Latest / Lucid Interval Podcast / Authenticity, Recovery, and Masculinity - Philippe Blais
Transcript
- Benjamin Broadhead: Thank andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: thank for joining me, buddy. Benjamin Broadhead: Hey Andrew, yeah, glad to see you. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, man. Yeah. Thank you so much for talking with me. ⁓ So we were just before I wish I had had record a little bit earlier, we were kind of talking about how like growth mindset and like I've got this podcast thing here and a lot of it is an opportunity for me to nerd out on like gear and the technicals and things like that. And this is my first week where I've kind of given myself permission to let good enough be good enough. ⁓ Because there's like with lighting, it's never done. Like you learn that on a film set, the lighting people always need 30 more minutes. It doesn't matter. how long they've had. There's always more that you can do. so this week, part Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, no, think it looks like a good setup to me. I was telling you right before I said, I don't know if this is film quality that I'm sitting in, but this is good. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: I mean, it's whatever man, like I think the quality of the conversation matters more than anything. And then this, the sound is a big part of that too, but like, so I think Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, so maybe you can tell me how many episodes of this have you done? Just lay out for me how this has gone so far. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Sure, this is my third. So I've wanted to do YouTube for a long time. ⁓ And I made a brief YouTube video called, what was brief? It 20 minutes of me talking to the camera, finally just ripping the band-aid off and thinking like, I don't need to get a PhD in neuroscience to be able to talk on YouTube. Like I'm good enough as it is, I'll do it. And that video was called This Video Sucks and Why That's a Good Thing. Yeah, yeah, it was really liberating to just be like, it's not perfect and the imperfection is actually the best part. Benjamin Broadhead: I saw it. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: ⁓ And then I kind of got hit a snag I was just there's still a lot of like deer in the headlights for me of like just looking into camera and talking and I do some of that with like acting now I'm learning to do monologues and stuff and I like to look in the camera because it's funnier but ⁓ I Was I did a conference where I worked was a videographer I helped a videographer basically at a conference for eye doctor actually there were optometrists But the people that ran the conference the clients were eye doctors ophthalmologists And as part of it, just kind of showed up and I was like, ⁓ I just started asking questions and interviewing people and kind of playing the role of a producer. And I realized like, ⁓ I should be in front of the camera and talking to people. If I had someone to talk to, there's kind of no end to what could be discussed. But I'm just kind of like, what do I need to say if I'm by myself? So that was kind of what gave me the idea. you're my third person to talk to. My first one was Laura Martinez, the Neuro-Shamana Keeler, and the one that uploaded this week but last week from when this gets uploaded was Professor Ken Levy who is a philosopher and legal scholar. We talked about free speech and free will, fascinating conversation. ⁓ And so you're my third. And my ⁓ of my commitment to myself is like I've been super outcomes oriented forever ⁓ and very perfectionistic which is a bad combination. Like ⁓ when you're worried about the outcome that you don't control being perfect that leads to a lot of doing nothing. And so it's really like part of this is religious kind of a growth vehicle for me. It's a way to stimulate my own personal growth is just committing to a deadline, which is a huge problem for people that are creatives, whichever less I am now that if you only wait to do things until you feel like it, you end up not doing very much and you don't get any better at your craft. And so I've committed to uploading every Monday at 8 a.m. for a year, 52 videos in 52 weeks, hopefully through long-form conversation, long-form interview, because it feels like the most natural and authentic way for me to actually connect with someone and to learn from them. ⁓ But I might not ⁓ Benjamin Broadhead: Well, I'll tell you, you knew how to get me because I think your exact phrase to me was, you're gonna help me keep a commitment to myself. And so you got me ⁓ you know, a and you reeled me right in with that one. It's a big commitment you made to yourself. It's good though. I'm happy to hear that it's already off to a good start. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, well, Thank you. Thank you, man. It's a big commitment. It's a lot of work. And I'm not like opposed to the work. The work is good. That's part of the growth too, is to get good at the workload. ⁓ it's a lot. It's more than what I would have expected, because I also committed to writing a reflection every week and uploading that to a sub stack. ⁓ And so the one I'm going to upload tomorrow, I think it's going to give me a really good opportunity to ⁓ see what it feels like to upload something that's not my best work. I just have a feeling like I wrote for an hour on Monday and I'm like, this is gibberish. This makes no sense. I kept going. I wrote, I'd sat through that discomfort, but I'm like, yeah, don't think this is going to be as coherent as I would like, but it's going on the internet on Thursday. Cause I just, think at this point, like that's the best way to, to get That's, that's the thing that holds back. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. Well, as someone as someone who's in your circle here and you've been sharing some of it with me, I can tell you that to watch it and be able to consume it as I want to over the course of like one per week or if I catch up on a things, I think it's great. And you said something, you sitting through the discomfort of writing and it not being perfect, but pushing through anyways, ⁓ even just coming into a conversation like this with you, I felt that a little bit of that discomfort and I'm someone who sits in this room a good amount of the time on video with clients in my job. And we do quite a bit of video conferencing and I'm presenting a decent amount. And yet I found myself sitting here and going, I feel this nervous energy about going to talk to Andrew. And I had to sort of reframe that as this, it's just a conversation with a friend here. But I think one thing that you're going through that's impressive to me is a willingness to let it. happen as it's supposed to happen versus a presentation is oftentimes perfected behind the scenes and it can have the illusion of being spontaneous or ⁓ being whimsical and playing off the audience and a lot of good ones do. But in this case, this conversation can be wide ranging. And I think the topics you're both writing about and speaking about in these conversations ⁓ seem to cover a lot of ⁓ ground. It's not a specific topic you're diving into. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, I know man I want to thank you for that for that feedback it it just having the support of you know If you don't put people put yourself out there Nobody can support you like no if no one knows what you're trying to do, you know So it's been I've been humbled I think by how blessed I am how rich I am in friendships and support and I have been trying to just kind of put things out there because a lot of the stuff I've been burning to get it out, know for a long time I mean, it's not just art but ideas and Benjamin Broadhead: That's true. Yes. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: I don't want to have a niche. Like I think that's a lot of people are like on YouTube, you need a niche. And I'm like, I mean, I'm not a niche. And I kind of don't want to be trapped in to that. I kind of want to be able to talk with interesting people and just have faith that the conversation is going to go where it's meant to go and kind of allow things to happen rather than try to make them happen. You know, to especially moments, you can't make a moment happen. You can only really allow it. ⁓ And yeah, it's kind of something I do acting as well. And that's again, like I don't have any real expectation of doing it professionally of getting that opportunity. It's just such an amazing growth opportunity because every time you do it, you feel that nervous energy, especially if there's an audience which I love, but you have to. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, well, there's a handful of folks that I've worked with ⁓ who, ⁓ you here in Dallas over the last couple of years that I've gotten to know that do ⁓ improv classes for that reason, or they practice improv. And there's a handful of them. One woman who I worked with owned an improv studio and she was ⁓ in our HR department. But the parallels that I continued to hear about improving at standing in front of an audience and riffing off someone specifically, I think improv, I'm no expert, but being able to improvise as a situation unfolds in front of you, trains you for that battleground of both work and personal relationships and just dealing with situations in everyday life. So to your point about acting, it's a cool thing. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Dating. Dating. Improv is like the ultimate flirting practice. Like really, if you're a guy like me that's super anxious and in your head, improv is amazing, man. I think it's, I mean, again, it's also a great way to meet people, other single people or whatever, but just to get out and make friends. I've taken one improv class at Third Coast Comedy here in Nashville, and then I pivoted, was in a film production program to learn cinema production for nine months. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah, are you taking classes? What's your what do you say you're acting? What is that? Okay. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: did a lot of acting in student films because I was just available and willing. Found that I began to love comedic acting and so I took a four week course intensive in comedic acting as well and then now I'm on a wait list to join a professional acting studio where you're showing up with other people doing your scenes but they're getting work which is kind of a will be a new thing for me of I guess putting myself out there and making an effort to try to get acting work. It's not something that Benjamin Broadhead: Mm-hmm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Really, I'm doing it just because it's than the best therapy I've ever done. And I've done kind of like almost everything. ⁓ Bessel van der Kolk in his book, The Body Keeps the Score, talks about it. He calls it psychodrama is the term for it in literature. And I experienced that in treatment where there's like an empty chair and you got to talk to your whoever about the thing. And I saw man after man after man not be able to do it, actually. That was a lot of my experience. When you get, what I've learned, it's amazing. If I write a part for someone for a short film and I name the character their name, they hate it. It's not like they don't want to do it because they're like, I don't want to be me. But if you're playing someone else, you can call in the same emotion and have the same experience. there's a, it's like you're being naked in private almost, like, because you have to have real emotion and you're calling on real experience, but everybody doesn't have to know. what you're calling on, you're acting out the scene. And I think that's kind of a cool hack for, I think especially for lot of men, it's hard to be vulnerable. There's just such a sense of shame around emotional vulnerability that like, I think that was the barrier in a treatment context and theater or acting kind of circumvents that. There was this film a couple of years ago called Sing Sing. about the theater program in Sing Sing Prison and they had a lot of the actors were actual alumni of that program and amazing results like to people just do theater it sounds so liberal you know it sounds so so Benjamin Broadhead: said that it's hard for a lot of men to get ⁓ being vulnerable. ⁓ said something about being naked in private, I think a second ago. It's reminding me, I got turned on to this book. I just checked the title of it because I wanted to make sure I said it right, but it's getting naked. It's Patrick Lencioni, I think, ⁓ it's around vulnerability and authenticity in the consulting business, in the consulting world and how in order to drive meaningful client relationships and ultimately long-term outcomes, ⁓ being vulnerable and showing your know, perceived weaknesses or the things that could be perceived as weaknesses to clients tends to improve those relationships over time. But I found myself listening to this on audio and it's all the things that I've learned in my personal and private life. And it just, I'm listening to the first maybe two, three chapters and I'm kind of going, yeah, it's about time someone kind of caught up to this, that this works. And it seems so ⁓ obvious, I guess, that it works in personal relationships and yet. that doesn't translate well in the business world sometimes. And I think it's true, we just think it may not translate well in relationships in general. just to go back to something you said about, you found that it could be easier to write a part for someone and not name it their name because they don't wanna be them. Can you say more about that? Is that because they feel like it's their- They're playing a part that is describing them, but it seems too vulnerable to actually show up as yourself. And it's a bit of a training ground. If you get to play a different character, what does that mean? andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: That isn't what I've experienced. So I've written a couple parts, I've written a couple short films, I ⁓ would just name the character after the person I was writing it for. And they were non-professional actors. ⁓ And it wasn't like they didn't want to be that vulnerable, it was that I think it would spoil the fun of it. They're like, ⁓ yeah, I definitely want to do it, but can I have a different name? Benjamin Broadhead: Hmm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Because there is a freedom and safety that comes from being able to be someone else. That's the thrill of acting, really, like is to, you know, and it's kind of more than playing pretend. It's being someone else for a moment. It's like, you know, kids are not really, kids who play, they're not really pretending to be, play doctor. In their minds, they are doctor or whatever roles they're playing. And that's what you're trying to do with acting is, Benjamin Broadhead: This makes sense. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: What I've learned, you I learned about there's this thing called method acting. You know, people, it's very famous and a lot of people think it means just staying in character forever and doing crazy stuff. And there's no kind of real one accepted definition of what method acting is. That's really not what it is. It's there's a method and approach and there's different approaches that people have that go back to this man named Stanislavsky, who was a contemporary of Freud and Carl Jung. And it's really about neutralizing self-consciousness. If you're thinking about how you look, Benjamin Broadhead: Mm-hmm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: like that's death. ⁓ If you're thinking about your, you know, mean, being up here above the neck in self and a lot of the, the, ⁓ the discipline of say improv, for example, is just being anti self-conscious, getting out of your head into your body, being in the moment. Because if I'm thinking about what I'm going to say next, I'm not responding to the, you know, and it's, it's a weird thing I've heard a lot of times with, ⁓ in like recovery circles and therapy circles. Benjamin Broadhead: Mmm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: that you always, the goal should be to respond rather than react. And it's interesting in acting, it's really the opposite. Like you really want to react spontaneously and authentically in the moment as if you don't know what's actually coming. And it helps, I think for some people it kind of spoils it. It's like, well I'm still me and then now I got all my stuff and like I'm playing this part and it's just a simple name change. They've requested, I'm like, name your character whatever you think his name would be, build the character. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Like I've got the lines here and that's kind of the constraint that oddly enough with art, like having just pure blank canvas is so hard. If you have a little bitty constraint of, you gotta say this line, but it can mean whatever you want it to mean. Like it's just like, and there's a lot of like freedom. It kind of pushes creativity. So it's interesting, although, you know, there are, I could see a case where some people would be like, this is too vulnerable. Like this is too close to my life story that I want to change I just haven't, I haven't come across it yet. Benjamin Broadhead: Well, when you said when you said that that people didn't want to be named themselves, they wanted to be named something else because it felt, I don't know. I think the words you said were I don't want to be me. And so I was curious. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, Isn't that fascinating though? Like, them. Benjamin Broadhead: Well, I think some of the greatest comedians of all time, right? You hear about these guys who have wildly low self-esteem and they're suffering from a lot of mental health issues and that ability to go out and perform is a coping mechanism of sorts, right? So, I don't know, I'm not here to diagnose the acting profession, all the people that find it to be great. I'm always impressed by it because I think I consume a lot of material, right? TV shows and movies. And, but when you get into understanding the process and the work that goes into it, and then you have to, I've only done it maybe two or three times in my life for like school projects where I've actually had to show up on camera and it's wildly uncomfortable to realize that you're being documented and you're being filmed. So, yeah, I don't know. I have a tremendous amount of respect for people that can do it. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. You know, ⁓ I do too. ⁓ I have come to really more appreciate the craft, especially like film acting. Theater seems really fun and rewarding, because there's an audience there. It's all live, it's real time. You can get into character, you stay in it. People are responding and you can feed off of that. And especially like me, I love being on stage. For me, it was always public speaking and debate. I wish I had done theater from an earlier age. I've done some stand up now in Nashville. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: just as some over-mike nights for some recovery related things and like just basically playing and having fun. And it is wonderful. It does fill a void in a way that is completely impermanent, but it does. ⁓ But film acting is like not, like there's people messing with the light and whatever, and you'll wait for four hours to say one line and then you gotta go and remember and it's out of order. So it takes an immense amount of focus is what I've come to really appreciate is the discipline of being able to focus on the moment. Benjamin Broadhead: Good to hear. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: the moment before which is kind of what you're just trying to understand where did I just come from in this story like because we're filming out of order and You want it to look look like you're not acting. That's the challenge like and a ⁓ Criticism that would some people with levy sometimes is like hey man stop acting like stop trying to perform and just be real for a moment because the audience can tell but I've got a ⁓ I've got a kind of an idea of a book I'd like to write I just at some point need to get around to it. It will be years from now to just explore the parallels between the process of method acting and there's different disciplines for that. There's a guy named Lee Strasberg who was Hyman Roth and the Godfather. That guy is kind of the father of the actor studio and method acting and then there was a woman named Stella Adler and there's another guy named Meisner and they have different approaches but they're like body up approaches. They involve meditation, relaxation and the parallels between that and trauma psychology as we understand it now are Benjamin Broadhead: Okay. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: It's the same thing. You're doing vagal work using essentially what they didn't understand that is polyvagal theory is what we call it now and trying to get into your parasympathetic state so that you can relax and react spontaneously rather than responding with a canned response. Because it's so obvious when an actor delivers a line and they did not listen to what the person just said because they're waiting for their turn to speak. which is, and so that's such a wonderful discipline and that's really why I love doing it. I've had a waiting for my turn to speak problem for a long time and ⁓ I then walk ⁓ away without having made any connections. Benjamin Broadhead: Well, that's when you sometimes you'll sound smartest. Oftentimes, at least that's the lie. Maybe that I tell myself if I'm planning what I'm about to say, rather than listening to what the other person is saying. And I think this respond versus react topic that you mentioned that you hear in recovery circles and acting or improv, at least maybe being the opposite. ⁓ I think that respond versus react to me is. being okay with taking a pause once the other person has finished saying what they're saying and being okay with that emptiness, with that silence that's there before you start sounding smart yourself. And you sit around in a room with enough people and you're waiting for an opportunity maybe to say something should someone invite you to, or it's time to say something and you're caught off guard. I can say, if I really get into what you're saying, I realize that I've become I think less coherent in what I'm trying to get across because I find my mind going every direction. So there's a balance for me between wanting to really listen to what you're saying, take little nuggets, but not let my mind go down a rabbit hole. You said something interesting 20 seconds ago and now I'm not listening to what you're saying anymore because I'm wanting to circle back to that and other things. Yeah, I don't know how, for me, I always thought acting is you memorize the lines and you know exactly what you're going to say. ⁓ quite a bit of thinking and pre-planning that goes into it. ⁓ I don't know, I'm not an expert in the art form, but I would say that improv probably demands that quick wit and being okay with not being perfect, which is a really good learning skill. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, those are the best moments. mean, ⁓ one of the first gigs I've had is just like I'm doing videography because I have a camera. do really photography, but doing some videography as well was a guy invited me to film his group do basically musical theater improv. It was like, whose line is it anyway, but also like musical theater. And so it's like the really hard thing, like improv comedy. And then they're all amazing. They're doing it in song. And I'm just like, and Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Some of the best moments were the moments of gaffes and imperfections and things that didn't quite rhyme right and you just go with it. And it's, if you're just, it's such a beautiful practice because the people, you just have to have neutralized your sense of shame in this contained environment, if at least, to be radically honest, radically vulnerable and. It's amazing the warmth that people will greet that vulnerability with ⁓ Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. Well, this is just like in the book I was just mentioning is that even in professional business ⁓ partnerships, relationships that showing your weakness, right? And being vulnerable and authentic is rewarded with compassion and with someone who wants to be there for you and help develop a sense of really knowing you. Because I think in romantic relationships and in business relationships and I guess in friendships as well, but just in regular you know, interpersonal relationships. If you show up as a saint, as a perfect version of a person that doesn't have any weaknesses or heaven forbid won't even acknowledge that there are some weaknesses in there, ⁓ it's really hard for someone to connect with you. Because I know I'm not perfect. I can tell you that. I've got a lot of crazy thoughts that come up and I've got fears and insecurities and all these different little isms that manifest themselves in different ways. So when someone shows up as human, It really makes it a much easier experience to connect with them as a human. And ⁓ I think that that's really cool that that's a good spot to do it. There's, know, within the confines of those communities, whether it's a recovery community or ⁓ it's a theater community or it's ⁓ just other places where people are trying and failing and trying and failing. And there's an understanding that life is hard, this is hard, and we're doing it because it's hard almost. And we're going to support each other as we go through the ups and the downs. there is some of the closest relationship and sense of, know, sense of belonging that you might find even if you're a total newcomer, right? Which is a really beautiful thing. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yes, yes, mean, well, then the belonging comes from that vulnerability. It's so counter to every instinct in my body up until the last couple years. Really started learning about just like, I mean, things like polyvagal theory and just like, know, the book, Body Keeps the Score, just really getting into the idea that like, if I just stop thinking about it and start working with my body and my nervous system, things downstream will change. ⁓ Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: It's amazing when you kind of feel into that when you just finally level with someone and they like you so much more because of it. And I imagine in sales or in consulting, which I guess is it's kind of a sales of a service instead of a product. It's like, man, if you come in and like you have all the answers and you can't admit when you don't know something or that maybe you made a mistake and you can't admit it, like, I just feel like that's kind of crushed whatever goodwill that it would have. And it's coming, it's so tragic, it comes from a place usually of insecurity that you just can't admit that you're afraid of losing this sale or losing this account or whatever. And in the end, just admitting, ⁓ my gosh, I completely messed that up, or I don't know, I don't know the answer to your question, I'll find out for you. And just being a real person, it's so endearing that it works so much better. And it's tragic that we, I think it's because we learn to be people in like middle school. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: That's when we start becoming fully formed people and it's a terrible environment when that age, when all we care about is conformity, really, and fitting in. And then it carries through in life when that becomes really a huge liability. Being just like everybody else and being perfect or trying to appear perfect is the worst thing you could do if you wanted to be Yeah. Benjamin Broadhead: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, you you said a few things there. I'll just touch on the this idea that in in consulting any business, right? Any any business relationship in which you show up, it sometimes can be very, it can be ⁓ a fearful experience to admit to a customer, let's say who's paying you to do something that you screwed up. Right. And I think that the unfortunate truth is that they usually know before you tell them anyways. And so there is a sense of, me just put the cards on the table and let's level set together about how can we move forwards here. And ⁓ I've learned a lot just through ⁓ my amateur approach to psychology and interpersonal relationships and some of the therapy and recovery related things that I've been through. One of the lines that I have taken to saying to ⁓ some of the clients that we've worked with is, look, just like any good relationship, we are going to be in periods of harmony and that inevitably we are going to fall into disharmony. And the key to this being a successful outcome for you is we need to be committed to each other that we're gonna really work on repair and get back into that period of harmony. And that cycle will continue, whether we like it or not, there will be roadblocks that pop up. I think that the trick here is that this doesn't mean you go to a client or you go to someone who you're in a romantic relationship with or whatever else and constantly admit that you're making mistakes because andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Bye. Benjamin Broadhead: then you're not having a vulnerability problem, you're having a competency problem, right? Like you're having a problem. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: or you're begging for validation. Like, whatever. And it's like, no, that's not a good look. Yeah. Benjamin Broadhead: What are the yeah, both both of which are not great, both of which are not great. So you got to make sure you know what you're doing right and but I think that it's okay to level set with people about when things might hit some bumps in the road. again, I feel that most people respond well to that because they're human to right. Like, they put on two, two, different unmatching socks in the morning occasionally, and they wonder how they make it through the day. Sometimes that's what we do. So. Yeah, I don't know. think you mentioned about becoming people in middle school. ⁓ you know, one of the things that I spend quite a bit of time working with other guys on is, you know, what does it mean to, to sort of step into like a calm masculine presence as a man? Like, what does that look like? Because, you know, I went through quite a bit of therapy in the last few years, getting into recovery circles, and there's this whole shaking of the foundation of what you think it means to be a person, at least for me, that was my experience. And I needed to reorganize my priorities. I needed to reassess the way that I was dealing with some of the uncomfortable emotions that come up, stress and anxiety and low self-esteem in certain cases. And also even just the highs as they come, because occasionally you just get really excited. And, you know, I didn't necessarily have a great way for coping with all of that, but throughout those Formative years and then certainly as you get into the workforce There is largely like a performance based view of one's value. Like what have I achieved? What do other people think of me and there's some equation there that equals personal value that that's how I thought what do you think of me and what have I achieved and ⁓ You know, those are tools of the ego that I think are not to be demonized but to be recognized that in the first half of life think that's just the way we go. And I say first half of life, not meaning the first 40 years necessarily, but the first portion. And for some people it happens at a younger age and some people maybe much older in life. There is inevitably this like, transitions, transformation that occurs a lot of time through great suffering that you go, I can't do it this way anymore. And so you move from this ego driven, you know, ⁓ performance based boy, let's say if we're talking about men. into more of like a self-possessed and self-aware man who's able to understand the highs and the lows and maintain that even keel throughout. So it's funny the parallels. I can pick them out now. I find that I see these patterns often in the rear view mirror, both in professional ⁓ situations, personal, family and all the rest. It's really funny the patterns that tend to repeat themselves everywhere. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: It's amazing, man, like how much carryover there is. And it's almost also humbling. It's like, man, look at all of the different facets of dysfunction that come from this thing that we call ego and having ⁓ a kind of a malformed or bad. I guess what's the word I'm looking for impaired relationship with the ego and you mentioned something earlier Lurie like it takes a certain amount of suffering and I've been thinking about that a lot actually last night I was watching a Chris Williamson clip and it's like I love to watch that guy show I Love his cinematography in particular. I love it, and I'm trying to work on doing something similar with that level of value I just don't have the resources yet, but I will I hope but he's he's obvious He seems to be a guy that's kind of a tortured guy like in a certain way. He's just he's driven Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: searching for something and he's kind of the A type route. I was more of the B type of just like accepting the suck and just being in it and wallowing and not taking action. So I have a different set of problems I think than the hard charger. But I was just kind of thinking like, man, it's like, the reason that I think a lot of the things that torture him that don't torture me anymore is because I suffered so much. that you get to the point where you're like, I will do literally anything but hurt someone else. Like, that was my thing where I like, I'm not gonna hurt an innocent person or creature or something, but like, short of that, I'll do anything. I'll look as stupid as I gotta look. I'll do whatever I gotta do because it just, will break down your ego. There's something ⁓ kind of like, it's like being very, very sick and being in hospital and having to be like taken care of, having people take care of your basic hygiene. Benjamin Broadhead: Mm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: I imagine that probably eliminates some sense of like modesty, like in a way, you know what I mean? Where you're like, whatever, if you see me naked, I've been seen naked, I've been in worse positions. But, there is that, it's difficult thing. St. John of the Cross, I'm writing this essay right now about existentialism, it's kind of where my conversation last week went. This man, Professor Levy, was fired from his job and he's been suspended. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: but I think he's not gonna become unsuspended. He's got a lawsuit because of some remarks that he made about the governor and Donald Trump at beginning of a class. I had all kind of ideas that we'd be talking about free speech and free will. He's a philosopher. He studies free will and how that affects crime and punishment and all these very above the neck things. And I realized an hour and a half in, this person's been personally devastated by this. He's lost his identity as a teacher and... the conversation took a turn that became, I think, much more moving and profound towards this philosophy known as existentialism and the dark night of the soul, which I experienced. Mine was like a 10-year period of just being lost. ⁓ I think that I can say that no one should be required to go that long in that period. I didn't need to go that long. just either wasn't willing or wasn't prepared to start making my way out. I think a lot of it was because I just wasn't willing to trust someone else to see my vulnerability. But this guy, St. John of the Cross, as this Christian mystic says, the endurance of suffering is preparation for great light. And ⁓ that's this idea that I've been toying with is that like, mean, if you go through hell, there's a saying, if you're going through hell, don't stop. Like, don't stop there, keep going. Because when you come out on the other side, there is a sense of having been baptized by fire. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: And I do have a sense that like, I think I've done the hardest thing I'm ever gonna have to do already. And so all these other fears I have in comparison to that, like I used to just be morbidly afraid of talking to beautiful women, which is kind of an embarrassing thing to admit. like, until you do that, but well, of course I'm not, of course I'm not, but here's the thing. Like, Benjamin Broadhead: I don't think you're alone. I don't think you're alone. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: If you pretend that isn't true, it's so inauthentic, that's probably the biggest turnoff in the world is to pretend you're not really nervous. You know what I mean? If you are nervous or whatever, that's what, for me in my mind, is dating is a very new thing for me now in my life. But when you're talking about like sales and like in these relationships, I'm thinking of that in that context of like, yeah, man, I mean, if I try to make a woman laugh, which I enjoy to do, sometimes a joke doesn't land. Sometimes you might be a little offended and like... Benjamin Broadhead: Mm. Mm. Yeah, yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: I mean, it's just like, all right, they can't all be gold records. Like, I'm sorry. Like, I mean, I'm trying, you know, I'm of like owning. Yeah, they can't be, they can't be. Benjamin Broadhead: Well, they shouldn't be. You're touching on a lot of things here that are great material. Let me go back to this idea that going through hell don't stop kind of thing. And you said you were in a 10 year period of the dark night of the soul. I got to admit, I'm not like super familiar with existentialism. I'm familiar with the word. I could not talk about that for an hour. But I mean, unless you let me down that path. the... The saying that you hear oftentimes, right, in recovery circles, and you talk about this professor who lost his position and sounds like really he lost his identity, right? And in those moments, that's where you really feel like a rudderless ship. I think for me, right, the place that I live in today on a day-to-day basis has to be grounded in some spiritual connection with a power greater than myself, right? For me, I call that power God. I think that... That was a word and a phrase that I really bristled at for quite a while. Like, don't talk to me about, need to go to conversion camp at a church or something. Like, you those types of things, not that anyone said that to me, but like, those are the things where I just said, this is not for me. Like, I honestly, I look down on the idea that some spiritual power could help transform your life. What I've come to believe today is quite different, if I'm honest. I think that... There's this saying you hear in the rooms of recovery too. Yes, when you're going through hell, don't stop, but also ⁓ you alone get to decide how far you want to take the elevator down, right? You don't gotta go all the way to the bottom. ⁓ And that I think is a really challenging thing for most people to deal with in real time. I think it's easy to look in the rear view mirror again and go, ⁓ it got really bad and I should have made some changes earlier on, but the truth is, my friend, for you and I... I know to be true for me, it could have gotten worse, right? Like it could have gone worse and it could have ended kind of thing, right? Like there's a way that this story ends for both of us that we're not sitting here and thank God that's not the case. I think that when the suffering threshold, like when your threshold for pain and suffering is finally met, that's when the change occurs. And for me, I needed to be able to show up to some very trustworthy men and build a relationship with some power that was going to be able to hold these emotions, these questions, these fears and all these things. And then I would be reassured that you know what, you're not perfect. You don't have to be perfect. You have a lot of problems, like a lot of problems. And yet you're loved, right? And yet you're okay. And yet you are good enough kind of thing. And when you can hold those two things together, to me, one of the things you talked about in leading up to this conversation is that you want to talk about masculinity. So I thought a little bit about that and some of the material I've read over the last few years. When you can hold those two things together, I'm not perfect. I have so many flaws and even things that the external world doesn't always see, just selfishness and self-centered fear and some of the things that I deal with. ⁓ I recognize them and you're able to. hold that with and I'm also pretty great. I think that there's like this weird tension that then produces a self grounding that you can walk in the world with and whether it's dating, let's just, go down that path that you're talking about. I think as you go on dates and as you are in a romantic situation, one of the most attractive things that I think a guy can bring into a relationship Is not necessarily a bravado and like this huge sense of I'm going to control the situation around me. It's really a sense of self awareness and self understanding and self control that I think represents that that masculine way to show up in the world. And all of that stuff isn't possible for me until I recognize powerlessness and that powerlessness was when I hit that, like that elevator got to the bottom floor and I said, I'm willing to do whatever it takes. Like, I'll listen to some other people. That's when that rebirth you mentioned, baptism kind of occurs. There's that cosmic cycle of death and ⁓ just to use a Christian example, death by crucifixion, right? And then burial and then resurrection, right? And then the cycle continues. So those patterns seem to exist everywhere. And it's just so crazy to me now that I see them. And I was so unaware of that, let's say 10 years ago. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: I man, there is a sense of being like, just feel like such a bonehead. some things seem, they don't seem easy, but they're simple. That in my mind, like, if my problem is so complex, the solution has to be, I think there's a logical fallacy, I don't recall the name of it, but it's like, no, the solution has gotta match the problem, reasons, I guess, it's gotta be proportional. But yeah, you're right. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. Mmm. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: I've been thinking a lot about masculinity. I've got kind of five buckets. I mentioned earlier, like, I don't want to be, I don't want this YouTube channel to only be about one thing. I definitely don't want it to be about the failings of the American healthcare system. And that's why I got trapped for 10 years in the dark night of the soul, because I was kind of ensnared with a bunch of psychiatric drugs and with the medical system that just wasn't really equipped to properly identify the problem. And in fact, the problem was Benjamin Broadhead: Mmm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: arguably not medical, that would medicalize the human experience. But I don't want to only talk about that. There's some policy there that I'm interested in, but ⁓ there's other buckets, policy, neuroscience, psychology, spirituality, and masculinity is the fifth one. And I've been kind of wrestling with it. It's like, know if there needs to be, this is the fifth one. These things are equally in importance, but this is the one I think I know the least about. I understand the least, and I definitely am the farthest away from being able to articulate a coherent definition, for example, of what I masculinity is. I've been, think a lot of it has been recognizing what I, tuning out what I think our culture has been saying it is. You know, there's this term toxic masculinity, we heard so much for a while that the term masculinity basically seemed to automatically be toxic, and I'm like, yeah, I don't think it's toxic, and I think what people are actually describing there is not masculinity. Benjamin Broadhead: Mmm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: ⁓ As I would define it there may be immature masculinity But there is this sense. I think that if there are some ideas I have about what would define authentic Healthy masculinity and one of them is self mastery is I think what you were saying it's and you can call that containment There's an emotional valence so that that term containment of like being able to not be emotionless but not to be completely governed by your emotions not to be enslaved by them to be able to respond rather than react that I think is a very masculine trait ⁓ and Self mastery that comes from we when you mentioned suffering there was another word that came to my mind which was adversity and They're not the same thing I think that ⁓ I don't think that to become a man Everybody every male has to suffer deeply like I don't think that's really a requirement I think it's an indelible part of the human experience, which is sort of what existentialism touches on Buddhism does as well You know, I think the first noble truth of Buddhism is that suffering is an immutable fact of life. ⁓ The question then becomes what do we do about it? And that's where existentialism kind of has its own way of thinking of it. But ⁓ yeah, I think that it's not a requirement that everybody suffers to become a man, but I think to become an adult, masculine, authentic, healthy male, you have to get used to adversity. And that could just be like picking hard things YouTube channel. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that, well, going back to what I the definition that I hold, I at least I try to hold, which is from Richard Roar. Are you familiar with Richard Roar? Catholic friar. ⁓ It's it's a transition like masculinity looks like transitioning from an ego driven boy into a self contained, self possessed man, right? Someone who is grounded. in a power greater than themselves. For him, he's a spiritual leader. I mean, that's the nature of all this. And again, for me, I don't know how to think about masculinity unless there's some form of surrender in there, whether that's that any of your major spiritual practices will talk about. I think you have to be driven by something greater than yourself in order to really step into your masculinity because you need support. You need to have a sense of power that will drive you forward. Otherwise, The masculine energy, in my opinion again, is one that initiates, one that steps out into the world in a way. And I think we'd be remiss if we didn't talk a little bit about, what does feminism mean then? And I think that it's also important to understand, again, I'm speaking on my own beliefs here, that I think it's embodied, both are embodied in each of us. I don't think you're only masculine, right? No, I think you have to have a healthy balance between masculine and feminine. look into Christianity and you'll see that in the character of Jesus Christ is very much has a lot of feminine qualities embodied in that man. ⁓ Anyways, I think that ⁓ one of the books that he's written and he's written 60 plus books, I think, ⁓ all of which are fantastic, at least as far as I've gotten ⁓ is on male initiation rights and how the traditions of a lot of the native people to North America and around the world. there are initiation rights for men when they come of age. And oftentimes that is sending them into adversity, right? It is a sense of you must die to your boy self, to yourself that you think you are in order to be reborn and then re-accepted by the tribe, right? To put it simply. And oftentimes it feels like death, right? You're taking a boy, you're separating him from the tribe, from the safety that he has come to know his mother, his father and others. And you're saying, go into the wilderness, right? Go. And it's represented in the Bible by the Jews being exiled out of Egypt, right? Like we've got to go wander. And this wandering, I think, is a part of life that happens, whether we know it or not, but there's a transformation that occurs when you are able to embrace that and come to a place of saying, I can't do it on my own. I cannot live the way that I was living. And it's hard. I think that adversity and suffering are not are not one and the same, but in this instance, I think the suffering that comes is through the realization that I can't handle this adversity on my own and I have to surrender. And that feels like death, right? Like the ego death at death, it feels like real death. It might be coming. And there's something that occurs in that that I don't think happens in a lot of our modern Western society today. It's a lot of like, No, you just keep going, keep accomplishing and then eventually it'll be there. The sad truth is for men, a lot of men, they reach this point in their life, whether it's in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s or beyond, where they go, I did all the things, why don't I have the joy, the happiness, the sense that I wanted to get? And that reckoning happens sometimes unfortunately on the deathbed, right? andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, that's sad. there's also a recognition that part of that initiation involves being honest about what you actually want and doing things that are in alignment with your values and your principles and goals rather than doing ⁓ That was coming up when you about spirituality. You know, it's something I've thought a lot about, like, you know, at one point I wanted to study the neuroscience of spirituality and I've got, hoping to line up someone next week maybe to talk about that just from a neuroscience perspective of what we're talking about. When we talk about things like ego death, ⁓ I think that the definition of spirituality is when the ego dissolves and becomes part of the super ego, which you could call God or like a collective consciousness or, you know, I think that the... It's unfortunate that we have to use words Benjamin Broadhead: Well, let me interrupt. I've heard that God is just the word that we use to describe the blanket that we throw over the mystery to give it some shape. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, that's a great way of thinking of it. The problem is there's lots of, with the word God, different conceptions of it, and for a long time I've ⁓ found myself pissed off some of ⁓ what I view as of the worst, most intolerant conceptions of it. ⁓ it's kind of like, there was a time I realized it's actually intellectually. Benjamin Broadhead: A hundred percent. Sure. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: dishonest to think of it this way. If I really want to engage with an idea, I should engage with the best version of that idea. It's called a steel man of an argument. Create the best possible version of an argument I disagree with and then work with that as opposed to a straw man, which is it, and then tear that down to make yourself look good. Benjamin Broadhead: Well, you're not a 12 step guy, I don't believe, there is an understanding there that it's not my conception of God, it's God as you understand him, it, her. And so people are encouraged for that very reason, right? What does, if there was a God, what would it look like to you? What would be the characteristics of it? And then people start writing down, know, accepting, loving, supportive, all the things that they might want, right? Unfortunately for many people, their conception of God is what they were fed when they were six, seven years old in a Sunday school class, or sometimes even worse, it's what their parents represented to them. And if, you we'd be lying if we didn't say that our first understanding of God is mom and dad, right? Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: apparent or right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, man. it's, it's ⁓ when they're that relationship is troubled or was from an early age and religion was part of that troubled, you know, relationship that it can be hard. I actually it's funny, I, a guy reached out to me that I know is a fraternity brother from another another school, but he lives in Nashville reached out last, I saw something I posted about, ⁓ about asking for help. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: from my conversation with Ken Levy and he connected and we had coffee this morning. He's a 12 step guy and we just kind of talked about recovery in life and lots of things. It was really cool to reconnect and I was just messaging him just while was waiting for you to come on and I was like, know, I would be open to going to just getting plugged in, meeting some people, just trying to find some fellowship and he was like, yeah, know, there's a lot of, I go to meetings with a lot of very progressive people. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: A lot of people have had religious stuff in the past. it's a pretty open group. And I'm like, okay, cool. What like, no, it's not. ⁓ It's not, it's, it's been, you know, the thing is ⁓ for me, what's one of the harder things with spirituality is getting my mind. Most people talk about God in what are called theistic terms. Like, like a philosopher would call it in a theism, which is the belief that God is a person, basically not a human, but like, Benjamin Broadhead: ⁓ is that surprising to you? Okay. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: an agent, wants things that has a will, there's a person there that you can talk to or whatever. And that's something that's hard for me to, I just don't think I believe that. I could probably get there. It's just, I think that it's helped, in the Christian context, which is what I was raised, I was raised Catholic, I find it very hard to access any sort of feeling in my body that feels spiritual through that particular tradition. Benjamin Broadhead: Mm-hmm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: ⁓ I've been to Israel with a close friend ⁓ and ⁓ we talk a lot about religion and I'd love deeply engaging with the ideas from a point of view of curiosity, even with the Bible and things like that. ⁓ So guys like Richard Rohr, I know who that is, because Christian mysticism, that's much more accessible to me than evangelicalism, which you see here. But I've actually found ⁓ shamanism. My first interview was with woman Laura Martinez, who's the neuro-shamanic healer. ⁓ Shamanism is really just about... the symbols that exist in nature. And there's a very Jungian element of it too. so like archetypes have been a way that I've been able to kind of start to make my way down the road. think it's about like, I do calisthenics now, which I've really come to really enjoy. And I've only been doing it a couple months, but I my calisthenics is everything is almost impossibly hard. Like when you're starting out. You're bad at everything. It's all really hard or impossibly hard. And you just kind of have to find something that is easy enough for you to actually do. Like you've got to go down, down, nope, too hard, too hard, too hard, and get down to where you can start. And for me, that start was, I had to strip away any completely non-theistic was Buddhism, was just meditation. which was turned on by the atheist philosopher Sam Harris to it. He wrote a book called Waking Up and ⁓ that's where I started and then I did start actually and then started to grow from that into yoga, Kundalini yoga and then I was stronger and actually started to experience some really non-ordinary states of consciousness just through breathing, moving, concentrating, sitting. and that's kind of grown more towards a more shamanic thing that I think is richer, also Hinduism. like, there's kind of a building out from this basic start of just an atheistic Buddhist perspective. ⁓ And it's been kind of cool. It still feels weird to put a name on whatever it is that is out there or in here or everywhere. I call it the everythingness of everything. That's the best way I can describe what I've experienced when I've had ego dissolving experiences with things like yoga. ⁓ It is like ⁓ when the self, when the ego starts to dissolve, if you would let it happen, it's blissful. that's a word that's commonly used because it's like, ⁓ my God, it's just boundless transcendent joy and love and things like that. And I call it the everythingness of everything, because it's like, it's not just everything, it's what gives everything, it's everythingness. It's what gives what is, it's isness. So it's weird, I can talk about these things for a while, but for long time, one of the things I had to be willing to do was engage with ideas that I thought weren't true as a matter of objective reality. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: because I thought that I was being dishonest. Like I was being intellectually dishonest, which was something that kept me sick for a long time, that I was so invested in my ideas and my beliefs and being rational that I also wasn't willing to look at myself in the mirror and say, love myself, because I'm like, that's a lie. And honestly, once I finally started changing the way I talked and it felt a little dishonest, and inauthentic at first, but radically my brain started changing and rewiring around that language. And so now I can speak definitely much more comfortably in spiritual terms, even though I still don't I think we're trying to talk about it. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, well, listen, I don't know that there's anything you said that in my opinion contradicts with Christianity. ⁓ I'm not as familiar with a lot of other spiritual traditions, but ⁓ what I can say is you're saying the everythingness of everything I think is what you used. ⁓ I don't know how that's that different than the I am who I am, right? I am the great I am, right? It's almost as if you were to ask yourself several times, Andrew, who are you? And then you say, well, I am, you know, fill in the blank, right? I'll just use this example of your previous guest. said who was a, who's a professor when you strip away the professor hood, who are you? And then you strip away on the son. I'm the brother. I'm the husband. I'm the, I'm whatever. Who are you? And at the, at the core of it, you're left with some very discomforting answer, right? Which is. I am. That's it, right? that's, well, that's a very disconcerting answer, right? And people have been searching for the answer to this since the beginning of time. So as it relates to like ego deconstruction, I believe the 12-step program to be designed for just that, right? Like, I think it really is a program designed to help you. Demolish go into this deconstruction of this ego self of who you think you are by first of all admitting powerlessness and forcing yourself into this position of surrender ⁓ through showing you the proof, right? Like that's why it's hard for people who have not hit the proverbial rock bottom to go through the transformation. It's promised in those steps because they still feel like there's a sense of no, I got this right. Like I still I got this I may have a. a drinking problem or a sex problem or a food problem or whatever it is, but my life isn't unmanageable. Like I still got this, I just need some help here. You kind of have to let all of the house of cards fall in order to be willing to say, I don't got this, right? And I think that that is a classical spiritual timeline for someone's life is that you're going to come across something at some point, whether it's cancer or the death of a loved one or whatever that you are powerless over. And in those moments, you have to recognize that in order to be transformed because otherwise you're going to continue down the road you're on resentful, bitter, begrudging, and you're going to be a real pain in the ass to be around, I think, if you continue down that path. And unfortunately, there's a lot of people that do. ⁓ But if you surrender to that and you allow transformation to happen, that's where the program gets to work on you. And you said something, I was being intellectually dishonest because I wasn't willing to look in the mirror. I wasn't really willing. to go and interrogate my beliefs that I held, because you're placing yourself in that highest power position where you're going, no, it doesn't make rational sense to me and I'm smart enough to know. And so you're not willing to call that into question. And the steps have a beautiful way of deconstructing those things that you hold, pointing out to you some blind spots through fellowship, right? Through the use of other human beings. And then you're able to start behaving in a different way. And I think, again, going back into this masculinity discussion, there's a way in which you start acting your way into right thinking, as opposed to thinking your way into right acting. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean that that's huge. mean that's that I think has just been abundantly validated by psychology that just like I mean having a growth mindset just the way that you talk in facts affects the way that you think and then you can grow into it but also like ⁓ Like motion creates emotion is another way of saying it like like you got to move and do stuff and then the you know Then the feelings will change confidence doesn't really come from Benjamin Broadhead: Mmm. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: already being good at something, confidence comes from already having been bad at something. you know, and then been willing and then seeing yourself get better. Confidence comes from competence, basically. And yeah, you've got to be bad at something and be self-awarely bad at something for a while. Because if you're not self-awarely those people are so hard to deal with, Benjamin Broadhead: Mm-hmm. No, there's... Well, and there's a matrix that's coming to mind. I can't think of exactly the quadrants, there's unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, unconscious competence, and unconscious competence. There's the four quadrants here, conscious competence. But the highest level being unconscious competence being real mastery. Like if you ask a real master, a pianist, let's say, How did you just play it? They don't even really think about it. It just flows out of them. And as wonderful as that is, that may not be as ideal as being consciously competent because they don't know how they did it, right? Or they're maybe not as great of a teacher to others. So there's a sweet spot in here, which is not like unconscious mastery, it's conscious mastery, thereby giving you the opportunity to teach others, right? And I think, again, for me, I have to have something that's driving me through this life because otherwise I have a tendency to get into the what's it all for like, why, why, what am I even doing here? And this, Well, they're okay. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: That's existentialism, by the way. That's the problem. If you get stuck in that, it's a problem. That's called existential depression. And it's like why? Yeah, that's the dark night of the soul. When you hit that adversity, Benjamin Broadhead: Yes, I think I might have I think I might have been there I might have been there for period of time Well, so then so then let me let me comment on that you said, ⁓ you know, were talking about right right acting yourself into right thinking and Going back into Christianity for a second. I mean the saying ⁓ That faith without works is dead right proves to be true to me. And I think that that requires action And that's what a 12 step program of recovery is about is action. And what is the best form of action when you're in that existential depression? Serving others, right? And what a wonderful opportunity that you have and that I have in order to serve others by taking something that we've become competent at, competent enough to sit here like two bozos for an hour and half talking about, and take that experience, strength and hope and pass it on to other. men, older, younger, whatever, but people who are in a position that they're still going through that hell and being able to share some of that with them, that to me brings, and not just, keep going, it gets better, but here are the steps we take, right, that you can go through and help God. It's an amazingly rewarding feeling. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: That does have a lot to recommend to that last point of like, here's some actionable things you can do right now. Because I think for men, a lot of times, there's been some talk of late, and something I want to look into, learn more, talk with more people about is like, does therapy really work well for men? Because there is an idea that 70 % of therapists are women, 70 % of therapy clients are women. It does seem like it's a very female thing to talk about your feelings, and then you feel better about it. And a lot of men are like, man, if you're telling me I gotta sit in this room week in and week out and just talk about it never do anything, I'd rather just not be anywhere. And ⁓ there is a sense of like, for me, one of the first things I ever started doing, was at the suggestion of my, it was then therapist, ⁓ just to start taking cold showers. After I'd gone through my last drug withdrawal, I woke up and I had this beard and I figured I would keep it because I hadn't shaved or bathed or anything for four months. ⁓ And I was like, man, I started, was like, dude, I'm. All of sudden, I'm feeling better. I can do stuff. I got out of my bed today. And I walked around and did stuff. he's like, and he's the first thing he said was good. Now start taking cold showers. So I was thinking like Andrew Huberman or whatever. I'm like, all right, what's that going to do? And I was expecting some neurobiology answer or whatever. And it wasn't. He said, it'll build grit. Like 30 seconds, cold water, you're not going to want to do it. And then therefore, you're going to do it. It used to be, I don't want to do it, but I'm going to do it anyway. and now it's like I don't want to do it and so therefore I need to do it. ⁓ It's like there's this idea, I've been listening to, just finished this book, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It's really made a big impression on how I approach my creative pursuits because I have several now and I've kind of diversified my self-worth streams basically between YouTube and photography and filmmaking and acting and writing. But ⁓ I've got all these projects for a long time. My self-worth was all in writing The Great American Screenplay for a great American film and being the next Tarantino or whatever and if that doesn't work out you're crushed and that's years in the future Not a good plan. It's a very lottery ticket Approach to self-worth which I think a lot of guys fall into now I've got lots of stuff and it's like man. I'm just not feeling the words on screenplay. I can do some photography I can kind of pivot around it But now I've gotten to the point where I've realized Stephen Pressfield talks a lot about the author of this book the war of art Ego is the enemy of art and ⁓ The ego is what tells you all this sucks This isn't any good. Who do you think you are? You keep mentioning who do you think you are and I'm like, it's so amazing. I've been meditating on that deep question because it's also a bad faith question, right? Like, who do you think you are? That's what stops people like me from creating, from doing this, because I think I'm not, I need a PhD in neuroscience first to stream on a platform that's dominated by people watching World of Warcraft, but like, and I'll finish this one point and I'll let you go. You know, what he's saying is that like, Benjamin Broadhead: Well... andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: The ego is where resistance comes from. And I think that's probably true. It was a matter of spirituality, neuroscience, psychology, however you want to look at it. The ego is the thing that wants to survive, i.e. not let you change. Because if you change, you won't be you anymore. You'll become something new. And so the ego kind of resists the change. And so I've begun to learn what Pressfield says. If you have multiple projects, whichever one is giving you the most resistance is the most important to your soul's growth. Benjamin Broadhead: Mm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: And so now I've gotten to where, okay, this thing feels the hardest in this moment, therefore I need to do that. Like now I've got enough, I'm well resourced enough that I'm like, okay, I'm gonna lean into the hardest things which are putting myself in front of this camera and writing. I'm gonna do both of them every week, even if it sucks. I'm gonna do it by Thursday or Monday. And that's a cool thing It's kind like going to the gym, like, you know. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, well, you started creating adversity when you started taking the cold showers. Those are hard things to do. And it might sound silly, right? Like, I've sat in rooms with people and we've talked about what are our goals for the week. And there was a point in time, I am somewhat embarrassed to say, where I raised my hand and I said, I want to brush my teeth twice a day. Like, it sounded so pathetically such a low bar that I said, I just want to stay committed and disciplined. to that simple thing because it was something that I would give up if I was tired at the end of the night or whatever, right? And that's not a hard thing to do, but it's something that was enough for me to say at the time, right? And some people say, I wanna shower every day or I wanna fold the blanket that sits on my couch in the living room every day. These are things that I wanna do. And then you start to level up a little bit, right? And what comes to mind honestly here is Jordan Peterson to some degree, which is there's no... growth in the comfort zone and there's no comfort in the growth zone, right? Which goes to your point about your projects, which one is giving you the most friction here and where you feel the friction you should follow in some sense, because you'll start to get better. He uses the analogy of the night slaying the dragon, right? Like you've got this big scary dragon that's out there. Well, you can't go tackle the great American novel if you haven't even written a 400 word blog post, right? So start with that, start with that little dragon first and do that over and over and over again. And all of a sudden you'll realize that you're gaining not necessarily even greater skill, but just greater comfortability dealing with something that is uncomfortable. And so for me, when I hear about you saying, will challenge you on this. You said I've diversified my value streams and I wanted to do this. Like this is where I got my value and now I'm doing this and photography and acting and these other things. I think let me just tie back in spirituality here is the underpinning to everything in my life today. If I start going down that road and identifying myself as the person who is becoming a life coach or the person who is working for a fortune 50 consulting firm or the person who is. Fill in the blank lives in this zip code has children have children that go to this private school or whatever it is. All of a sudden I'm walking down a very delicate path that is based upon achievement and what other people think of me. So to come back to to come back to the sense that. we have inherent worth because we're glorifying the creative intelligence of the universe, whatever it is, by being you, that in a very paradoxical way frees me up, should free me up. It doesn't always because my ego has a wicked capability of regenerating on a minute by minute basis to tell me fears and to make me self doubt. But it should free me up to do whatever it is, the thing that I feel like I'm being called to. And it's in this sense of being held and secure in a spiritual foundation that empowers me to have that masculine energy, by the way, to go out and create into the universe. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, it's amazing, like lot of the things you're saying are just so close to where I am and I'm so not in a Christian context, but it is amazing that you can kind of get some of the same things from it. There's a line that keeps coming to me, it's from the Bhagavad Gita. And it's during a, there's a part called Arjuna's dejection. and he doesn't want to fight because he thinks it's the wrong thing to do. Krishna is the god in the pantheon in Bhagavad Gita, comes and talks to him. They have this long conversation about why should you work? Why should you do the work of being a warrior? And Krishna tells him that ⁓ you're entitled to your labor, but you're not entitled to the fruits of that labor. if you want to find happiness, you should just give them both to God. Basically, you should do the thing. that's really when I say, you're so right in your instinct about the danger of saying, well, I'm getting worth from creativity, but does that mean am I getting worth from creating or being a creator? You know what I mean? That's a dangerous path to go down. like, especially I don't have a huge audience or I don't have any outward signs of success. I am just... Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: I was never happy until a year ago. I sat foot in a film school for the first week and started talking about movies and cameras and stuff. And I was like, ⁓ my God, I think this is what happiness is. And I haven't known what was missing. I have to create. And there is a sense that I'm accessing something and I want to get it out there. But it is a sense of it's an act of devotion, basically. Benjamin Broadhead: So, but I think that that's very different. It's not. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: to, I, you know, before I sat down, I did something of kind of invoking the muse. So like I'm kind of dancing around, it's not a Christian God, but like asking like, please allow me to be inspired, allow me to be present so that I can hear the signals and try to treat writing or doing this, like the work of my life as an act of devotion. And also like, I do feel like I'm the luckiest guy on earth that I get to do it. Like just that I get to do this with you right now. Benjamin Broadhead: Yes. Yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: that I'm gonna get to do some photography tomorrow night, I'm gonna go do some videography. I mean, ⁓ I'm not making any money from it. And I don't have any expectation of making any money from any of this anytime soon. Honestly, if I never did make any money from it, ⁓ wouldn't be able to do it as much as I would like, but that's okay, because it's a joy just to do it. Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, you know, let me let me bring this up. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: but I'm also not famous or successful yet. happens it doesn't. Benjamin Broadhead: Well... And you often hear that, right? As people gain fame and success that the art starts to suffer in some ways because I think they do start to bend a little bit from, or the source that drove them seems to somehow dry up. My opinion, likely because the ego starts to clog it all, right? Like there's a lot of mess in here that is disconnecting me from the divine. And the job again of these 12 steps is to declutter that filing cabinet. Let's get it on paper. Let's use tactical. like very pragmatic approach to identifying parts of self that are being affected in all the areas of our life. And oftentimes what we find is it's low self-esteem that has been driving us from the beginning. And so how do we then go about doing esteemable acts and recognizing that we have inherent value in order to get our self-esteem back? I'll just say this, when you're talking about your value coming from creation, but also just a love and a happiness coming from creation. I think it's Richard Rohrer again, who talks about these two competitive sprinters from, I don't know, some small country, let's say, that are running in the national championships for 100 meters or whatever. there's one of them who says, you know, ⁓ God granted me the ability ⁓ to be fast, but I'm going to run and I'm going to run like my life depends on it because I want to I want to be champion, right? Like this is what I've been working for. I'm going to give it my all, right? And I'm going to run to be champion. And the other one says, ⁓ God granted me the ability to run fast. And I think when I run fast, he is happy. And I'm going to run fast for that, right? Two very different approaches to what this race is going to look like. One, should he not win, right? Or heaven forbid, he should win. is going to be left with this very fleeting sense either of I don't feel the way I thought I should or I'm crushed because I never amounted to the thing that I thought I should amount to. And the other one is running for the pure joy of it. And that's what I hear you saying when you're talking about your art. And so you've been imbued with these gifts, no doubt, as have I and everybody else. The challenge and I think one of the beauties of recovery, what it means to not drink or to not do a drug or to not do a behavior that was problematic for you. That's a part of it, right? That's step one of recovery. But I think getting involved in helping others, in learning, you know, who is my true self? What are the things that really bring me freedom and joy and happiness and allow me to be of maximum service to my fellows, right? And my creator. Those are the things that you get driven towards in recovery. The challenge is you then have a pretty great responsibility to follow those things, right? Because the path widens, but you go, Did I get to this place in my life so that I could, I'll fill in the blank for myself, sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day and ingest caffeine, you know, the form of coffee? I don't know, right? I don't know. So that's where this balance and this tension of being human, I think, comes in. You feel this great urge to sit there and practice meditation and to do yoga and to create art. And yet there is a flow of life that's occurring in society around us that I think I have a responsibility to participate in. And so there's the tension of being a human, my friend. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, man. Well, the contemplative or monastic life calls like, I mean, I've given that serious thought over the last two years. And the thing is, it's like, I've always had a sense, it's like, look, I don't want to the rest of my life in a, I mean, I literally at one point went to the top of a mountain in Colorado and kind of had a spiritual experience, which is wow. But then I came right back down. I mean, was a one day affair, but I've always felt that I am of the world, like, and I want to be of the world. Benjamin Broadhead: Of course, of course. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: But there is something for me about going somewhere, going on retreat, leaving here. If I lived there, I would leave there and come here. mean, it's just something about, there's kind of a humility. I was reading some things that you suggested I read about the seventh step. ⁓ And of course, this word, humility, humbly, is one you just get looked over. But this was really a reflection on humility in the 12 and 12. ⁓ Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah, yeah. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: There is, I think, humility in me recognizing, like, I need to go somewhere. Like, I need to take the, make the effort and the sacrifice of my time to go with the intention, which is a big deal in, ⁓ in, template of practices. My intention is to go and to, to seek out spiritual growth, spiritual practices. And there's something about traveling. that just the body intuitively understands I'm in a new place. I've gone to New Mexico a lot and participated in some really amazing rituals out there. They have a, you're talking about like Rites of Passage. ⁓ Then out there, the Taos Pueblo, the ⁓ Native American tribe out there, the Indians. When the boys become men, it's a month long affair and they close the Pueblo to the public. No one can get in or out. ⁓ And so I've actually never been in there. ⁓ It's this amazing ancient ⁓ dwellings that are still you know, inhabited, but they are open to the public sometimes the year, but when the boys become men, I think in the spring, they close it and they'll go into a cave. And think they don't leave the cave. do not know any of this for a fact. If I'm wrong, please, someone correct me. But I think what I've, if I remember correctly, they go into a cave, they don't leave the cave for 30 days for a full lunar cycle, 28 days, I think a lunar cycle. And the elders will come into the cave and teach the boys the stories of their tribe, the secrets, the rituals, and that's, and they will undergo, I'm sure, ⁓ you know adversity and things to overcome as they go on their through this rite of passage and ⁓ I've never done that but have done some things related to masculinity but there's I think it what has been good for me about going out there is that it starts from a place of ⁓ Having the humility to accept I'm a seeker and I need to I need to go somewhere. It's just my form of sacrifice self-sacrifice and ⁓ Spending time in an intensive spiritual setting, like an ashram in particular, I've really wanted to get a deep, to deepen my own understanding of something called Raja Yoga. It's really fascinating. I think you would, I would suggest you might check out a book called Light on Yoga by B.K.S. Iyengar. Just the introduction. ⁓ I read it, it's about 60 pages, and I'm like, this is basically like the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, but more. and more comprehensive because the thing that I always felt was missing from the 12 steps was a respect for the body. mean, especially like exercise. I'm like, look man, if exercise ain't part of it, like, I'm not gonna make it. I just, my brain doesn't work well if I'm not strengthening my body by weakening it and finding hard things to do. ⁓ Yoga does encompass that, but Raja Yoga, they have what are called the eight limbs. Benjamin Broadhead: Mm-hmm. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: ⁓ And there are things like right action is one of them. There's yamas and nyamas or the dos and don't dos, involve moral action. In Buddhism, it's part of the eightfold path as well as right action, right speech, right thought. And ⁓ I've wanted to go somewhere to intensively study that, but the goal would be so I could bring it back and offer some of that knowledge to someone else. ⁓ But it's just not something that, ⁓ I think now that I've committed to this path, of being on YouTube, now it's about consistency and hopefully my learning can become, can come through conversations like these, because I'm getting a lot out of this personally. And this is the beauty of it is that if no one watches I'm so happy. ⁓ Benjamin Broadhead: Yeah. ⁓ I am too. Well, let me, let me. Let me just say this, I've got, I should have checked the timing with you ahead of time because I have a meeting at 5 PM that I need to be on, which is in about 7 minutes. ⁓ I kind of assumed we were going to do this for 1 hour, but I realize now ⁓ I could do this for a full another hour because just even what you just said, I've got some thoughts on. ⁓ I don't know, tell me if this is an editable part out here, but how do you want to wrap this or should I respond to what you just want? What do you think? Thank you. Okay, well, all right. So what you were just talking about going somewhere, right? And you realize that there's a humility and recognizing you need to go somewhere. I think that what I'm hearing is there's a willingness to have participation in life. And I think that participation in life for me looks like getting out there and seeing the world. And I think that the simple act of traveling has a really quick way of reminding me that This world is abundant. I think that I get so locked into this scarcity mindset. ⁓ If I sit in my room too long, my metaphorical room, but even if I stay in my city for too long or whatever it is, I forget. I forget that it's a big world out there. And sometimes a quick trip to a different state, but certainly if you have the opportunity to go international, you start to remember, ⁓ yeah, this is a big abundant place. And you get, you you talked about dating. get out there and meet some new people and recognize there are people who think ⁓ in vastly different ways than I think about things and people who are exciting and interesting, who are interested in all sorts of yoga or all sorts of little arts and crafts that I know nothing about, right? And I think that there is participation in life. And for me, I think one of the epitomes, one of the best ways to describe addiction, right? Or some really, some challenges around mental health. is the removal of ourselves from the stream of life. And it's the progressive narrowing of things that bring us joy, right? And ⁓ in a lot of ways that just, that creates this illusion of scarcity. If I lose this person, right? A spouse or a girlfriend or whatever it is, or if I lose this job, or if I don't have these things, I can have nothing and then I'm gonna die, right? Like that's how my brain goes is you're alone, you got nothing, you die. And I think that to your point about seeking and traveling and getting out there, those are easy ways for me to just feel the flow of life again and remind myself, ⁓ yeah, it's okay, it's okay, but I have to participate. And I think that in that is a spiritual practice as well. ⁓ This has been a great conversation, man. I think, I wish I had more time. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, well, I guess. That's okay. I always feel that way at the end. like, well, we'll maybe just have to do it again and have a part two. I appreciate it, man. If you could just, last thing I'll ask is if you could sum up this conversation would it be? ⁓ Benjamin Broadhead: I would be happy to. Oh, boy. That's a challenge. I feel like we've touched on a wide range of subjects here. I would say, you know, I entered in here, you mentioned about you wanted to talk about, you know, the concept of masculinity, I think, is a broad entry point into a conversation. I think that's sort of where we got right. But to me, I think this is these types of conversations I really value. I know I'm more of a people person than I am a thing person. Like, I'm not an engineering mind. I'm not a person who wants to deconstruct a race, a toy race car and build it back together. I'm a person who wants to understand what you're thinking, understand your belief systems and what you're doing and why you're excited about certain things. And for me, I learned about, you your acting, your filmmaking, photography, the passions around yoga and some of the things that are going on in your personal life. And, you know, some of your willingness maybe to go out there and try some new things in the form of ⁓ 12 step fellowship right and meeting some new folks. I think For me the under the under the overarching theme of the conversation is a really refreshing reminder that We should hold our very firm beliefs loosely in in an effort and an attempt to let that flow of life Take us where it would have us go ⁓ Because it's been a while since I've had such a meaningful conversation around what's happening in another guy's life. And I know we don't see each other very often, but ⁓ it's really refreshing to hear the stuff that's energizing you. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: Yeah, yeah. Well, man, it's been a real, it's been a pleasure just to do it. That is kind of the joy of this is that ⁓ it's like, take not Han says, like, don't do the dishes to get to the end of it. Do the dishes to do the dishes. Just be there. And this has been a lot more fun than doing the dishes. But ⁓ so I just want to say thank you so much for your support and for coming on and, you know, supporting me in this way, but just over all the years. And ⁓ I trust that this is not the end of this have to put a pen in here and Benjamin Broadhead: There you go. Yeah. I hope it's not. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: We can do this again sometime maybe soon. Benjamin Broadhead: I'll be a recurring guest. about that? ⁓ You tell me how to make that happen. All right, then. See you, Andrew. Bye-bye. andrewheacock 2025 12 10 15 35 57 CFR: That sounds great. That would be wonderful. All right, bye.