on me, right? It had been something that I'd never talked about. Up to the age of 37 when that anxiety attack happened to me, I'd never talked about it. I never mentioned it to anyone. It was a secret that I carried and truth be told. deep down inside, I felt shame, I felt rage, I felt confusion, I felt like I was broken, unlovable, and undeserving, and unworthy of success and happiness. Like, I was just like this broken thing, right? And so imagine being this broken thing or feeling like a broken thing and trying to get

into a relationship with a woman, trying to be a father of two amazing kids, trying to, try to lead an organization that's going to make an impact, right, like Fit Body Boot Camp and all the other companies that I have. You could see how there would be so much friction between the guy that feels broken, unworthy, unlovable, and the path that I want to travel in life. And so working with Kevin as he won my trust, and I opened up to him and I told him about what happened to me as a kid, we worked through that. And I was able to heal over those 12 months.

And so as I healed through that process and I openly talked about it from stage, so many people, especially men, would walk up to me and say, after I, you know, spoke, they go, hey, it's like you were talking to me, man. I can't believe you talked about what I'm. happened to you as a kid that is so brave of you that is so big of you thank you for talking about that because something like that's happened to me and I know I have all these emotional and mental scars and they show up in different areas of my life in the way of sabotage and the way of anger and suffering and silence undeserving unfulfilled et cetera like man you know you can work through

this you can go work with a therapist and work through this problem you do know that right I don't want to work with a therapist I don't think I need a therapist yet is there any books that you recommend reading look books are not going to get you there right you need a therapist to talk to you, ask you the right questions to help you dig, deep down into your soul, unpack all that shit, and realize that you are lovable, that you are worth it, that you do not need to carry shame and confusion, and that rage you can just put away because it's useless to anything. So that said, let's go back to our guy that I was telling you about. Jacked, great shape, couldn't make eye contact. As we got to this section of the project, about, oh, 40-some-odd

hours in where we went through the journaling of the Hunt and Destroy piece, he revealed that when he was a kid, he and his dad would go and show horses, right? And they would show horses, and so they had this big pickup truck, and they had a trailer where they would pull five or six horses in this trailer. And he would sit next to dad in the passenger seat of the truck, and they would drive to the arena where they would show their horses, and hopefully their horses won. and if the horses did not win to dad's expectations then dad would get very angry dad would get very pissed dad would yell at this young man and dad would say you're not going to sit in the front seat with me in the truck instead you're going to sit in the trailer with the horses and so this young

man found himself in the back of a trailer with horses sitting amongst a whole bunch of hay and piss and horseshit. You could imagine how demeaning that was to this young boy. You could imagine how crippling it was to his self-esteem and his confidence, to his self-worth, right? And as he grew up, he just felt like he could never do anything right. He was just never good enough. And he constantly created this narrative of punishing himself,

just like dad would punish him. And it showed up in his marriage. It showed up in his health. It showed up in his business. And what was sad is, he didn't feel that he was there at the project to deal with that. He thought he had some other issues. But thankfully, the project is really good at breaking men down

and getting them to become vulnerable and suspending disbelief because the Navy SEAL, the Marine, the SWAT guy, the MMA guy, were really good at breaking you down mentally and emotionally through physical evolutions that get you to want to open up and let down the wall. And it's during that time that I get to shine as one of the project instructors and work on that hunt and destroy piece. And so as we did, we figured out really the dad had a problem with alcohol. The dad was just repeating a cycle that his dad did.

And he felt that punishment would create more winners than positive reinforcement. And so you could imagine the work that this man had to do to heal himself. But by revealing that, unearthing it, taking it out of the shadows and putting it in the light, he was able to realize that, you know what, I am plenty worth love. I am worth success. I am worth happiness. I am worth fulfillment. And the real work began for him. But this isn't about the project. This is about what a real man is. And so when we talk about a real man is, it's unfortunate because, well, as I read there for you, a real man these days is lost, is confused, is passive aggressive.

A real man is a nice guy, right? And all that means is that you're just passive, you're quiet, you're unsure, lack confidence. You ought to be a savage, but a servant. You ought to be a protector and a provider. That's what a real man is. And I don't know if you need to walk around as an alpha beat in your chest all the time, because I certainly love opening doors for people. I love saying please and thank you.

I love treating people to things and I love being generous with my time and with my money. But if I have to bring the thunder and fuck a motherfucker up, I certainly will. I love being comfortable in my own skin and I love saying, no, I'm not going to go to that wedding and I'm not going to go to that funeral. I never spent time with that bride and groom anyway. And so I'm not about to go waste my time to that wedding. And that person that died, Godspeed. But again, we didn't spend much time and I'm not going to go there.

See, it's when you start falling into these obligations of life because you are insecure, that you don't have your own core values, that you don't have true character and a true North Star to live by, that you begin to do what everyone else does. And you begin to have resentment towards your spouse, towards your business partner, towards life in general. And I'm here to tell you that what real men do. And if you want to know how to be a real man, it is to be vulnerable. It's okay to cry. It's okay to talk about the deep shit. because nothing cracks me up more than men who haven't seen each other for a long time. Maybe they're friends.

And like, hey, man, how's it going? How's the weather in Kansas City? First of all, motherfucker, I can open up my iPhone and tell you the weather in any city across the world. Like in that moment. Do I really care what the weather is in Kansas City? Do I really care how your sports team doing this? Because I could pull up, again, the stats on your sports team in your city and take exactly how good they're doing. right the thing is men who have these emotional scars who haven't dealt with it that are operating

in the state of passive aggressive that are suffering in silence that are kind of living in a state of mediocrity and ignoring and avoiding all those other the deep work keep all conversations on the surface superficial they talk about the weather they talk about sports team they talk about the politics those aren't the conversations that i like to have not now Not that I've healed. The conversations I want to have are the deep conversations. The conversations that I want to have are the impactful conversations. The conversations that I want to have might lead one or both of us to crying, and that's okay.

The conversations that I want to have are the ones that are going to create a ripple of impact. And for that to happen, you have to start feeling strong and confident in your skin. For that to happen, you've got to start healing. And I know it's a far shot for me to tell you that you might need to work with the therapist, but it felt just as far of a shot when my doctor told me that I would need to talk to a therapist about my stress and my anxiety, which led to me uncovering all that deep shit that I had never addressed. And that deep shit is what had me programmed in a negative state.

And so I'm here to tell you guys that if you want to be a real man, if you want to be the type of man that is a gentleman, that is chivalrous, that is kind, that is compassionate, that is empathetic, also a savage and a protector and seen as a leader, seen as someone confident, do the real work, do the healing, do the deep work. And understand that one out of every four people have had some form of sexual abuse. One out of every three people have had some form of physical or mental abuse. And no matter if it's sexual abuse or physical or mental abuse, the part of your brain that lights up under a cat scan is that fight or flight part, the part that says fear, threat.

And if you're always living under that fight or flight moment of fear and threat, you're not going to have a sense of peace. You're not going to have a sense of deep happiness and comfort. And you're not going to have the sense of fulfillment and meaning. And what I would want for you is what I've gained through doing the deep work. which is I'm more comfortable in my skin than I've ever been, and that I have peace of mind, that I have happiness,

and I have a sense of significance and purpose on this planet, and it's magnified by 10x because I've done the healing and I've done the work, and I encourage you to do the work, and I don't know if therapy is the solution for you, or maybe you've got to come and experience the project, or maybe you've got to go talk to a counselor, but I can tell you that if you continue to repeat the patterns that you've been repeating,

you're going to continue to get the results and the outcome that you've gotten. And I don't know how long it's going to be before the spouse leaves. I don't know how long it's going to be before your kids begin to ignore you and avoid you. And I don't know how long it's going to be before your business collapse all around you. But I don't want you to experience that. So I hope you'll take this words of wisdom for me in that go and do the deep work. Go and figure out what your limiting factors are. Fix them.

You're not broken. You're just not completely healed yet, but you will be. So guys and gals, do me a favor. share this on the old social medias. Feel free to tag me. I would love it if you would leave a five-star review on iTunes and all the other platforms out there. And as always, don't forget to tell your mama.

Peace.