Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
Charles and Dan are just two guys talking about relationships, masculinity, and authenticity. Join them as they discuss books and media, as well as their (sometimes messy) personal stories, to encourage men to join the fight for their mental, physical, and emotional health--because a world of healthy, resilient men is a thriving and more secure world for everyone.
Mindfully Masculine: Personal Growth and Mental Health for Men
The Let Them Theory: Immature Reactions, Mature Moves
Why do grown-ups still throw tantrums? And why does doing the right thing sometimes feel awful?
In this episode, Charles and Dan dive into Chapters 7 and 8 of The Let Them Theory—where emotional maturity meets real-life discomfort. We unpack how adults act like kids (just with more email silence and fewer juice boxes), how to hold your ground when someone else is spiraling, and why making the right move often feels like the wrong one—especially when it shakes the whole “family web.”
Also in this episode:
- How to spot emotional regression in the wild
- Letting others ride their emotional waves (without jumping in)
- The myth of the “perfect” breakup or resignation
- Why 90 seconds of discomfort beats years of quiet resentment
- And the timeless wisdom of not having hard conversations after tequila
This one’s for anyone who’s tired of managing reactions and ready to start honoring their own values.
🎧 Watch or listen to every episode at mindfullymasculine.com
A good idea is to go into any emotionally charged conversation with any adult and kind of expect them to act like a child, and I think that's a valuable way to frame like anytime you're going into a tough conversation with anybody, whether it's a work colleague or a supervisor or your romantic partner, whoever just kind of be on the lookout for. What I'm probably going to see in this conversation is some childlike behavior, because, if they're like me, they didn't learn all the things as a kid that they needed to learn to regulate their emotions. So some of that's about to bleed out because we're going to have a tough conversation. Welcome to the Mindfully Masculine Podcast.
Charles:This is Charles. In this episode, dan and I unpack two powerful chapters from the let them theory One about recognizing adult tantrums for what they really are and the other about making the hard choice even when it feels terrible. We talk about how emotional immaturity shows up in everyday relationships, why staying calm takes more than willpower, and how to hold your ground when the right move hurts, whether you're trying to avoid a blow up at work or wrestling with a big decision in your personal life. This one's packed with insight and more than a few stories from our own emotional missteps. Let's go.
Dan:Good morning Charles.
Charles:Hello Dan, how are you?
Dan:I'm doing well. Thanks A little bit of a crazy.
Charles:I say thanks.
Dan:How about you? Let's rewind? I say thanks. How about you? Let's rewind? How are you Spectacular? I guess that would be the proper, polite thing for me to ask. Is it's not all about me? I should ask about you too, right?
Charles:I'm okay, thank you. It's been a crazy week. My cat's been sick, so the emotional and financial toll of a sick cat has been wreaking havoc with my life. But I think we're on to cover chapter seven and eight on the let them theory and I am happy to say chapter seven was kind of a turning point with me on this book oh, yeah, I really liked it. Okay, what was your favorite part? So the four parts chapter title. Shall I say chapter title is when grown-ups throw tantrums, and I love throwing tantrums that's what.
Dan:That was my favorite part too, I.
Charles:It is interesting how she talks about, like what the adult equivalent to temper tantrums. That's what that was. My favorite part too, I it is interesting how she talks about like what the adult equivalent to temper tantrums are yeah with a kid.
Charles:That was insightful for her actual temper. Tantrums with an adult is like we usually do it in more passive, aggressive ways. Yeah, they're tantrums nonetheless. But number one, I liked how she really owned up to her own emotional immaturity and the effect that it's had on her life and the effect that it had on her kids lives. Yeah, because it takes a pretty big person to admit hey, my kids are in therapy because I fucked up I know that's what you were criticizing.
Dan:Therefore, all up to this point, you're like does she realize, like who she is, like how she's coming across? And she absolutely does so, and it seemed like it from this chapter she definitely does get it.
Charles:And the biggest thing that was kind of reinforced for me that I kind of already got on a conceptual basis, but I liked the way that she said it and it did resonate with me. A good idea is to go into any emotionally charged conversation with any adult and kind of expect them to act like a child, and I think that's a valuable way to frame like anytime you're going into a tough conversation with anybody, whether it's a work colleague or a supervisor or your romantic partner, whoever just kind of be on the lookout for. What I'm probably going to see in this conversation is some childlike behavior, because if they're like me, they didn't learn all the things as a kid that they needed to learn to regulate their emotions, yeah. So some of that's about to bleed out because we're going to have a tough conversation, yeah.
Charles:Or being completely stoic with you and cold yeah, and you don't want to communicate In my notes is that when a child will physically run away from you if you're telling them something they don't want to hear an adult will just kind of shut down and avoid confrontation and either the silent treatment or just sort of detach from the situation, some form of avoid, don't wall, check out, whatever you want to call it.
Charles:Yeah, and so instead of physically running away which would be funny to see a coworker actually run away from you when you're trying to have a difficult conversation they'll just kind of shut down and give one word answers.
Dan:Or in my case, in reality I'm dealing with right now is not responding with an email.
Charles:Right.
Dan:Right and just not hearing anything back and it's and they clearly made the mistake and they're not owning up to it, but one's kind of suffering because of it, unfortunately, yeah.
Charles:And so how does one handle that? It's like, do you do you do what feels like chasing them down to get an answer? Do you bend over backwards to make them comfortable? Or do you just say, okay, if you're not ready to talk about it now, then I'll wait. But yeah business relationship.
Dan:That gets tough because, especially when you're waiting for them to sign a check something I really picked up from this chapter that I thought was insightful was a kid melting down when they don't get what they want is actually a normal reaction and we should not be suppressing that in in some way. Right, we should be. We shouldn't be reacting negatively to it, we shouldn't be encouraging it, but allowing it to happen and letting them know hey, it's okay, but this is how we deal with things. We're not always going to get what we want, and I understand you're upset. Leave it at that and not try to change the emotions, because if they don't know how to process them or learn how to process them, like she's talking about when we were kids, we're not spending much time working on that as adults. And now we're all eight-year-old emotional kids in adult bodies.
Charles:Yeah, and I would say that I mean looking back I see that in my own childhood and in the childhoods of my friends, where, for the most part, I didn't really see this modeled the right way at all, it was either parents who constantly coddled their kids, parents who constantly denied their kids' feelings, or, in my case, I feel like my parents went back and forth between denying my feelings and modeling me okay, and I never knew which reaction I was going to get. But it was never just acknowledging my feelings and sitting with me in my feelings and my parents being the steady ones so that I could feel like I had the space to confront those feelings and live through my feelings. It was always either they're there, it's OK, you don't need to feel this way, or you're fine. This is nothing to be upset about and just wildly swinging between the two of them.
Dan:And she makes a great point is our parents weren't taught that as children either. So now our outbursts as children were probably causing them to feel emotions they couldn't handle or get to a point very quickly that they couldn't handle, and so then they're not operating as their best selves and they're not making good decisions either, and so they're not able to absorb and handle the situation and us. So, yeah, they're basically operating with their eight-year-old children brains trying to handle our eight-year-old emotional outbursts, and that's.
Charles:Yeah, not a recipe for.
Dan:That's like Lord of the.
Charles:Flies action going over. Exactly. It's not a recipe for success by any means. Yeah, and I like her point that, listen, when bad stuff happens to you, you're supposed to get sad or angry about it. Or when sad stuff happens to you, you're supposed to get sad or angry. That's the designed reaction. And when you try to get someone tries to talk you out of that reaction, that only delays it, puts it off and increases the chance that you're going to deal with it in an unhealthy way, where it's like, yeah, when shitty, chance that you're going to deal with it in an unhealthy way, where it's like, yeah, when shitty stuff happens, you're supposed to be upset about it. That's the way that it's supposed to work and you can't really you can't help that. You can't stop it, you can't interrupt it, you can't control what happens to you and you can't control your immediate emotional reaction to it. All you can control is what you do with it and how you act it out yeah.
Dan:so that's how she ties it back to the whole principle of the let them theory is she says let them react, let them be quiet and ignore you, let them not engage with you, hold your boundary, don't solve their storm, and so that's you letting them react and you, it's.
Charles:the let me part is let me hold my own boundaries, let me give them that space regular basis, fairly unfruitful conversations, or you're seeing someone in your life like a parent, a child, a romantic partner, a close friend, constantly showing up to these difficult conversations or just showing up to life and acting like a kid. One thing you can do again if you're close to them, close enough to them, there's a good chance you might have some old pictures of them when they were children. Oh yeah, I like that. Try to use that, not in a condescending way or not in a way to make you feel superior to them, but just look at them as a kid and even do this with yourself. Look at yourself as a kid and realize, okay, this version of me or them didn't learn the things that they needed to learn to deal with moments like this that are occurring 20, 30, 40 years later. Yeah, and so I'm gonna try to have some empathy and some compassion for that kid that's trying to deal with this the best way.
Dan:They know how still locked inside that grown-up body yeah, and I like what you just said was think of yourself as that kid too, because then you give a little self compassion for the emotions that are going to come up for you as well and don't suppress them either, but try to don't let them just go freaking crazy. But at the same point, if I think of myself as that child, that eight year old dealing with and remembering how I dealt with things when I was eight years old, it's really going to give me some space to allow those feelings to be there and also kind of put this blanket over it, like this is not the correct reaction or you shouldn't be expressing these thoughts that are coming up from these crazy emotions that you're having right now. Give yourself a chance. So question for you what's easier for you, or I should say, what's harder for you staying calm when somebody else's emotional reaction is aimed at you, or handling your own emotional reaction to things?
Charles:Ooh, good question. I guess it a lot of it's going to be context dependent who it is, what the what, the situation, what the subject is. I would say, in most cases, controlling what's coming up inside of me is going to be the more difficult thing, but controlling my reaction, what's coming from them, yeah. But you know, I can think back to situations with with former partners where they would come to me with an issue or a concern and they would clearly come to me as a rational, reasonable adult, but I would immediately turn into that eight-year-old kid and then I would say or do something in response to that, would transform them into the eight-year-old kid. And then you got two eight-year-old kids arguing with each other, trying to solve a grown-up problem or a grown-up situation, and that's a good way of putting it.
Dan:I that's absolutely.
Charles:Same things happen to me absolutely, and I've been on both sides of that, where I've approached the situation, quote, unquote the right way, as an adult, and immediately they reacted to it like a child, which then caused my inner child to decide oh okay, we're're two kids in a in an argument right now, and all the stuff, all the intention I brought into the conversation initially to hey, let's confront this issue in a positive and healthy way, just goes out the window and it's just two kids fight with each other.
Dan:Yeah, yeah.
Charles:And yeah, it's so hard to notice that in the moment at least it has been for me in the past like, oh, this, the whole tone of this just changed. And now I'm fighting with this other person based on my incomplete knowledge of coping and regulation skills that I came out of my childhood with. Yeah, and now and if that's not bad enough, I'm also bringing you down to my level is part of it too. And then, because if in some cases, one person can stay away from that, one person can say, no, I'm going to, I'm going to maintain the mature frame and framing of this issue, and then I'm not going to, I'm going to respect what you're going through, but I'm not going to come down to your level. And that is one way that you know situations like this can be avoided. But otherwise it's just going to escalate.
Charles:And yeah you know that eight year old turns into a seven year old, and then the other one turns into a six year old, and it's really difficult to stay in that position.
Dan:You really need to, I think, constantly remind yourself hey look, we're. There's going to be emotions here on both sides. I want to be sensitive. I'm going to try to not use some hot button words or triggers, which sometimes it's just it's an accident. You don't even realize what I mean, especially as you're getting no some money in a relationship. You really don't know what their hot button issues are, sometimes until the eight year old kid is out and about already and he's crying and screaming. So, yeah, yeah, it's, it's reasonable. I think so many people have problems with our with relationships.
Charles:Yeah, cause we're just not like I said it's either. I feel most parents make the mistake of going either too far on the coddling side or too far on the denying side, and you just don't get a lot of parents that find the appropriate reaction to their kids' feelings of okay, I can, you're having some big feelings and I can tolerate that because I'm an adult and I've learned how to regulate my own emotions. So yeah, now I can give you some support in regulating yours yeah and she does make the point that it is.
Charles:It's the job of the adult in the parent-child relationship to help their kid manage their emotions and to learn those skills. You don't get to just say let them to, oh, my kid's spinning out of control, so good luck. Yeah, it's like no, you have a responsibility to help correct through that, yes, where you don't treat your adult relationships and your child as well.
Charles:So, and that comes back, to something we learned in A Man's Guide to Women by the Gottmans, which is learn to listen to your body and trust your body. And when your pulse gets over 100, you need to be able to recognize that and recognize that you are not in the place you need to be able to deal with any kind of a difficult emotional issue.
Dan:Yeah, and a lot of times we can be in that altered physical state before we even have the argument from not sleeping well, not eating well, some sort of physical, not even an ailment, really, it's just day-to-day life, like oh, I forgot to eat, or or I just really used your meal.
Charles:Now I'm falling asleep. She mentions the big three of alcohol, stress and hunger. And if she's dealing with any of these more complex interpersonal situations while she's had a couple of drinks or she's stressed or she's hungry, she's like, yeah, it's going to go worse than it would have if I wasn't also dealing with those things.
Dan:Yeah, take care of yourself first, right, sober up, have a meal, go for a walk, whatever that is, before you make any big decisions or need to challenge yourself by handling a difficult conversation where emotions are going to pop up, like really sometimes. It's like we're so busy these days we just want to get it done, get it off our plate and address it sooner rather than later. Every time I've done that, it's never come out as good as being in the right state of mind, and it's a tough. It's a tough stress to deal with of holding off on getting that thing done and out of the way Now that you thought about it versus going. Oh, I need a little self care, like that's it.
Charles:And I've experienced this and I've got friends that have experienced it too where sometimes if you're in a relationship with some difficult areas that need improvement, sometimes the only time you feel like it's okay to bring those up is after you've had a couple of shots in you.
Charles:That's a good point Right yeah, liquid courage, exactly. And you're like, okay, my, my defenses are down, my inhibitions are lowered, now I can bring up this thing that's been bothering me. Yeah, but your skills to handle it healthy and appropriately are also out the window because of those same drinks that you had that gave you the courage to bring it up.
Dan:Right. So what I think happens is right alcohol kind of numbs things. So they numb some of those anxiety feelings and those stressful feelings that were preventing us from having the conversation to begin with. So I think those get numbed, but it also numbs. What else is it numbing now too right, and what else is it kind of Empathy, your ability?
Charles:Smoothing over in terms of your sharpness, your ability to think and respond to what the other person is saying. It numbs everything, and that's the problem when it's like, oh, I had another fight with my partner last night. Yeah, were you drinking? As a matter of fact, I was, how'd you like? Okay, well, there's a, there's a pattern there and, yeah, that's one of the reasons that I would encourage everyone to consider giving up alcohol, at least in the moment when you feel like you've got a difficult conversation that you need to have. I know it's harder to initiate the conversation when you're clean and sober, but it's also when you got the best shot of handling it the way you should. I mean, those conversations are hard no matter what, so throw on some stress and some hunger and it's going to get even harder.
Dan:One thing that helped me was when she broke down scientifically what emotions are in our body and mentioned that those are really just chemicals that are released within six seconds and they last only 90 seconds unless we do something to bring them back up again. So once I hear that's not a lot of time, it gives me a little bit more hope that, hey, I can handle some uncomfortable feelings as they crop up, for if just 90 seconds okay yeah, and there's an abc loop that's mentioned in this chapter and it's a different one than she she brought up a few chapters ago, I think as well.
Charles:Which is what we learned before was that something happens to you in your life. You assign meaning and value to that thing that's happened and then you react to the meaning or value that you put on it. You're rarely reacting to the actual thing that happened. You're reacting to the value you put on it and the feelings that you've let yourself experience and then you have a reaction to those. Yeah, and when you're confronting someone or dealing with someone who's exhibiting these childlike behaviors, she recommends acknowledge the pattern, break the cycle and choose your response. But it also does fit into that same thing of okay, you're going to experience this issue and then you're going to assign meaning to it and there's a good chance you're going to get that assignment part of the project wrong and then you're going to react based on the meaning that you assigned, which could be completely.
Charles:One of the things to remember is when somebody responds to you with these difficult childlike behaviors, this is not about you, this is. These are patterns that they formed probably decades before they even met you, and so it's not your responsibility or your fault that they're, that you're the current target of those, the negative aspects of those patterns. That's not. It has nothing to do with you. You're just the person in their life that's currently experiencing it, but it's about the lack of skill or the lack of work that they've yet to experience. It's not about oh, charles is so special, he came into this person's life and now they have to behave this way. That's not how it works.
Dan:Here's a mistake that I always make for many years until I realized how many flavors or how communication changes between people. So a lot of times, like you said we'd, I would react based on something somebody said and, looking back, well, that person was saying it in a state of distress. So a lot of times what they were communicating was not clear, it wasn't exactly maybe what they meant. They were out, lost for words. They weren't at their best selves when they were giving me this information. So now it's already muddled and not exactly how they're feeling about things. And then I would take that literally and go oh, you said X, y and Z. So that's what this means to me.
Dan:Well, a lot of times that my interpretation is already flawed because what they were expressing was accurate. So now I'm basing my assumptions and my meaning based on inaccurate information, right, and now I'm reacting, and probably not in the best. I'm not looking at it as the best case scenario most of the time, because we're not wired that way. I'm looking at it as worst case scenario of a flawed piece of information. And so now my reaction is going to be completely, possibly completely inappropriate or completely off kilter or not helpful at all. Knowing that it helps me slow down and go.
Dan:Okay, I don't have all the information here. Yes, this is my initial thoughts, these are my initial reactions, that this is what it means. But a lot of times what's helped me is just going for a walk and like talking it all out literally into an Evernote where I can like review all my thoughts, but and then going through it and realizing, hey, this is not the most likely scenario, this is not the most likely scenario, this is probably a little bit more accurate. And then once I start to see that that helps me kind of bring down, bring down my feeling also moving, getting those flight or flight hormones to get used up, basically, and that extra energy to be used up, that absolutely helps as well with that.
Charles:For me anyway, yeah, I think the going for a walk instead of just or even going to lift it's hard to for me. It's hard to make myself do that in the moment, because it feels like I've got to urgently deal with this situation and I don't have time to take a break to walk around the block. I've got to do this now.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:Where, in most cases, things aren't as urgent as we think they are.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:And people. It's very rare that there's a situation where this has to be handled immediately or else dot, dot dot, and the or else is something true and serious. Yeah, it just feels that way in the moment. The next chapter, eight, is about making good decisions or appropriate decisions, or right decisions, even when they don't feel right. And this is an important one where sometimes, I think, sometimes we try to leverage our intuition and this idea that when I'm in a tough spot, I'll just trust myself to do whatever feels right in the moment and I'll get it right where. That's often not how it works. The thing that feels right in the moment coincidentally often overlaps with what the easiest thing to do is.
Dan:Oh yeah.
Charles:It's interesting Funny how it works out that way.
Charles:And so that's not true. I mean, we are social primates that are conditioned to find the easy way to do things whenever we can, because that leaves us energy and resources to deal with the emergencies that may be right around the corner. So we're really good at convincing ourselves that whatever the easiest thing to do is also the correct thing to do. But that's not always the case. And she gives a few stories in this chapter Just, and I've got just like one little one line descriptions of these stories and just thinking those gives me stress A bride canceling her wedding two weeks before, an executive leaving a family business, a parent setting boundaries with their adult children and a career change that will affect the entire family. Sometimes, when you assess the situation you're in and you do some work to write down and lay out what your values are, what's important, then that leads you to the point, the conclusion of okay, I've got to make this difficult decision and it's going to be rough on me and it's going to be rough on other people, but I've got to do it.
Dan:Yeah.
Charles:And then that kind of puts you into a week, month, year of just different levels of misery, while you're building up to what you have to do to find it in yourself to make that decision. And it can be rough, but the fact that it's rough doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Dan:Yeah, what she mentions is to think of family like almost a spider web where everybody is interconnected and so anybody who does any almost anything, it shakes the web and it starts to affect almost everybody, whether, whether it really does or not, people are in your family, they seem to be invested in your life and vice versa a lot of times, and so sometimes what could seem somewhat innocuous is actually cause a lot of problems within the family because of the way that that's connected. And I can see similar type of analogy in work. If you've got basically a work environment where you've got bosses and coworkers and a company and changes that you make or requests that you make or don't make or that's going to affect other people, and that could be also like a secondary type of family and all those relationships that get affected from this decision that you're making. And now that's just building up more anxiety and stress in terms of holy cow, and when you think about it it's not quite as bad.
Dan:But without putting words to it or thoughts to it and realizing it's just, oh my gosh, you really could blow this up into some bigger deal than it is and cause you to really kind of paralyze a lot of times with decisions so calling off a wedding and maybe you know people waiting and waiting and with a wedding that gets more and more expensive and it gets worse and worse the closer you get to that landing. So it's it really is difficult. Yeah, I've been there in terms of calling out the wedding, but the woman I was dating at the time actually made it probably so easy for me because she handled it. It was mostly her family that was invested in this process, so yeah, I can't imagine that that would be.
Charles:I've not had to go through that and I can imagine how difficult that would be. Yeah, we only lost.
Dan:like I can't imagine that that would be. I've not had to go through that and I can imagine how difficult that would be. Yeah, we only lost like $500 on the wedding invitations. That was it. That was it.
Charles:That was about as good as it could go, I mean, minus the emotional impacts. I'm sure that wasn't easy, but Well, the thing was it was a mutual right, it was absolutely mutual.
Dan:She basically turned to me and was just like listen, you really don't want to get married, do you? It was like five months after we got engaged and I was just like, no, I just didn't want to lose her as a friend, because she basically gave me an ultimatum. And so it was kind of like, well, what are we doing here? And I'm like, well, you're like my best friend, I don't want to lose that.
Charles:So I guess we're going to get married, obviously, yeah yeah, I think the other mistake that we can often make is this assumption that well, I'll just take more time and I'll just delay this decision. There's no downside to that. Making the wrong decision, that could be a huge problem, but just putting it off there's no reason not to do that.
Dan:It's going to make me feel better in the moment right, exactly, that's the thing, and my emotions are scary. I don't want to deal with it.
Charles:You're telling yourself that it's smart to wait and gather more information, but in a lot of cases we've already made the decision. We are just afraid to implement it because of how it's going to feel and how it's going to make the other person feel. And it's like I don't want to disappoint this other person and I don't want them to be mad at me. I don't want to think, I don't want them to think I'm a bad guy, yada, yada, yada. But you've already decided like this is what I have to do. And now you're just afraid to do it and, as she mentions in this chapter, the longer you take, the worse it's going to be on both of you.
Dan:Yeah, yeah. So she comes in and says okay, the let them theory applies to letting those people get angry at you. Feel those emotions be pissed off. Let them have it. Let them have their reactions, you can't control them anyway.
Charles:I've been there with jobs that I wanted to leave, that I decided I wanted to leave, but I wanted like leaving on good terms was so important to me yeah, in any relationship, leaving on good terms, right, letting out exactly how to leave on good terms, so I just won't leave. And that's a great tool that your brain can use to trick you into procrastinating. A great tool that your brain can use to trick you into procrastinating doing the thing that you don't want to do.
Charles:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. That can be miserable. Yeah, sure, I remember a job I was in where I decided that it wasn't good for my career, it wasn't good for my financial future. But it's like you know, I know how these people talk crap about people that quit and leave them.
Dan:And I don't want to be one of those people.
Charles:So and listen man, I think everybody out there has gone through that multiple times throughout life. Yeah, probably with relationships, with jobs, with all, and it's like you said because we're social beings.
Dan:We don't want to have this back then, back then thousands of years ago back thousands of years ago.
Dan:yeah, you do one thing wrong to somebody, everybody finds out about it. Now it's like you could be ostracized and kicked out of the tribe and that's basically certain death. So our brains haven't changed since then. At least our primitive brains haven't changed yet. Our prefrontal cortex the new one has, but we got to use it and we got to make sure that doesn't go offline. When we're feeling all these emotions, the modern part of our brain goes offline. We're in survival mode. We're not able to think hey, it's going to be okay for us to feel these negative emotions and risk causing somebody else to feel these negative emotions.
Charles:Right, yeah, I think back to I think I've shared this on the podcast before I heard it from, I think, a comedian or somebody who was a guest on a podcast where the root of our fear of public speaking is due to the fact that for thousands of years, the only time you were asked to speak in public was when you were convincing the tribe not to kick you out.
Dan:Oh my gosh Joe, I've never heard that, but that makes so much sense.
Charles:Doesn't it? Yeah, like.
Charles:You're defending yourself 10,000 years ago, the only time you were given a speech, it was please don't kick me out of the tribe. Yeah, it wasn't. Hey, I've got a new five minute comedy act I've been working on. It was okay. The tribe has caught me doing something that is not okay with them. They want to kick me out. So now I get a chance to yeah, try to convince them all why I shouldn't be kicked out of the tribe. And that was the only public speaking that humans did for thousands of years. And now that's why it's still the number one fear that most people say is speaking in public.
Dan:That's interesting.
Charles:Yeah.
Dan:And people say, yeah, that's more fearful than death.
Charles:Yeah, For most people it is yeah, or in surveys it's cited more often than dying yeah. And that's the reason why, because it it's almost like dying plus something else. Right. Well, it's like a long slow death, depending on how long your speech is right. Yeah, exactly yeah, it's the long slow death of trying to convince people that you're worthy of keeping around and then they possibly decide, no, you're not. So then you die of exposure and starvation.
Dan:You are putting yourself in a position of being judged by many people all at the same time, correct?
Charles:Yeah.
Dan:And of course, our brains never go to oh, they're thinking the best, they're thinking I'm an amazing speaker and our brains don't do that. So it's going to be also negative criticism that they're coming at us, or at least we're assuming will be coming at us.
Charles:Yeah, we're. We are assuming that the reason that we're the ones speaking is not because they recognize us as being, you know, special or professional or especially learned. It's no, we're up here to prove ourselves that we're valuable, yeah, and that that's where that anxiety comes from. Wow, so, yeah, that actually is helpful. Once you hear that though yeah, I think so. I think once you can intellectually understand what your brain is doing, what your brain is doing, then it's a little easier to come up with strategies to say, okay, I understand that's where this is coming from, but I'm not going to live according to that rule.
Dan:Yeah To me, then. It helps me focus on the value that I'd be providing from speaking in public at that point, and there is.
Charles:there is no worst case scenario today. That's comparable to what it was 10,000 years ago. Maybe you won't be asked back to that event to speak again. Yeah, maybe you'll never be asked to speak in public again, but you're still not going to be forced to live out in the wilderness by yourself.
Dan:That's just not going to happen.
Charles:Yeah, Okay. So when it comes time to make that decision and inform others of it, the process that she suggests is stay firm but kind. Allow emotions without absorbing them. Keep your boundaries clear and focus on your why process of breaking up with somebody or telling them you don't want to see them anymore. Where it's like, you gotta stay dedicated to just giving them the information they need and not turning it into a opportunity for them to convince you that you're making the wrong decision and as a result, that's you'll come across as cold or inflexible.
Dan:But that's actually the kindest way to handle an interaction like this so she also mentions in this chapter about prioritizing everybody else's emotional needs over your own values, peace and future. When I think of a scale and I'm thinking about the decisions that we're making are related to future relationships, jobs, things that are really important and that basically take up years of our life resources, time, energy, how valuable and, yeah, values, right, yeah, versus somebody else's emotions. Like, I'm like, oh my God, like, and we regularly prioritize somebody's emotions over these pillars of life for ourselves. That's true, and we just get in this habit of doing that, where we're making those emotions of other people that we can't control more important.
Charles:And when I heard that, I'm like, oh my God, we're insane, we're all insane by acting this way, yeah, and like we talked about, I think, last week or the week before, the idea of putting so much energy and so much anxiety into what you think people will think about you, even when you're wrong. So even with, like, you're making these huge decisions or choosing not to make these huge decisions based on your impression of what other people might think of you. That is probably not even correct, and it's a shame that the only tool we have for making these decisions is such a flawed tool, but it's the only tool we have. So we have to look for methods and mechanisms outside of our own assumptions that we can rely on, because those assumptions are going to lead us the wrong way so many times. But with practice we can get better at it. With practice we can get our brains to defaulting to seeing things the right way instead of the scary way.
Dan:So I'm going to read a little bit from what she has in the book. Actually, she gives us tips on how to do that, Like it's yeah, great idea, but how do you actually do that and put that into practice? So what she says, and I tell you think, towards the end she says you're stronger than someone else's temporary emotional reaction. Let the waves rise, Let them fall. Do the hard thing now so you're not suffering years from now. Let me tell the truth. Let me act in integrity. Let them be upset if they need to be. That's emotional maturity. That let them be upset if they need to be, that's emotional maturity, that's adulthood. And so it's, I guess, letting the emotional waves rise within us as we are thinking about how other people are gonna react, and just let them. And when they rise, eventually they'll fall. And what she'd said was 90 seconds. So if you can hang on for 90, ride that wave for 90 seconds, I think we're okay, but 90 seconds is a long time when we're in the moment it feels like forever, absolutely.
Charles:But yeah, it is. It is still short enough to be temporary, and being able to realize that it's temporary while you're in the middle of it is is key. Yeah, I. One of the meditations I listened to a while ago was talking about meditating through physical pain, whether that's tripped in a dentist or your lower back, bothering you or whatever and so much of the anxiety we experience about pain. By the time you're, when your body feels pain, in the moment that you've registered feeling the pain, you're already past the pain. So the misery and the anxiety is not about the pain that you've registered feeling the pain, you're already past the pain. So the misery and the anxiety is not about the pain that you've already experienced. It's about the fear that the pain will continue. Yeah, and I think that's true emotionally as well as physically.
Charles:Yeah, it makes sense, it's really the anticipation of difficulty and pain. That is what freaks us out, Because the actual pain you kind of only feel it after it's already over.
Dan:I know this has been portrayed a lot in satire and TV and movies, but a lot of times you see kid at the doctor's office getting a shot and they yell out, oh, and they're like, I haven't even stuck in it, I haven't given it to you yet, but I think that's real. I think we all do that in some form.
Charles:Absolutely, and it can freeze us up and it can stop us from going forward with doing the things we need to do. Yeah, because the anticipation of the bad thing just is all-encompassing, where the bad thing itself, by the time you feel it and you recognize it, it's already in the past.
Dan:Yeah, she also mentioned in this chapter something that I've been guilty of a lot of times in my life, which is I don't like conflict, I avoid conflict. And what she says is you're not avoiding conflict, you're avoiding other people's emotions. That's what you're really doing. It's true, it's not the actual person that you've got a problem with, it's how do you handle their emotions. That's what you're scared of. You're really scared of not conflicts, but other people's reactions, other people's emotions.
Charles:Interesting, and I mean I think you can. You could make the case that that's an act of selfishness too, where you're saying I am willing to prolong their difficulty or their misery in the comfort I'm feeling and not having to make the decision so they can yeah they can just suck it up and deal with continuing to live their life, Thinking everything's fine when I've got a hammer I'm about to drop on them.
Charles:But it's too dropping the hammer on them and then they're reacting to it. That's too uncomfortable, so I'll just leave the hammer or the guillotine or the ax over their neck as long as I need to feel comfortable and then I'll drop it when it feels like the moment's right.
Dan:For me, that's kind of a selfish way to it's really selfish. Absolutely yeah, and you're not being honest either about how you're feeling or you're the relationship that you're currently having with that person, either right, yeah, yeah.
Charles:So knock it off everybody, including including Charles and Dan. All right, we will pick up next week with chapters nine and 10. Let me open my app up and see what those are. Let's see there's audible chapter nine yes, life isn't fair. And chapter 10, how to make comparison your teacher.
Dan:So we will cover that in the next episode Sounds good. All right.
Charles:Thanks, dan. Thanks, teacher. So we will cover that in the next episode. Sounds good, all right, thanks, dan. Thanks for listening to the entire episode of Mindfully Masculine. We appreciate it If you're learning to stay calm in the storm or make decisions that don't feel easy but are right. You're not alone. You can catch all our audio and video episodes at mindfullymasculinecom. It's the place to listen, watch and keep an eye out for anything else we decide to share down the road. We'll be back next time with chapter 9 yes, life isn't fair and chapter 10 how to make comparison. Your teacher talk to you next time.
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