Moore Style - Becoming an Integrated Man with Tony Endelman

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

If you’re struggling with limiting beliefs, shame around sexual exploration, or stepping outside of your comfort zone - you aren’t alone. This week we are joined by transformational life coach, Tony Endelman for a conversation around the power that we hold to make a difference in our lives. Join us as we dive into the male loneliness epidemic, why support is key in dissolving shame, and exercises to overcome anxiety and depression. If you can relate to feeling lost and unfulfilled, this episode will inspire you to create the life you want! In this week’s episode, we discuss: [01:29] About Tony Endelman [04:02] How Tony became a transformational life coach [10:49] Examining your behavior [14:59] “How to not be the biggest fucking downer on the planet” [18:42] Exercises to overcome anxiety or depression  [23:45] Letting go of attachment & dealing with rejection [30:00] Get outside of your comfort zone [31:51] Shame around sexual exploration [39:57] Tony’s “Integrated Man University” [43:26] The impact of enmeshment on loneliness [46:28] “Most men are taught from a young age how to please a woman” [50:14] Moving beyond societal pressures [55:21] One of Tony’s favorite dates   Connect with Tony: Website “The Big Stick”

Welcome to the down and dirty podcast, the ultimate guide to modern midlife dating. I'm your host Celeste Moore and I'm here to help you navigate the challenges of today's dating world. Think of me as your female version of hitch but better with over 16 years of experience as a certified image consultant and dating coach. I've got the inside scoop on what women want. In this podcast, we're diving deep into the world of healthy masculinity and modern dating. It's a fast changing industry. And here you'll find personal stories, expert insights

and candid conversations that will empower you to take control of your dating life. There's never been a better time to achieve your desired outcome, whether it's marriage, finding a significant other, securing a life partner or simply regaining your dating confidence. We're here with you twice a week to explore the viewpoints and challenges in today's dating arena that resonate with every man seeking dating success and love. So let's dive into today's episode. We've got an exciting discussion lined up for you. Get ready for the double D's of dating where dating dilemmas turn into dating triumph. welcome everybody to another episode of the down and dirty podcast i'm your host aless more and

i'm super excited to jump into an exciting conversation with my guest today before i jump into the episode i want to tell you about him his name is tony endelman and he is an author popular self-help blogger a certified transformational life coach and certified happiness trainer he is also one of dr robert glover's elite certified no more mr nice guy coaches tony recently released a book the big stick collected and applied wisdom from the teachings of dr robert glover encapsulates nearly 40 years of wisdom put forth by dr glover he's born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, Tony Nolans. His humorous and unconventional self-help has been featured in the Huffington Post, Yahoo, Lifehack, Mindvalley, Thought Catalog, Thrive

Global, Tiny Buddha, and The Good Men Project. In his coaching business, Tony works with clients both one-on-one and through his group coaching program for men, Integrated Man University. Welcome, Tony. Thank you for being on today's show. Thank you so much for the invitation. yes by the way never say nolans if you come down here locals will tear you apart for that really i heard from locals that's how i should say it okay correct me correct me well maybe i i've never heard that i've been here almost a decade and everyone i met is pretty picky about about the language you use down here so how do you say it as far as i know nolans is frowned upon oh okay correct me how would you know I think you're supposed to say New Orleans but

New Orleans okay all right well I could be wrong you know what I'm gonna say New Orleans you know I'm not a native so I'll get torn apart for being a transplant so I actually got torn apart because I didn't say it that way and so I was like okay you live there grew up there but you know what potato potato because none of us are from there so anybody that's listening that's from there send me a dm and tell me how it's i would never i would never tear you apart i'm just warning you okay well i will not come down there and say it like that all right so i know that on your website you give a beautiful story because you're such an amazing writer you really are just very straightforward. And I love that. I think a lot of men resonate with that

as well. But if for those listening here today, could you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got to become and be a relationship coach and work with Dr. Robert Glover? Pretty amazing. Yeah, of course. I actually hate to refer to myself as any sort of relationship coach, but Okay, so you're more of a transformational life coach? Yeah, I mean, relationship coaching is a big part of what I do, but relationships are inherently complicated and messy. Yes, I agree. I can't pretend to figure them out all the time,

but I do what I can. Yeah, my journey, it's quite a long one. I'll try and condense it as much as I can, but you know i i was born and raised in omaha nebraska it's my hometown and in my 20s i mean i mean the long and short of it and i was quite unhappy i was pretty miserable i was dealing with a lot of depression anxiety and a whole like shit storm of events kind of happened right around my 30th birthday. I published a humor book that didn't sell. I detested what I was doing for work. I hated my nine-to-five job. I tried starting a marketing company that failed.

I ruined a number of friendships. I had pretty much zero romantic dating prospects. and also right before i turned 30 my father passed away suddenly and unexpectedly while he was working out at the gym and he was like the picture of health didn't smoke didn't drink ate right worked out every day i mean if anybody was gonna live to be 100 i i thought it would be my dad and he basically just dropped out at the gym one day and that was a real shock not just to my family to our whole community because you know he was very beloved everybody loved my dad and after that happened it did initially kind of send me spiraling further into depression but ultimately my father's passing I mean it really it woke me up it really knocked me on my ass

and it it made me realize geez this shit's unpredictable and what am I doing you only get one life it could end at any minute and i'm just sitting here in my apartment in omaha and miserable you know and if i don't make some changes some like big major changes i'm just gonna sit here and rot basically that's how i felt and so i started doing things that i found really scary that made me really uncomfortable but i started making some big changes in my life The first big change I made was while I was going down the self-help rabbit hole, I stumbled across a model of neuro-linguistic programming or NLP, which I had no idea what the fuck NLP was, but it just, you know, again, I was going down that self-help rabbit hole and this model of NLP said, well, there are six levels of human change and transformation. and the first and easiest and outermost level is change your environment and so I thought well shit why not start there and so I moved to New Orleans or Nolens where I live now and I had

fallen madly in love with New Orleans on this solo road trip that I'd taken it was just like I couldn't stop thinking about New Orleans like it I'd spent like 10 seconds here and I was just like holy shit I have to live there and so I packed up my stuff and rented a U-Haul and moved down and so was that a panacea for all my woes of course not like kind of wherever you go there you are type of thing but it was a real good start but when I got to New Orleans I started repeating a lot of the same patterns I took another toxic job that I hated I started repeating the same dating and relationship patterns and it was actually i started dating this woman who i just became infatuated with and she dumped me very very very cruelly and that was ultimately what

led me to dr glover's work uh and ultimately what led me to become a coach was was a heartbreak which seems to be a catalyst for for a lot of people for a lot of different things but for me that this woman just kicked my ass to the curb and you know in the past that wasn't the first time that that had happened i'm not it wasn't the first time a woman had unremorsefully tossed me from her life but this time around i just thought okay something's going on with me like you know because in the past i would always dismiss the woman as oh she's crazy or she's a bitch or she's a narcissist or whatever we kind of throw those terms around and tend to blame other people but this time around i'm just like okay there's no way i've dated six narcissists in a

row like what's the common denominator here it's me something's going on with me and so i really started i started diving with it and and examining my own behavior and my own patterns and that's what led me to again that's what led me to dr glover's work and then that's how i got hooked up with him and he's a great friend and the greatest mentor in my life but yeah then i pursued coaching because i'd always been fascinated by psychology and self-development anyway and i always wanted to just be an entrepreneur and do my own thing so i started making this career pivot and so i started my coaching business on the side like eight years ago while i still had a day job and then ultimately just upped and quit my day job and i've been

a full-time coach writer online entrepreneur for i don't know five years five or six years now so that is what turned out to be not the very condensed version but no that was very condensed well thank you for sharing and what you did was really brave what you did was really people think about it all the time like i need to make changes or i need to look at the common denominator oh maybe it's me looking at yourself can be really difficult i've done that a few times in my life Yeah. Well, I'll say two things to that. I appreciate you calling me brave, but, you know, I hesitate to use that word because when I was doing these things, particularly like when I quit my job, you know, I was like, okay, what's scarier? Like going after what I really want and like maybe taking a chance and believing in myself. and yeah maybe venturing into the unknown and stepping outside my comfort zone and facing some of my fears pretty scary or like sitting in this fucking cubicle for the rest of my life

being miserable that to me was way scarier so i appreciate what you're saying and maybe what i did does require a certain amount of courage but to me the alternative was just way more frightening yeah yeah nobody wants i mean like you said you saw with your own father which i again my condolences that i can't imagine i haven't lost a parent yet think you know but to know when you lose somebody who is that close in your life to know that life is truly truly sure and that that was able to move you to say probably like no living in this effing misery right it's gonna of like be worse than than stepping out to the unknown i mean yeah yeah and the other thing use about kind of looking within and examining your own behavior yeah that is tough i mean

you have to come to terms with a lot of your faulty behaviors and beliefs and paradigms and you have to really get brutally honest with yourself but you can't make changes in your life if you don't do that first you know and right you know that's the thing about dr glover's book nowhere mr nice guy it's very confronting you know i mean and that's my new book the big stick that's why i called it the big stick because literally every guy who reaches out to me they all say the same thing well i read dr glover's work and it was the big fucking stick upside my head that I needed you know so it is very confronting but yeah again that's that's the that's the first step towards you know transformation and changing your life yeah is

getting really honest with yourself about you know what your shortcomings are and what what your faulty beliefs are and what your problematic behaviors are and what you want to change you know you have to be real honest with yourself about that stuff yeah that literally is probably the hardest i remember going through a leadership training years ago like 17 years ago and very very brutally honest but you had a very small group and they would tell you how you how they saw you and you might think oh i'm hiding this i can cover it up well like i don't come across this way and when then you have 30 plus people all say the same thing you're like oh shit yeah that's fucking hard that like but to know the reality right because we tell ourselves stories

in our head and like really what we think is going on is really not not the case though but yeah then like then owning that right that's that i know you said it doesn't take or maybe bravery is not the word but that takes that takes courage that takes action steps you're not going to go past that if you don't start there so yeah yeah and it's funny like you mentioned people telling you how you are or how they see you you know like i i wrote an essay probably one of my most popular essays on my site is called how to not be the biggest fucking downer on the planet and it's about my battle with depression but like everybody kept telling me like dude you're the biggest fucking downer on the planet and uh they weren't saying it to be mean

they were saying it like out of love and concern but i had friends literally say to me dude you're a fucking downer you know and honestly you need friends like that you need people to point that kind of shit out or you know because yeah i did experience a lot of depression but i thought oh maybe i'm pretty good at hiding it you know but when enough of my friends told me dude you're a downer like it made me go okay maybe i need to do something about this because i don't i don't want to be the guy who brings everyone down you know i don't want to be that guy yeah well i completely understand depression and anxiety there's been many moments in my life where i've dealt with that so i think in itself the depression and anxiety is also to look at that and to work

because it takes work it doesn't take just like oh yeah i'm depressed here here's a pill or something right oh it totally that's one of the things i i talk about the essay is like i don't think happiness is just something you can turn on but that that's what you hear from a lot of people, right? Oh, just think positive, choose happy. It's like, well, that's what happy people say, but you can choose to do the work. You know, you can choose to do the work. So, and that's what I did. I didn't just choose happy, but I did go, okay, I'm making an unbreakable promise to myself to do something about this. And I'm going to commit to doing the work, whatever it takes. Did you write that down? Did you say it out loud to yourself or did you tell other people?

that statement or was it just in your head it was in my head yeah okay okay yeah it was in my head i maybe i might have told my mom too like yeah i promise i'm gonna figure this out you know but it was in my head yeah i only asked that because i've been told over and over the more you like they visually write it or say it out loud or tell someone the more it has it holds i guess because i've told myself i'm gonna wake up at five every morning i don't know just throwing something out there right yeah news news news right but if it's like in my calendar or something right it it holds more to myself i was just curious yeah i think there's a lot of there's definitely a lot of power in writing things down um you know i've tried to start the habit of journaling and i've

never been to never been able to stick with it but but I do believe in like you know uh like you know I have a big whiteboard with all my goals for the year I make a vision board every year I do put things down or put things out into the universe for sure yeah I like that I think that's really important I don't know I think maybe it's something about seeing it that I don't know stays in your brain and look around. Well, it's just staring me in the face every day. You know what I mean? It's just my whiteboard, especially, it's just like staring me in the face every day. And it's a constant reminder of what my mission is, you know? Right. Right. And so I know that, you know, you do talk a lot about overcoming depression, anxiety. So if your client comes

to you do you know how to like guide them with this is there something that you can give them exercises I mean I know you're not a therapist and a counselor but are there exercises that you help them through this process yeah well you're right I'm not a therapist or a doctor so if somebody did come to me and it's happened on occasion where somebody came to me and they were you know like in suicidal despair like i cannot take that person on as a client you know right right i work mostly in my coaching business now it's almost it's probably 95 nice guys quote-unquote nice guys okay who read dr glover's book and i have found that pretty much all nice guys including me have this kind of like low grade chronic like dull depression that's that's

kind of always with them and so yeah i mean there's a whole host of journal exercises and activities missions and homework assignments i give these guys to help them i think to be honest I think what seems to me to be the common denominator amongst these men is that they just overthink and overanalyze the shit out of everything, which causes them to feel depressed and anxious. And a lot of them have self-limiting beliefs. You know, I mean, the nice guy syndrome is fundamentally rooted in toxic shame, which is you know just a belief the inaccurately internalized belief that i'm not okay just as i am

and so that's how a lot of these guys think they think they're not okay just as they are they think they're unlovable or defective in some way plus like i said they kind of overthink and over analyze the shit out of everything so i don't know just to give you a short list i guess first of all i recommend meditation to everyone and anyone meditation completely changed my life it is the simplest and most effective tool i know of to just combat your monkey mind so i try and get these guys to start meditating as quickly as possible one of the things that dr glover is so adamant about in his work that i try and hammer home is like you can't do any of this work alone so you cannot overcome toxic shame you cannot overcome your low-grade depression

your anxiety your self-limiting beliefs your nice guy syndrome you can't do any of that shit alone so find a coach find a mentor you know or better yet find a group like find a men's group of like safe people ideally a group of other men who you can reveal yourself to and who you can relate to and these other men are there to support you and lift you up and encourage you and give you more accurate feedback about the bullshit stories you're telling yourself yeah also some of the basics eat healthier get some exercise i also tell guys get the fuck off the internet yeah or be really really mindful about the content you're consuming on the internet because a lot of these guys are just and i and i was guilty of this too we're just wasting our time

we're just doom scrolling on the internet or you know obsessing over women will never meet on instagram or playing video games or jerking off to porn you know all this like junk food behavior that just doesn't serve us at all and that is honestly really bad for the psyche you know yeah so so those are kind of some of the basic things I try and get guys to do right off the bat you know and then I of course work with them on like working at becoming the observer of your thoughts not the believer of them so really learning to kind of step outside yourself and again observe the bullshit stories you're telling yourself and learning how to realize they're bullshit because most of the stories we tell ourselves are bullshit you know yeah 100

and that's the problem we believe those stories you know but but they're not true you know yeah So I work with guys on just learning how to, again, be the observer of their thoughts, not the believer of them. I'm also a big believer in like letting go of attachment to outcome. Huge. Rooted in Buddhism, but I guess sort of that subtle art of not giving a fuck sort of thing. Yeah. Letting go of attachment to outcome. Learning to look at the world more abundantly.

those two are huge too when it comes to like dating and relationships for sure letting go of attachment thinking more abundantly learning learning to master the art of moving on so crazy you just said that because i literally just recorded a very quick quick solo episode and it was literally about that it's about how valentine's day it's one of the things that everybody put so much pressure on it's gotta be perfect and the outcome's gonna be like this and i experienced a date one time that he literally set everything up to be like his vision of this perfect date right number one there's no perfect date but number two something it was like i don't remember what went wrong it was like the timing was off something literally it was so little that

threw him all out of whack. He was sitting in his emotions. He was, I don't want to say petty, but he was acting like a child. You know, it was just like, it was just like layer after layer after layer of this, like, it could have been such a beautiful thing if you didn't attach this perfection to the outcome of the state. And then in the end, nobody was getting laid and nobody was having fun because we were all, I was pissed that he was pissed and he would be a stupid. It was just like this domino effect sure i love that you talk and and i'm sure i am sure if he would have just let it go and laughed at himself you would have actually found that maybe even more attractive exactly exactly so yeah that's just such a key i mean if you're gonna date in 2024

you've got to learn to master the art of moving on because you're gonna have to endure a lot of bullshit a lot of bad behavior and you know a lot of people who aren't the right fit for you and you've got to learn to move on from those experiences i think that's so important like what you're saying and what you're talking about it's like you know when when guys are dealing with rejection and it's so great that you get rejected because that person's not for you you don't know why what's going on why they said no or why it's not working out i mean that just gives you another like go put yourself in the right direction to meet the person who you're supposed to meet that's what i think and i know guys take it so tough and so hard nobody likes to be rejected

but i think if you take personal aspect out of it sure and look at it as more of a rejection yeah i mean rejection in and of itself doesn't hurt i mean it's the stories we attach to i mean how can somebody reject you like how can a complete stranger reject you they can't they don't know you they don't know anything about you and so it's literally just you know they are not interested in interacting with you at that moment yeah it's got nothing to do with you right it's one of the most powerful exercises i give to guys which i mean i stole straight from dr lover but the exercise is go out and get rejected that's what i tell them go out and get rejected you know go out and talk to five different women and try to get rejected now that doesn't mean do anything

offensive or creepy or act like an asshole but it means be bold be confident and let go of any attachment to outcome and just be you and what happens is they almost never get rejected all five times you know um and when they do get rejected they go oh that wasn't so bad wasn't that big of a deal you know i'm still standing i'm still breathing yeah yeah like i've never like nobody's ever i've never heard of like a man like getting punched in the face or getting a drink thrown at him or i've never even heard of a man like being told to like fuck off like it's always just like you know women like to be approached like yes thank you thank you thank you like you know that movie Hitch with Will Smith um yes okay you know the very first line of that

movie where Will Smith is narrating and he goes no woman wakes up and thinks gee I hope I don't get swept off my feet today you know and it's like women want to be approached you know they want a cool calm confident charming funny interesting guy to come sweep them off their feet you know yes we do and so go take a chance and if they're not interested again nothing bad will happen it's not gonna hurt they will simply say i'm sorry i have a boyfriend or i'm busy or something you know right they're always polite about it you know well because you're the guys you're talking to aren't d-bags i know i mean right right assuming the guy is a normal decent human being correct yeah no i love that and i think that your answer is always going to be no

if you don't ask to so it's like you're always going to wonder in your head well maybe i should have should have talked to her you know you've had those moments i know i have like someone passes makes eye contact with you and you're like oh my god like i can feel something or that I'm attracted or something happens and you let that shit go by and you never see her again. Yeah. Happens every day. Yeah. Every day. You get pissed off at yourself because why didn't you say something? Yeah. But you know, it's like going back to what we were talking about earlier with quitting your job or taking a chance on yourself. It's like, what's the alternative? you know or you could you could say hi to that woman or that beautiful stranger and

it could be the next love of your life or you let it pass by and kick yourself the rest of the day and you stay stuck in that pattern of never doing anything so you can't think your way out of this shit you've got to take action yeah it's really powerful too and it's a muscle guys like you have to just practice and practice and just do the things that make you uncomfortable like i love goggins and he's just i don't know if he was the one who came up with it but like get comfortable with being uncomfortable like in every aspect it's the only way you're gonna grow yeah and it's like it's just it always stuck in my head especially when i met him i was like stay hard you know he's just like i mean he's an alien or something but i know he he worked on another he's on another

he's on another level yeah well like imagine yourself normal me working out next to him for an hour and just watching him and going like oh my god what am i doing like yeah yeah yeah i don't know if any of us are equipped to get to goggins level but but something to strive for nonetheless well i just think what it means is like you know the only way that we're going to change our lives and the guy's lives right the only way that you're going to make something different is by changing your patterns and I'm sure that's something that you were learning as you you said you repeated the patterns that you in your relationships when you moved down to New Orleans yeah so what what changed for you other than reading Dr. Glover's book like what were you

were like okay after the breakup I think you talked a little about exploring your sexuality there was some shame around that can you talk a little bit about that yeah well first of all yeah reading no more mr nice guy was a real eye-opener i also read a book called attached about attachment theory which was a real eye-opener and then the getting dumped in the way i did by this woman was a real eye-opener i mean she sent me like the most vicious text message i've ever guy in my life and you know it did a number on me you know and it

made me go this can't keep happening and so but you're right yeah I had a lot of insecurities and shame around yeah around sex and sexuality dating and relationships and so yeah like when I moved to New Orleans

that was one of the things I told myself I was going to do was work on all that get more comfortable with my sexuality and being a sexual person. I was quite a late bloomer. I was ignored by women growing up. So I would assume that's where a lot of that comes from, just the shame and the insecurity. But anyway, yeah, when I got to New Orleans, I really, I don't know how to put it, but I became kind of a man whore. I dated a lot and I sowed all my wild oats, so to speak.

fulfilled all my fantasies and just tried to have as many experiences as I could and I'm not necessarily recommending that as a path to take but that's the path that I took and it served a very healthy purpose for me you know I'm not necessarily like proud of all this stuff I did or i'm definitely not like bragging about it but again for me it like needed to happen it was the only way that i was gonna get over all my shame and insecurity was to go out and have all these experiences so yeah that was that was a big thing for me i think that's very normal and healthy to have sexual exploration and there should be no shame on that in itself and however you wanted to do that well i i think it's normal i think it's normal and healthy too but yeah sadly our

society is so fucking schizophrenic about sex you know sex is everywhere we're bombarded with sexual stimuli and we're all sexual beings and yet it's still like taboo and yet we're still told hey sex is dirty and nasty and saving for the one you love like people still grow up with those messages and so yeah how do you expect to grow up having a healthy fulfilling sex life when you internalize all these messages growing up and sex which is normal and healthy gets cross-wired with things like anxiety and shame and secrecy i mean it stems a lot from religion it stems a lot from the normal heteronorm hierarchy in society and there's a lot that if you when i grew up there wasn't the internet you know and how did i find things out it wasn't not normal that was just

very weird to see i think there was one girl in my high school that was like bisexual women and i was like you know this is so weird why am i feeling certain feelings right now you know right well like dr glover for example in his workshops he'll ask guys he'll say like what was your first sexual experience you know and he'll say like and so whatever it was you know could be the first time you uh your first kiss you know maybe it was like i'll show you show me yours i'll show you mine with the neighbor you know maybe you found your dad's porn like whatever was think of your first sexual experience and then he'll say okay now was it was it out in the open was it celebrated did you go to your parents and tell them about it and then were they like

that's great that's a milestone in development let's go get pizza or or was it hidden was it shame-filled wasn't secretive was it you know anxiety inducing and for literally 99.9 percent of people our first sexual experience was hidden and secretive and filled with shame and anxiety you know and so sex gets cross-wired with those kinds of things yeah that's really fascinating because yeah it does kind of set the tone and like i'm going to say it again a lot of our society there's a religion based to growing up and oh and or you were in a city that was largely religious based and so you know what the bible says or what this says you know save sex for marriage and you know our sexual education was like just don't get pregnant you know here's a

condom like and this is you get a period and it's very you know the education was so limited and right so a lot of it was secretive that makes just so much sense yeah i mean that thank god i wasn't religious growing up yeah yeah that's a huge part of it you know messages from religion from society from parents you know we get these messages growing up that just they're not accurate you know right but we internalize them and then yeah then you know again sex gets cross-wired with things like secrecy and shame and anxiety and then we carry that into adulthood yeah well I think it's educating again on sexuality and I'm glad that you do that too I've always been a very non-judgmental person when it comes to that space because whatever your likes and desires are as

long as you're not arming somebody then have fun you know long conventional i agree yeah yeah and you know whatever you're into there's somebody else out there is into it too everybody's got their thing so for sure i think that's these are my biggest podcasts like the most downloaded it's all about sex anything that has to do with sex people you know it's amazing how yeah like I said I think I had this conversation earlier today with somebody and I was like yeah it's still like taboo which is just crazy to me I mean we're 24 it is crazy I mean that's why we were put on this earth well that's how we're on this earth first of all yes for sure our parents and everybody before them had sex that's why we're here and that's how we're here and then we're here to do basically

mother nature's bidding we're here to reproduce essentially we're all here to have sex we're sexual creatures yeah to think that it's not normal and healthy and wonderful yeah it's crazy to me yeah well there's a lot of there's a lot of shame and stigma and work to be done around that area and hey if we can be part of the healing process and you know yeah i'm all for it so yeah for sure i love that well i love your story and i think it's so important for guys to hear oh wait i'm not i'm not finished but i just remember he just literally came to my head tell me about your program that you have for your integrated man university i'd love to hear about that yeah oh yeah of course well certainly back to you can't do this work alone here this is

my heart and soul into building this program and as amazing as dr glover's book is no more mr nice guy a lot of people read it and go okay what's next you know what do i do next and so my when i created integrated man university that was kind of what i was thinking is like if no more mr nice guy is like high school for nice guys integrated man university is like the undergraduate and postgraduate work so it's a really comprehensive online course that I created so there's like over a hundred video lessons that cover you know it runs the gamut it covers you know every area of life you know from nice guy syndrome to attraction dating relationships heartbreak sex happiness career success so it runs the gamut of subject matter but the best

part about it is you immediately become part of this tribe of men so we we have group calls every week so that's the not doing it alone part component of it right so any guy who joins my program like immediately becomes part of this cohort or tribe of men and they can hop on the group calls every week and it's just great it's an amazing group of guys or you know again we get on the horde every week on zoom and there's like a group therapy aspect to it you know we're all revealing ourselves to each other and sharing what's going on and getting support and encouragement feedback from other guys but there's also like sometimes we just shoot the shit you know and joke around and and that's really important too because you know men are i don't want to say

universally but men are lonely you know men are men i mean i i don't think i need i'm sure you've seen the articles right like i mean male loneliness is a silent epidemic loneliness is killing men like i mean it's true like uh almost all the guys who come to me for coaching they all say like almost all of them say i just just don't have any guy friends i don't know how to make guy friends you know all the guy friends i've had uh you know i've lost touch with them like i just i need guy friends and so there's that part of it too it's like just just having connection with other men is is a big deal yeah i know that a lot of guys lose that after let's say team sports in high school and college and you know sometimes when you get into the work

environment you're not really all like getting along and hanging out maybe you go out for a community there is and actually i'm sorry to interrupt but no i think also what i see is i think a big contributing factor to adult male loneliness is that they have become enmeshed in their relationships you know a lot of these guys are married and they've wrapped their entire identities up in their marriage and in their relationship and in this woman and and they've lost sight of their friendships they've lost sight of their hobbies they've lost sight of their passions they've lost sight of most of the other things in their life because they've become so enmeshed in their relationships that's a good point yeah i see that a lot too

yeah i see that on both sides of marriages or seriously long relationships it's definitely a problem yeah yeah it's a big problem it's kind of insane when you think about it like the idea of lifelong monogamous pair bonding and then this like modern concept of hey i'm gonna pair up with someone and we're gonna meet each other's needs we're gonna we're gonna make each other happy we're gonna be each other's best friend each other's lover we're gonna entertain each other and amuse each other and solve each other's problems and do everything together and live together it's like that's fucking crazy and it doesn't work yeah well i mean why do we have multiple friends because each one of us gives to that relationship right that

one person doesn't fulfill every need in my life right why would one person fulfill every need in my life it doesn't yeah I think well then about you know that's going back to like dating and relationships like you know a lot of men I have found and they're kind of under this illusion or possibly even a delusion about what a woman or women can do for them oh and I used to be the same way i used to think particularly when i was depressed you know and going through a real dark place you know what i would think if only i had a woman if only i had a girlfriend if only i had a partner if only i had a woman in my life i'd be happy i'd be complete all i need is if only i had a woman that's what i would think and that's how a lot of men think and so again they have this

illusion about what a woman can do for them you know but a woman another person cannot make you happy or fix your problems or meet all your needs you know that stuff comes from within and not only she can't do that she doesn't want to do that like what an enormous fucking burden to place on another person you know yes i mean where does this come from the parenting the mothers like Where, I mean, where do you feel that this is showing up over and over and over in their lives? Well, geez, I mean, I don't know that I can pinpoint one place, but I would say for the men that I work with, number one, I think it again comes from the toxic shame, the belief that, hey, I'm not okay just as I am. and i think it's maybe the relationship dynamic between their parents so i mean look most men are raised being taught how to please a woman like that's how we're raised like

probably from birth you know our earliest caregiver is you know our mother and if it's not our mother it's probably some other woman so we immediately are you know from probably from birth learning how to please women and so i think we internalize that you know that that's why we we go through life thinking we need to please women and gain their approval and make them happy and that actually repels them it turns out it's not very attractive but i think it comes from other places too religion then the institution of marriage and this idea of pairing up with another person and living happily ever after you know that comes from society and religion and our parents and and tell you the truth i think it comes from like media and entertainment like

cheesy romantic comedy movies i know that sounds disney kind of silly but i mean think about it that's what we grow up seeing we grow up watching like disney movies and romantic comedy movies and like we believe in that stuff these fucking fairy tales you know yeah just the other day i watched as an example this movie american underdog which is about kurt warner the nfl quarterback like who was basically an unknown and then came to the nfl and took his team to a bunch of super bowls i mean i'm not a huge sports fan it's a good movie but like there's a part of the movie where like he goes to some honky-tonk bar and like meets the the cute bartender and they start like wine dancing and then he you know they have this moment where their eyes lock and they obviously

there's chemistry and then he walks her to her car and she's like you don't want to be with me I'm like I've got all this baggage I'm divorced I have children you don't want to be with me and he's like why would you say that why wouldn't I want to be with you you're amazing then she gets in her car and drives off and then the next morning he shows up at her house with a rose and like knocks on her door and she opens the door and she's like what are you doing here and like her mom and her like son are in the background and he just like walks in and starts playing with the son and like making friends with the mom and you know of course they fall in love and that's like hollywood that happened in real life that guy would be going to jail

that guy would have a restraining order against him like that shit doesn't happen in real life yeah when we grow up seeing that shit happen all the tv shows we watch all the movies we watch like those are the messages we internalize growing up so yeah like nobody sits us down and tells us the truth this is not real honey you might like the movie but it's not real well the good thing is thank god that those beliefs can be altered and changed and i think knowing that like that you have the option and you can do the work but you can change those beliefs and i think that is the most powerful thing too yeah i mean unfortunately you have to learn a lot of these a lot of these lessons the hard way because again like nobody really sits down to tell us the truth about these

things you know right about most of the stuff in life whether it's going to college getting a corporate job buying a house getting married you know like yeah i mean our parents like taught us what they knew. Yeah. And like, I didn't know until probably 30 that, yeah, I think 30 was the age where I had such a rough relationship with my father growing up and for so many years. And that's something smack. Like I went through this personal development training thing and it like smacked me in the head. It was like, you know what? Your father was human. He had limited tools. He grew up the way he grew up and it didn't ever change. And so I was like, oh my god like you know i i put my parents on pedestals when i'm a kid and i think most kids do

they're perfect they're all knowing they're like not god but they they know what they're saying and when you realize they don't know a fucking thing yeah right and then you're like oh let me give them some forgiveness here i think humans tend to have this weird quirk where they want They want you to make the same decisions that they made, even though those decisions didn't make them happy. Like, I, I like, I don't want to get married personally. I think, you know, I love love and romance and having a partner, but just getting married itself, I think is crazy.

And I have a lot of friends who are like, aren't you going to get married? Don't you want to get married? I'm like, you're married and you're fucking miserable. why are you telling me to do the same thing you did when it didn't work out for you you know yeah you're divorced twice why are you telling me to get married yeah it's just people seem to want you to again follow the same path and make the same decisions they did even if it didn't work out for them you know yeah there's just this like this is normal this is what you're supposed to do in life and if you don't you're kind of looked at as different so i think a lot of people can

form yeah and it didn't work out yeah and again nobody actually sits you down and tells you the truth like nobody ever says to you hey your college degree might actually be worthless or hey that that corporate job might actually be so toxic and so unfulfilling that it sucks your soul or hey buying that house might that might that house might turn into a giant money pit or your marriage might end in a really bitter expensive nasty divorce like nobody tells us that stuff yeah so we we learn the hard way yeah it's very true but you know what i think your journey is so cool because i think we all have our own journeys but burning that into helping guys and creating a man's tribe or a man's

you know the connection that's so needed and it's just you know really amazing so yeah well thank you i appreciate that yeah is there um anything that i haven't really asked you or talked about that you want to share with everybody here not that i can think of i mean you tell me if there's anything else you want to know i am happy to share it well i think everybody has will have at least your website do you want to shout out your handles or anything that you've got going on yeah i mean tonyendelman.com is my website that's where you can read a lot of my writing and if anyone wants to work with me i i do free introductory calls just to make sure we're a good fit vibe with each other so people can schedule an intro call with me on my website

If I, I'm not big on social media, uh, not a fan. I mean, it's bad for the psyche, I think. So I would say people go to my website and then of course, go get the big stick, you know, particularly if you're familiar with Dr. Glover's work, you know, the big stick goes far beyond nowhere. Mr. Nice guy. It's like you said at the very beginning, it encapsulates 40 years of Dr. Glover's teachings and wisdom.

so go get the big stick that would be the only other thing i hope people would do okay um okay one last question for you before i leave everybody a nice outro here what was one of your favorite date and what was it one of my favorite dates oh man gee that is a that's a good question you know one I got this is gonna sound really really contradictory to what I was talking about earlier but one of my favorite first dates was with the woman who ended up dumping me very very cruelly we just had the most and I actually write about this in the big stick you know I had just moved to New Orleans so it's maybe three or four months after I moved to New Orleans when I met this woman and we just had the most like classic I don't know if you've ever been to New Orleans or

New Orleans but we just had the most quintessential like classic New Orleans night like we had this amazing like Creole dinner and then we went to like Frenchman Street and saw this amazing live music and it was just like this beautiful romp through the city that that sort of culminated with us like you know making out in their car but it was just like this quintessential New Orleans date night that I remember very vividly I've had a few of those but you know New Orleans is a very romantic city yeah yeah that's amazing thank you for sharing that I appreciate that all right well as we wrap up this fascinating conversation I've had Joni Endelman. I want to express my heartfelt thanks for sharing your insights and experiences

and to you, our listeners, your support and engagement. Make this journey truly rewarding. And remember to follow and subscribe to the Down and Dirty podcast for more inspiring conversations. And don't forget to check out all my socials. Until next time, keep exploring, stay curious, and thank you for tuning in. if you enjoyed today's episode and want to support podcasts like ours then please hit that subscribe button leave a five-star rating and or invite others to listen your support is what helps us grow and continue to bring you valuable content thanks for hanging out with us on today's episode let's stay connected you can find me on instagram at celeste more image

and I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's discussion. For all the links, resources, and additional information mentioned in this episode, check out the show notes on my website, celestmore.com. That's all for now, but stay tuned for our next episode where we'll dive into more exciting topics. Until then, see you next time, friends.