The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Real Talk: A New Approach for Men’s Mental Fitness and Wellbeing by Chinazom Sunny Nwabueze

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Real Talk: A New Approach for Men’s Mental Fitness and Wellbeing by Chinazom Sunny Nwabueze https://amzn.to/3PLWfP7 Dreamcatchersperformance.com Are you ready to start thriving and grabbing the moments that matter? Have you ever experienced feelings of loneliness, overwhelm, or a loss of hope so visceral you felt as if you’d never be the same? Are you tired of seeing the trend, especially among men, where we hit our forties, and it’s either we have a mental breakdown or commit suicide. Such a painful and unnecessary waste. Pursuing Mental Fitness is the way forward through deep introspection and timely action no matter your circumstances. Let’s rewrite the script and stop this trend once and for all. When reached, Mental Fitness culminates in wellbeing that goes beyond looking good in the mirror. You’ll feel your very essence lightened and enhanced. The stories contained within this book are based on actual life events from average, everyday people. The characters in this story may be fiction, but the events that transpire are as real as you and I. Follow five everyday characters as they discover they don’t have to do it all alone. I’ll even spoil the ending for you; they don’t get it all figured out. The good news is they don’t have to. Neither do you. We hope you discover in these pages: Hope that no matter your situation, there is always a way forward to greener pastures and improved emotional and mindful wellbeing. Belief in the collective ability of a group of friends to elevate and support each other through anything with candor, presence, and deep friendship. Trust in your capacity to overcome any hardship with vulnerability, intentionality, and reliance on those closest to you. Power to move beyond the paltry existence of just surviving to the wonderful world of thriving. Access to the true essence of life. The pursuit of Mental Fitness is a journey you need to take for yourself. This book won’t be your guide to the seven steps needed to conquer Mental Fitness or to suddenly have a perfect life… I won’t lie to you; it’s not that easy… But if you prioritize your thoughts and develop mental habits, you’ll squeeze every drop out of the essence of life. Achieving mental fitness through intentional exercise, mindful practices, and consistent work allows you to perform at a high level without losing your wellbeing. Become mentally fit and you’ll help change the narrative for generations to come. A better life waits just around the corner. Pick up this book now and let its pages sink deep.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Welcome to the big show, my family and friends. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, step right up to the magical, the thrilling, the beautiful circus that is the Chris Voss Show.

14 years, probably going on 1,500 episodes at this pace. And the craziness of doing it for all these years, I don't know, man. It seems like fun. Should we go for 20? Sure, what the hell? I don't know man uh it seems like fun should we go for 20 sure what the hell i don't know they may have to prop me up and jam an ai bot in me eventually because i'm 55 now and they'll just be i'll just be like on here going i'll be like some uh i'll be like some bot from what was that arnold schwarzenegger movie where the they had the bots running the taxis there you guys as always you

know we love you guys so much and we bring so much great entertainment and so many brilliant minds to the show. And these guests come on, and they just fill your brain with this intelligence so bad that we've actually had people say that they've had some brain swelling problems, but it's usually over in a couple days. I don't know if the lawyers are going to let me keep this in the show, but we'll run with it. So what you should do, because you love the show so much and you're always here, refer the show to your family, friends, and relatives.

Do you like how I spend so much work setting up the plugs and the ramble every day? Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Foss, youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Foss, linkedin.com, 4Chess, Chris Foss. Go see us over there on TikTok, Chris Foss1, and all the great stuff we have going on over there today. CNN's Jake Tamper will be on the show coming up fairly soon, so watch for that.

We're excited to have him on the show. Today, we have an amazing gentleman on the show. He's the author of the newest book called Real Talk, a new approach for men's mental fitness and well-being. And anybody who knows this, listened to the show for 14 years,

I probably need some mental fitness. I probably need some mentality or some mentalness or something. Chinism Wabwese joins us on the show, as you can tell. And he is the founder of Dream Catchers Performance and high-performance leadership coach and behavior science consultant And he is the founder of Dream Catchers Performance and High Performance Leadership Coach and Behavior Science Consultant with Better Up. Is that incorporated? He also created a mental fitness online community, a video chat series, and delivers workshops and presentations on mental fitness. He's amassed over 2,000 hours of coaching and his new book that just comes out we'll talk

about shares the critical insights gained from coaching and pairs it with solid data and impactful storytelling. Welcome to the show. How are you, sir? Very well, Chris. Thank you for having me on the show. There you go. Thank you for coming. Give us a.com or wherever you want people to find you on the interwebs. Website is www.dreamcatchersperformance.com. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. If you just search Chinnazom Sunny Wabweze, I'm on there. As well as on my website, there's a book. So there's a tab for my book, Real Talk.

So if you want to go and follow me on there. I'm also on Instagram, dreamcatchers underscore performance. There you go. So what motivated you to write this book? It's just I wanted to start a conversation around mental fitness. It's written for men, but I wanted it for everyone, men and women, because I just found coming out, especially coming out of the pandemic, we all started to understand about our mental well-being.

So I wanted the same way we take our physical fitness to start taking our mental fitness that seriously. Ah, now mental fitness, why is that more important than, or just as important maybe, than physical fitness? Because guys tend to work out a little bit, I think. I don't know, some of us do and some of us don't. I think it's more important because without your mental fitness, everything else just kind of falls away.

So I feel like when you have your mental wellbeing, you should, you should be doing everything you can to take care of it. So as practically as possible workout, what is it that helps keep your mental fitness? Physical fitness can be one of it. So movement, um,

how do you practice giving yourself space from your thoughts? How much rest do you get? Uh, so whatever it is whatever fills your emotional energy with joy really should be prioritizing that and working on it as much as possible because when you god forbid but if you lose your mental fitness then the rest of it just goes out the window definitely so what how do you define mental fitness what is mental fitness because you know a lot of people are going well i don't know i sit around and watch tv and eat tv and eat Cheetos and my brain seems to be working pretty good. What is exactly mental fitness in your mind?

Mental fitness, I think, is working out when you have your mental well-being, like working out the things that fill up your emotional energy tank. So what kind of movement do you need to do? What brings you joy? How much rest do you need to get? And you joy how much rest you need to to get and also how do you protect yourself from stress and uncertainty and then the big one is the things that take your emotional energy so your work your project your families how do you manage those what kind of boundaries you put in place so that's to me that's how i define mental fitness is being able

to to tell me if i ask you how you doing you can tell me okay this is where my emotional energy tank is and you have tools to work on to like if if you're running on low how do you top it up you know you mentioned a key word there that i've i've learned uh very empowering over i don't know the last couple decades and it's funny to me it's not really funny it's it's interesting to me how many men don't have boundaries or keep boundaries or set boundaries uh you know i recently i've been talking about that last couple years on my social media and uh it's interesting to me especially with married guys i'll ask them uh what sort of boundaries do you keep and they're like uh what are boundaries um and i'm like well this explains a lot here uh so tell us about

boundaries and why those are important for men and and men to set them and maintain them and and have them in their lives i suppose well i think boundaries when i talk about what takes your emotional energy i'll start with work like i know a lot of guys are really they get so into their work and they're trying to climb up whatever corporate ladder or whatever the success means for them. And then they kind of sacrifice that for everything else. They're just family or whatever it is that gives you joy. That goes out the window. You're just like, I've got to be successful.

I've got to give everything. So I kind of find that's where boundaries struggle. And also a lot of people fear of missing out. So whenever an opportunity gets put in front of you, you're like, oh, my God, like your eyes just light up. And you're like, OK, that's it. And then everything else about exercise, getting some proper rest, getting some, you know, spending time with people who give you joy, that just gets forgotten. So that's a big one to try and understand about boundaries. There you go. You know, setting boundaries and maintaining them is so important for a man. You know, we are the basis of logic and reason in society. And in our culture, it seems like

everybody's at us. You know, we're expected to be so many things provider protector uh you know now everyone wants us to share our emotions and and stuff and and uh you know be more open with our emotions you know we're you know masculinity is under ultra attack as you know some even the psychologists that have been taken over by people from kind of the woke culture have have you know deemed masculinity as a toxic trait um and and yet and yet everyone seems to want us for our masculinity you know they love the provider protector thing and they love the access to bank accounts because we're we're we're valued for our resources and what we deliver to people in society but you know then then we get shit for well you know what you're

being masculine uh and so i think this is a big challenge for a lot of men and there i see a lot of men that are lost in today's society do you see the same thing i do feel like society has set us up for failure a little bit um starting in my mid-40s and i found a lot of my friends around me were having mental breakdowns which was was one of the reasons I wrote the book because we kept having this thing where you're supposed to be the provider, you're supposed to just keep pushing and gritting and provide. You just have to show up as a superman, and then the problem is you get to your 40s, and you just burn out.

You run out of gas. But I really feel like we should start changing that, because that definition was written, I don't know how many generations ago, but it doesn't work now. And I'm seeing now a lot of men, especially the friends I have around me, we're changing what it means.

You're no longer just a provider because you have a partner. Could be a wife, could be any other person, but you're usually working with somebody else. And I feel that you should also be able to show your emotions, to show that things are tough, because that also helps you ask for help, which is a big thing. And sometimes you should be able to say no when you can't take too much

because you're not nobody's super person. So when you're running out of your gas, you should be able to say like, excuse, help, help. I need, I need some time out here.

There you go. Like we should really start changing that definition. And you mentioned suicide. You know, men have, I think it's three to four times a higher rate of suicide than women do. And when we, and we don't use suicide as a warning signal like women do uh we we when we

go for it we go for it we're pretty good at it um sadly and and so this is a really important factor because i mean suicides have risen uh i think alcoholism drug use uh you know you see these young boys in gen z struggling uh They're having a struggle in school. They're having a struggle going to college. They're having a struggle meeting and dating and stuff. And it just seems like, you know, we've had a lot of authors on the show that have written about the issues with boys in schools and the culture they're growing up in and how they're struggling. And the irony is these books were written like 20 years ago. And so you can literally look at the books now and go, wow, you predicted the future.

And so, you know, men need to kind of identify that we're, you know, I think we need to identify that we're different than women. You know, we're sold so much of the stuff that men and women are the same and we're just not. We're biologically different. Would you agree with me on that i do agree with you i think we had this conversation of why when men meet up we love to talk about sports so much sometimes we can just want to just be there solitary and i think at some point the way we express our emotions and the things that give us joy are different but i do also feel like men are different also because of the way society has told them to be so from an early age you know don't cry

you're always competing you've got to be better than everyone else but if we actually started to rewrite some of those things that society placed on us early on we might not be as different as we think we are and we could we could actually start to express our emotions in a different way, apart from just through frustration and anger. And, you know, instead of, I think you mentioned as well, where young boys turn into alcohol or other things, it's because I feel like there's a narrow, that narrow definition doesn't allow you that outlet to actually express who you are,

even though you are different. But by expressing it, maybe we're not as different as women because we're still human beings with emotions. Yeah. I mean, stoicism has really helped me over the years deal with my issues, childhood trauma, things of that nature. And I think there's more of that now and prevalent in today's society. I see a lot of issues with men

that grow up with mother abandonment issues or not having a father in the home. That seems to be something that I can tell you exactly what you're going to do in your life in both those cases. The women you're going to pick and attract and the experiences you're going to have. It's really changing our society, especially with the amount of how divorce has kind of

become so prevalent in single motherhood and in raising kids that don't have an alpha father in the home. And I think without that sort of frame that children need, because we're designed to have both a father and a mother in the home to, or at least a masculine and a feminine in the home so that we can learn the masculine part. We can learn the feminine part and see how that balance works in a relationship so that we can develop healthy relationships from it. And if one's missing, it can't be replaced. And so I think that's where another thing where men are really struggling. So you talk in the book about pursuing mental fitness

and trying to really focus on that. Maybe a lot of guys don't do that because we're kind of like, yeah, whatever, we'll get through it. Just suck it up. You know, we get told by society, just man up, quit crying, just man up, deal with it, bottle it all up, and just go out and produce resources and do that what are some of the ways in the book that you give tips on different resources people can use

to develop mental fitness i think the first one is talking so the book starts with four friends who coming out of pandemic meet for the first time they've known each other for many years but they have they have what i call real talk they start to have conversations and sharing about all the challenges they were going through and they kind of stopped that that exact thing that what you said suck it up you know just go through it just you know don't don't show your emotions so by sharing they'll start sharing that jesus we were all struggling through this why didn't you say anything why didn't you say anything what you know and then they started to see that by talking, it was never as bad as just having it going in your own head.

That's one thing I see in my coaching practice. When you just have stuff going in your head, it's 10 times worse than when you actually share it to a friend. And when you say it out loud, you're like, okay, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was. So I think that's one of the first things is like just having, talking about it. And then with your friends and your trusted group, like start understanding what does mental fitness mean for you?

Because I've started trying to explain in my book, but I always find that every time I talk to people, I'm always learning new things about what it is that gives them that joy or what it is that fills up their energy tank. And by sharing, you start to learn from different people and then you start to understand what it is that gives you your mental fitness and also for me i've started to realize mental fitness is a journey so it's where are you in your journey and what what do you need to change in your life so for instance i just became a dad for the second time so i'm having oh congratulations yeah thank you thank you but i'm having to learn again you

know okay what kind of exercise can i do where you know what you. But I'm having to learn again, you know, okay, what kind of exercise can I do? What are the new things I need to change in my life to give me joy? So it's always a work in progress. So those are things where I think you can start off with. There you go. Do you find a lot of men – one thing I grew up, and I got tuned into this from Billy Joel.

I know that sounds weird, but I was a big Billy Joel fan as a kid. And I used to, there was a song called, I can't remember what it was. Got a call from an old friend, used to be close. It's All In My Own Life, My Life, I think it was called. And it's a story about a lot of people who go through a midlife crisis. And at the time, I was like, why is this this why do people go through this midlife crisis thing and i was like in my teens and i you know and then i started you know the seeing this thing with men where we would have midlife crises you know hey you're the women talk you know shit about men they're like hey men's going through his midlife crisis. He gets a convertible and dates a 20-year-old at 40 or 50

and has this big blowout. And I started asking myself, I'm like, how do I keep that from happening? How do I keep that midlife crisis blowout thing from happening? And you talk about in your book that men get in their 40s and they start at either high rates of suicide or some sort of coping mechanism that probably isn't healthy. And we have the mental breakdown and stuff. And I think part of it is because we kind of buy into society as men and what society expects of us and what we have to push through.

And we don't really think about, hey, what do I want? What is my life's purpose? We talked about this in the pre-show. I asked a lot of men, hey, what's your life's purpose? I don't really think about, hey, what do I want? What is my life's purpose? We talked about this in the pre-show. I asked a lot of men, hey, what's your life's purpose? I don't know. That's true. Happy wife, happy life.

And you're like, seriously? What are you going to do when she leaves you? And I see a lot of men, I hate to be mean, but I see a lot of men crushed. You see a lot of them on TikTok and social media. A lot of them, they're crushed in divorce court because they bet all their eggs

their happiness and their life's purpose on someone who women file 90% of divorces or educated women file divorce or 90% of divorces of educated women are filed by I don't know

basically women file most of the divorces in this country. It's about 70% to 80% of any divorce that's filed. It's 70% to 80%. And if it's an educated woman, it's 90%. So they're filing most of the divorces. And I see these broken men that are just like, I did everything right. I did the provider stuff. I told her my feelings i i did everything right and now i'm sitting in you know uh you know in a horrible position financially broke wiped out and i've got these child support payments i can't even see my kids what the fuck did i do wrong i did everything right you know and then and then i see the guys who do the blowouts in the midlife crisis so i don't know what your thoughts are on that i I loved what you just said,

because I think you just hit the nail on the head where a lot of men don't ask themselves, what is it that they want? They're too busy trying to compete, trying to provide, struggling, struggling. And then it's not until, unfortunately, sadly, there's actually a character in the book where you get into your 40s

and you have a mental breakdown and then you stop and you're like, what the hell am I doing all this crap for? I have this house, I'm paying for this, but I don't even enjoy it. And why was I doing it? And I had a friend who went through a series like that where they actually went on a pilgrimage. And for the first time, they asked themselves,

who am I? What do I want? And then that's usually when you actually stop. Sadly, it's usually when some sort of health crisis happens that a man will stop and be like, why have I been doing this? Why am I doing all this stuff? Do I even want this? What do I want?

Or you take a look in the mirror and you don't like what you see back. And that's even a sad thing. So I feel like that's where we really need to start changing this narrative because now I'm a dad. I don't want that to happen to my son i don't want society to put this in about for you to be happy you need to go and work here you need to do this that's it you know you should define what happiness means for you and you should not let society put that thing on you but i think that's that's a big point about men are too busy struggling to meet society demands that they don't even ask themselves what they want.

They don't ask themselves about what's their purpose. And then until it's too late, and I really want to help stop that where people are not doing that and waiting until they're 45 or 50 and, God forbid, something really bad happens. Yeah, and that's what I did. I looked at the songs from Billy Joel and I went, how do I keep around that midlife crisis? And it's like, oh, these guys bought some packages from society. You know, life is a giant catalog. Like I, I remember when I was like 12 or 14, I really, you know,

we had the old big series catalogs and stuff. And I realized that what life was like a catalog. I might've gone up from some artists who wrote something, but I realized that life was like a catalog i might have gone up from some artist who wrote something but i realized that life was a big catalog you can go through and choose the life you wanted to have and so i did that and i'm like i'm not going to live my life in such a way that i'm going to wake up at 40 or 50 and have a midlife crisis going oh she would have done something else and been awake you know i think it was the i think it was also the song uh it was also a song from pink floyd uh from Dark Side of the Moon that talked about how you miss the starting gun because you're asleep when the race starts. There's a great line, and I'm sure everyone probably knows the line.

I'm thinking of it. So great stuff here. And I think men are starting to really soul search more. We're starting to wake into the fact that maybe society really isn't working in our favor the last couple of generations. And, and we're kind of, we need to find something better and more. And since we're logical and reasonable, we're trying to figure stuff out. I see a lot of men right now trying to understand female nature more.

Uh, I, I've certainly studied female nature more. Uh, I, I've certainly studied female nature more. You know, we, we have male nature, we have female nature. The problem with men is, you know, in my generation, we were just given playboy and said, go get women, you know, that was it is a hot women, go get them. And then, you know, women, when, you know, they, they start studying men from a very early age with their fathers and they're very savvy. They develop much quicker than we do. And, you know, then they got, they got all these magazines and, you know, they basically have an owner's manual to men from a very early age or men are just giving playboy and

go get it. And, you know, okay. And, you know, we have that whole provider protector thing where like, and go get it and you know okay and you know we have that whole provider protector thing we're like oh i'm you know taking care of everything and doing everything and then and then somehow people are still unhappy with us so um uh go ahead there was something you said earlier there's like when you were growing up where your i think your granddad would just take you fishing and a lot of times our male figures would just take us places but don't talk.

Yeah. And I feel that's where we have to start changing where the person you look up to needs to start talking to you and telling you what are these emotions you're feeling. I feel like that kind of puts you in a better place to try and understand what it is that you want or, yeah, what do you want to choose from. I love that analogy you put, catalog,

so that you actually choose the right thing that's going to make you happy not what you think you should choose because of what society tells you to choose definitely i you know i was the last of the generations that were raised by alpha fathers for the most part i mean there's still alpha fathers out there my grandfather i grew up with a weird at the weird crux of it, and I've talked about this on my Facebook. My grandfather was an alpha father. He, or alpha grandfather, alpha man. He built his own damn houses. Like, he would build, they built their own goddamn houses, two of them.

And, you know, they were just like, hey, should we buy a house? No, they built them. He was a welder for Union Pacific Railroad. Tough as nails, but the nicest, most loving, generous man you would ever meet. And so if you have this vision of some sort of alpha dude who's, you know, I don't know, a real jerk or whatever, he was the nicest guy in the world. He was charitable. He did things for his church that were amazing. I would go into his shop he would teach us all sorts of welding and steel work and

and in the shop and he always he always had us working as boys he would pay us a little pittance of money for the work but it was all about the work and teaching us lessons and you know he would take us fishing we go fishing i grew up with the boy scouts where we went and did stuff we went and did like you know crazy stuff like sledding and building sleds and doing stuff and you know the old sort of boy scouts we weren't sitting around going i don't know can we see what's on the bachelor this week um i don't know what boy scouts do nowadays but you know we would do like men stuff and the one thing i didn't realize at the time is when you're around other men and men do tribal stuff because everything we do still comes back to this caveman nature that we have.

You know, it generates, I think there's some science to this, that it generates our masculinity. And, you know, one of the problems we have in today's society, if you ask a man to go hang out with you anymore, and we talked about it as a pre-show, you know, they're kind of like, are you coming on to me? It's like, no, dude.'m around i'm around women all the time i need i need to just go do some man stuff and and you don't have to talk or hang out like i one of the problems i have during covet is i used to have a lot of man buddies that you know i could go have coffee and hang out with you know we used to we used to go to events and drink and then we couldn't do events and throw parties and stuff. And there is a thing where men need to be around men more and just do men stuff.

So what I had was I had an alpha grandfather, and he had a feminine wife. And she was the most wonderful grandmother I'd ever had, and they were happy. Were they perfectly happy? No, they'd been married for like 30 years. Give me a break, but I never saw them fight. I'm sure they did, but they had a wonderfully balanced family, and then I had my family with a very feeling, effeminate father, no alpha context. I don't know how that got lost generationally, but it did. And a very unhappy mother. And then I had the same thing with my grandmother, where my grandmother was, you know, constant emotional suicides, emotionally manipulative problems acting out issues and she had a she had a uh remarried

uh step husband and and so the the i could see this dichotomy between an alpha strong father with a feminine wife and a a weak uh father with a with you know what had you know if you don't if you're not masculine women will fill in the masculine and then they'll whip you for it and because you're being the feminine because they can't have safety and uh and security which is really big for women people don't realize and so i got to grow up with this dichotomy seeing these two models going why is everyone so angry over here and everyone's really content over here and happy? So that shaped me in a way that still is today. But a lot of men don't have the same experience I had.

It's crazy that you had that complete. Yeah. It was like black and white. I'm like, why is everyone so angry over here and everyone's over here? And, you know, I had a very weak father. You know, he would, you know, he a very weak father you know he would he would uh you know he disciplined us and he come cry to us at night and go oh i'm sorry for hurting you and after a while you kind of go you know you're full of shit because you know if you're gonna beat us

for being bad kids own it right right we were bad kids we. We were shits. This is a great topic you just brought because this is a different generation. For now, I'm thinking I want to be my son's best friend, but I want him to know where the line is and where to discipline him. And I have this thing where I discipline. I don't beat my son, but I do shout at him and send him to naughty corner

and I want him to know that you've done something wrong. But I don't want him to then be afraid of me. And I'm trying to find that balance where, oh, my dad, when my dad was growing up, he was like, you should call an alpha. My dad didn't even need to beat me. He just needed to raise his voice. If you heard his voice, that was enough.

If you said your full name. Yeah, he'd just shout at you and you you heard his voice that was enough if you said your full name yeah yeah he just shot you and that was you just had that voice but we never got to see get to know him until we were much older and i'm trying to find that balance now where i feel like you can share your emotions to you to your kid and you can also when you need to be strong you're strong but also there's times when you need to show vulnerability. And I find like with my son where I hope I'm getting it right now, where if he hears my voice get to a certain level, he will listen. But also if he's crying and if I'm disciplining him,

I'll show him that I feel emotion as well. Because I don't want him to not be able to cry and show his emotions. So I'm trying to do it early on because I feel like with boys, you definitely need to show them that boundary when they're younger. Don't wait till they're as big as you because then you'll be in trouble. Exactly. I mean, we have to learn authority and leadership, which is a masculine trait, early on for men. But I think one of the holes that was in my life was, I don't think my father ever told me that he was proud of me until I was about 35.

And I can still remember this day, the exact moment that he told me because it was pretty crushing when he finally did. And I didn't ever really think I was seeking it. But that's a little too long to tell your kid you're proud of him. pretty crushing when he finally did and i didn't ever really think i was seeking it but you know that's a little too long to tell your kid you're proud of him you know i i probably needed to hear that maybe you know when you're younger you needed some uh positive reinforcement yeah so the question why you call your dad weak i don't like for me i don't agree with someone is weak if they show emotion.

I feel like you can show emotion, but just as long as also when you need to be strong and hold your ground and stand by your convictions, you can do the two together. Yeah. Let me clarify what kind of – there's more depth to that. So the thing that my grandfather had was an alpha frame, if you're familiar with frame and and setting frame which is similar to boundaries so there's an alpha frame in the helm there's a there's a leader there's a there's an authoritarian leader there's a rock in in in the relationship and men are designed to be that way because we have logic and reason our emotions don't overcome us and and we don't we don't you know it things don't blow with the wind we we are a rock and we're expected to be rock i have i have my girlfriend

say that to me all the time they're like you are my rock you're you're you know i can be emotional and go through my thing but you you are you know the voice of logic and reason and sanity so uh but sometimes yeah i mean uh so um my father lost his his masculine frame and went to a feminine frame and so what you find is women uh feel safe in an alpha frame in a masculine frame because then they can't operate they're feminine and if they can operate they're feminine and they can feel safe and secure, like a lot of men today don't get how much security and safety women really need to have.

They really need to know that you've got it for the long haul, that you're building something for everybody. They really need to feel safe. This is why women shit test. This is why women test your masculinity. This is why they do it it's in its biological it's a feature not a bug can i share a story with you where i went through a transition

where i had to come over when i came out to us in 2019 my wife was six months pregnant i was changing careers i've just changed career from bank investment banking to that to being a coach so when i came over and also i was having to wait to get my work permit and everything because I'm a British citizen, my wife was the only person that could work. And that was a crazy feeling to have for the first time where I was not bringing any income in. So I can't speak for every relationship, but in our relationship

where I feel like some for one, one period, one person is going to be the rock. Then the next period you're going to be the rock. But I always said that it's like, I'm picking somebody who I can rely on through life because I can't say that I'm the one that's going to carry everything all the time. But when,

you know, even if it wasn't working, the person can rely on me that I'm always showing up for the family. I'm always doing the best thing to get to get myself so we're always doing our own work to get there but going through that period a lot of a lot of fears came out a lot of vulnerability like it was the first time where i wasn't having any income since i was my 20s so it was crazy so i realized that my wife never thought any any different of me she never thought any less of me. And until I finally got on my feet,

she always supported every stupid, crazy idea that I had at the time. But she always supported it. Yeah, because work isn't about masculine frame. You probably were still maintaining a masculine frame, and she was still operating her feminine, even though she had to work. She believed in your vision of where you were taking your family. And even though you had to work she she believed in your vision of what you were of where you were taking your family and you know even though you had to go through a transition she was believing in it and so my father lost his masculine frame early on and part of was uh him

and it wasn't just showing emotion there was there was something about it always he he had trouble when he would work at places where he'd always fly off the handle, react emotionally, and they would fire him. He couldn't keep a job for his life until he started his own companies and did some other things. God bless him. In fact, he made most of his money working for me at 55. My age that I have now, he made the most most money he ever made in his life working for me um talk about weird but uh he was a good man he tried his best he did he did what he could i i love him and and it's at his eulogy i said you know the man did the best he could and that's all

that you sometimes can expect of people and parents but i i'm i'm i'm i'm acquiescence to the fact that that you know he had somehow lost the frame that i'd learned from his father and uh you know the the emotions of being the authoritarian you know you set rules and boundaries you have to hold them and and i needed a father to see see a father holding those boundaries and so to come to us every night and discipline us and sometimes when he would discipline us, it was out of weakness. So he'd get beat up at work because he, you know, couldn't stand up to them. And he'd bring it home.

And, and to me, that wasn't manly. That wasn't strong. You don't bring, you know, I developed a rule that you don't, you don't hurt the ones you love. If people fuck with you in the world, go fuck with them back. You know, stand up for yourself. Don't bring it home and send it with your family. So, uh, let's see here. if people fuck with you in the world go fuck with them back you know stand up for yourself don't bring it home and send it with your family so uh let's see here uh naya has a really good uh thing here that's uh how can other loved ones around men support them in having mental uh and

having healthy mental fitness well that's that's a great question I think I would have to start with my wife, where she really started to understand me and always kept asking me, how are you feeling? It used to really bug me at the time where she keeps asking, how i was feeling and having to share with her how i was feeling and then having to think okay i need to go and speak to this friend i need to go and speak to another friend and also what i really love is whenever you're making a decision she would always back you especially when you're going through the tough times there were times where you know everybody around us was probably saying why doesn't he just go and get a normal job like what he's always been doing but she never I don't know maybe she was scared inside but she never showed it to me she'd always she'd always back me so I think that definitely helped with with my mental fitness but the big part as well is she knows that I'm really into I love doing exercise and I love that quiet time on my own so whenever she can she will always

allow me to just okay you need to go and go off and. So whenever she can, she will always allow me to just, okay, you need to go and go off and do your thing. So she would always give me that space. So she understands I need to go and do this so that I can come back and be the dad or the husband and everybody wants around. So she would always like support me and give me that space to go and do what I need to do to fill up my energy tank and come back.

And that's so important because women need to realize, and I see a lot of women that just don't get this in this world, that we're not like them. We can't be multitasking and obsessive. And they're designed that way in their biology for a reason. And men, we need our space. We need our cool-down time. We spend a lot of time going out to work, fighting, doing our battles and stuff to be providers. And we need our our our cool down time you know we spend a lot of time going out work fighting

doing our battles and stuff to to be providers and we need that cool down we need that tune out time we need some quiet we need to we need our peace we need our respect and and being able to have people give us that space and instead of you know like i have friends that are like uh you know hey i i try and go do something just to make myself happy or go into my garage or do something to make me happy, and I'm getting called back in and I can't get my space. And it's like, well, you need to set some boundaries for that. And we need to more identify that women and men are not the same.

There's someone named Elaine Zen in my comments saying, Chris, you're very wedded to archetypal male-female gender roles. You know, here's the thing. These aren't roles. These aren't gender roles. This is biology. And if you study how men and women have developed over eons of time, we all have, we have male nature and we have female nature and they haven't changed. Like, you know, I hear all this stuff, you know, everyone's like, well, you know, everyone's the same. No, we're not.

No, we're not. I'm in the dating pool. Women are still chasing hypergamy. They still expect guys to pay on the first date, be chivalrous and gentlemen. We're still expected to do old world roles uh you know until a woman says to me i'm paying for the first date chris uh you know you might have been dating in the wrong dating pool you need to yeah you need to go to a different date because i'm sure there's some women now i'm not expecting a woman to pay on the first date i'm sure there's some male i. In fact, if that happens, there's probably some red flags there.

But women expect us to be that. Women right now, on my dating apps, you can do this from search algorithms, are chasing the top 5% of men. And they're chasing the high earners. They're chasing the 6-foot-tall plus men. And they're looking for men who make money if you watch interviews of women they tell you everything you need to know about this they're looking for providers and protectors guys who who do well or who are successful they're chasing alpha men in fact

they're sharing them pretty uh quite a lot if you if you read the studies and everything that's going on so women are still looking for old world, traditional style men. Well, saying they don't. Is that biology or is that also society? No, it's biology. Yeah.

The, the, the problem we have and why men are getting lost is that we believe this is some sort of a new culture bullshit. And it's not like people, this is what is being fed in my comments thing that these are, these are gender roles. They're not, these are biological roles and and women are nurturers men are providers and protectors we're expected for to provide security and when women are secure they're very happy

they're they're they're not shit testing you constantly because women want security security is a really big thing for women and i don't think men don't get it and i don't think i still don't get it even as much as i study it but these are biological roles that we've developed over eons of time they all go back to caveman stuff and propagation of the species and somehow in our society and culture we've we've raised this delusion that somehow it's it's some sort of propaganda that someone put on us. Like, you know,

you need to have three breakfasts or three meals a day and you have cereal for breakfast every morning with milk. You know, we, that's like some sort of propaganda. It's not. And that's the delusion of our society. And I think that's why a lot of men are struggling because we're stuck

between this thing. We're like, wait, we're supposed to be equal, but we're not equal. And like, none of this makes any sense. I have a different thing where like, wait, we're supposed to be equal, but we're not equal. And like, none of this makes any sense. I have a different view from you,

Chris, because I feel like there are some relationships where the women are the providers and things go up or down. So I don't think from the women I know live, still live in that, that kind of mindset where they realize sometimes you're going to have to be the one that takes, sure. It takes it on. And while your man is doing something then he'll come

back and they also let's not forget there's also you know gender gender neutral relationships well same gender relationships so i don't know that security is also the same thing if it's a man or woman and a woman but usually you have the same sort of thing going on in those relationships. There's still a feminine and there's still a masculine in LGBTQ relationships that I know of. There's still a feminine. There's still a masculine. I feel like with this role is it,

it, it moves it's fluid. Cause I don't like any one person and I'm going to use, if someone, you know use if someone you know if someone becomes ill you always find that that other person steps up yeah step up so i never feel like it's just this is the one person who's doing the security providing the security i feel like the way it goes is like at some point someone's going to have to step up in that relationship and i feel you have to support each other through this ups and downs and journeys.

There is a trade-off there. But the studies show that the high divorce rates that we have in our culture right now are from when a man stumbles. So if you can find a good woman who will stand with you and understand the till death do you part and all that sort of good stuff. But we have high divorce rates in this country. And if you look at the studies, there's data on all this stuff that i cite if you look at the studies 90 of the time or 100 most of the time a man stumbles he loses his job he loses income he loses his life's purpose he loses his vision uh and it usually it's tied to

his job he loses the high-paying job and once, you know, women are about security. That's just really it. They are. Everything is. But that one is because as well, the society says that a woman shouldn't have a high-paying job as well. But if you had both high-paying jobs and you were both doing work, then

if the man stumbles, it's not the end of the world. To a certain degree, if a woman earns more than a man, according to the data, she'll end up divorcing the man eventually if he doesn't par up and earn more than her. Women's hypergamy is a biological fact, and they always date up. They've always dated up. When I was in high school, I wanted to date girls that were in the sophomore class.

No, they were dating the seniors. Women date up, men date down. it's biology and why we do it and i think the biggest challenge that men have is that they're we're lost in this culture and this bullshit we're being fed and there's a delusion in our society that that biology is in biology and if you really understand this depth people are trying to flip the model of biology and it's not biology but um it's great that you read this book and you have this discussion and uh and and you know men need to take a little bit more time to focus on themselves i think i agree i think we're definitely saying the same thing we need to understand what makes us happy and what our purpose is as you said understand our emotions so that we can start showing up in a different way. And if we take care of our mental fitness as well, also looking for different partners that are going to help us support that.

Now, you help people, you coach people and work with people. Tell us a little bit about what you do there and how you help people and maybe how they can reach out to you. Yeah, so I call it a high performance leadership coach uh so i help people in doesn't any field that you're working in a doctor the tech field banking anything i just help you kind of understand basically how to take care of your well-being first and then whatever it is wherever i call it your performance arena, wherever your performance arena is, trying to understand the things that are going to help you show up as a good leader and get the best out of you. So that's it in a nutshell.

There you go. And you can reach me through my website to book a session. There you go. So give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs. www.dreamcatchersperformance.com there you go it's been wonderful to have you on thank you for coming on and sharing your data with us thank you so much Chris

it's a pleasure being on your show really great conversation there you go please men reach out get more help do mental fitness I think women will appreciate you more if you take care of yourself um it makes it makes all the difference in in the world and if we can lower men's suicide rates and the issues men are having you know i see so many has been crushed in

divorce online and and and they turn to alcohol drugs and abuse and uh the depression because they can't see their kids much of the time. And, you know, if you study what goes on in divorce court and with these lawyers that pull all this stuff, it's extraordinary. And, you know, I've been single all my life, so I'm always hanging out with single dudes. And usually seeing what goes on with divorce courts and stuff that are highly slanted against us.

It's just awful. And men not being able to be around their children is just so destructive to not only the children, but the men. So it's a big deal. Order up his book, wherever fine books are sold, folks, real talk,

a new approach for men's mental fitness and we'll well being out April 13th, 2023. Thanks for tuning in. Go toreads.com fortress christmas youtube.com fortress christmas linkedin.com fortress christmas and all those great places on the internet thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time