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What Are You Grounding Into? · Evolutionary Men

• 0:00
  All right, and welcome back. So on this episode, I want to talk about getting grounded and what
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  that actually means to us men and what the impact in our lives might be. And I want to start with a
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  really crucial distinction that often gets missed in conversations around getting grounded. And it
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  has to do with something I've talked about before on this show, the difference between a state of
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  consciousness and a stage of consciousness. So a state of consciousness is one that's temporary.
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  It comes and goes. It's like the weather. It's stormy now, and then it's gone. And the thing with
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  a state of consciousness is it can come at any moment, but it's not necessarily permanent, right?
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  We can hit a flow state, maybe in our golf game one day, and have the best round we've ever had.
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  But then we can't quite obtain that again. Or we might hit a creative flow state. Or we might have
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  a deep oneness experience meditatively. And suddenly, it all makes sense. But then we can't quite get back
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  there, right? We had this peak experience, and then we can't quite get there again. That's a state of
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  consciousness. And we all have access to them, and they come and go. And it's an extremely important
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  thing to understand. Because then on the other side is a stage of consciousness, which is a stabilized
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  structure that we can come back to or maintain stability in over long periods of time, right?
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  So this would be the difference between having a one-off best golfing match of my life, and okay,
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  I can do this repeatedly now over and over and over again. And when it comes to stages and states,
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  there's often a lot of confusion. And when it comes to grounding, what it turns out we're most often
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  talking about is the state experience, right? That right now, I could lead you in breath work,
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  in meditative awareness, in some embodiment practice, to help you get grounded into yourself
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  in this moment. And that is extraordinarily important in a day and age where most of us,
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  particularly us men, are walking around ungrounded all the time. And what does that really mean?
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  Well, often it means we're up in our heads and we're not actually here. Grounded really just means,
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  in this state sense, connected to my direct felt body experience in this moment and feeling rooted.
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  So feeling oriented. Grounded means, ah, I have a sense of where I am and what I'm feeling in this
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  moment. That includes my physical body, my emotional body, my surroundings, and my mental landscape.
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  And it's really important to cultivate that capacity as a man if you want to be able to get more people
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  to trust you to do meaningful things in life. If you're a leader or a CEO, if you're leading your kids,
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  your wife, your family, whatever that might be, if you're not grounded, trust tends to go way down.
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  Because people don't know where you're at and they can tell we're often quite spun up in our heads,
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  in rumination, disconnected from our actual felt body experience as men. And this is, again, so crucial.
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  And we have to train ourselves to be able to access that state in the moment. But there's no way to
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  really hold that permanently. It's going to kind of come and go. And that's okay. But we build a toolkit
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  and an awareness of how do I get grounded in this moment? What is it that's happening in my system
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  right here and now? Where am I orienting from in this moment? Can I feel my connection to the earth?
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  Okay.
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  Okay.
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  Here I am. I'm grounded. And that is great and powerful. But it misses something really crucial
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  that I have just not been seeing in the world of this work that is really important for our lives as men.
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  And it has to do with the stage structure of grounded, which another way to think about it is,
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  what are you grounding into? Right? So just to use kind of a visual metaphor here, the practice,
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  the state experience of grounding is shooting our roots down into the earth. Right? Here I am.
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  Here's what I'm feeling. Here's what I'm experiencing. Here's where I'm orienting from. And here's what I'm
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  tethered to. What we're getting grounded into, the stage structure, is, well, what is that soil
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  underneath me? Is it loose sand where it doesn't matter how far down I shoot my roots? I'm still
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  going to get knocked over. Is it tough dirt? Is it an interconnected web of other roots that the
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  more roots that go down in my community, the stronger it all gets? This is what's so key.
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  The structure, the stage experience of what we're getting grounded into is what I kind of call
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  the shit work of our lives and the relationships and community of our lives. Anybody can go do a
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  workshop and get grounded in the moment, but that doesn't have anything to do with what are they
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  grounding into in the entirety, the whole picture of their lives, right? What is their financial
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  situation? What is their relational situation? What is their health situation? These things are all
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  really important. And to be truly grounded in the most empowered and empowering sense as a man,
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  you have to have both. You have to have that state capacity in the moment to shift your awareness,
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  connect to your direct felt body experience, get rooted in the earth, and know where you're orienting
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  from. And you have to build a rich life to ground that all into. And in fact, the richer and stronger that
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  network, that system, the more it will support you when you can't ground yourself in the moment through
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  a state experience. That structure, that root system will provide you some stability. The thing about
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  just getting grounded from the state experience sense is it tends to be fun and sexy and the kind of
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  things we can do in workshops. And we get all this great energy that I've talked about before
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  that makes us feel like we fixed it all. The thing about the stage experience of what are we getting
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  grounded into is it's not very fun. It's generally not sexy. It is kind of what I call the shit work of
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  life. Sometimes we just have to shovel things from here and there to make them more stable. Or they're not
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  not necessarily sexy in the same way, right? Getting a hold of my sleep hygiene. Getting a handle on what diet
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  works for me. Moderating and creating some containment around my digital media or social media consumption.
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  Having tools and strategies so my intimate partner and I aren't always at war with each other.
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  Knowing exactly what's going to happen in my bank account over the next three months.
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  And having community that can support me.
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  Right? The other theme that's come up a lot on the show, and I thank David Romero for
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  introducing this term to me, is, you know, community is immunity.
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  And that's essentially what I'm talking about with the stage experience of what are we getting
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  grounded into? You can be someone who can totally ground in the moment, but have no connection in life.
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  Still be the lone wolf. Have no structures to catch you when you can't catch yourself.
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  That's where things like men's groups. Longtime listeners know and are probably exhausted of me
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  repeatedly banging the bell, hitting the drum, so to speak, of, hey, you gotta get into community.
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  You gotta get into a men's group.
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  That is one of the most powerful tools for what are you getting grounded into?
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  That cannot change instantly.
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  What structures are you investing in and building in your life that create stability?
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  That strong root system that you can plug into.
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  So when you're getting overpowered or losing it, something catches you.
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  Something stabilizes you.
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  And you need both.
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  We need both as men.
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  Getting grounded is something from the state experience we can do very easily.
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  It can teach you that in a weekend.
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  It can teach you that in a two-hour workshop most of the time.
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  It's instant.
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  Getting grounded into a strong, resilient, connected life, that takes work.
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  And that takes the kind of work that doesn't necessarily show immediate results.
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  Right?
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  It takes sticking with it, trying things out, experimenting.
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  What works?
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  What doesn't work?
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  What really helps me show up from this wise, integrated self in my life, in the most stressful situations?
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  And then what do I lean back into when I can't hang there anymore?
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  When I get triggered, when I get exhausted, when I get stressed, that's when we revert to,
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  what are you getting grounded into?
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  And when that catches us, makes it a lot easier to come forward, access and generate that state again.
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  Okay, here I am again.
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  Here's my direct experience.
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  Here's where I'm orienting from.
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  Here's what I'm wanting.
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  This capacity for us men completely dissolves the either-or paradigm so many guys get stuck into.
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  Either I'm the macho, lone wolf, red pill cowboy, or I'm some wafey, helpless man that just needs other people to support me.
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  You need both.
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  It's both and.
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  Getting grounded isn't just the state experience.
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  Again, I'm going to keep repeating it.
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  What are you grounding into?
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  And that is something you have to take a long, hard look at as a man.
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  Because most of what's being fed to us in our society now is not very strong, not very stable in terms of grounding into something.
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  You need relationships that support you in getting stable in these different structures of your life.
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  That's what it means.
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  And you cannot fake that.
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  You can't walk into a workshop.
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  You can't walk up to a woman.
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  You can't lead your team and just fake that in the moment.
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  That is the result of an investment over time that has built an actual structure in your life that can't easily be wiped away.
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  And it can't easily be created.
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  Right?
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  It takes time.
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  It takes sticking with it.
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  It's an investment that pays dividends in stability.
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  And certainly what I've noticed in my life, certainly what my wife noticed when she met me, what I notice in so many men I work with now in my coaching programs, my shadow program, dating and relationships programs,
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  are when they start to get grounded into community, meaningful, trustable, raw, honest, powerful community, it sets the stage to start handling these other things in their lives.
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  The diet, the food, the energy, the wellness, the finances, the purpose, the sex, the relationships, you name it.
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  Those start to stabilize after that.
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  And suddenly we have this durable system that is our life.
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  It's this web.
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  It's this network we're plugged into.
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  And when we combine that with that state capacity in the moment to show up, here I am right now, feeling my entire experience, my guts, my heart, my head, my environment, my relationships.
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  It becomes incredible.
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  You become a rarefied presence in the world that people notice, remember, trust, and want to be around.
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  Your nervous system itself, that state of you have the capacity to ground and you have the structure to ground into,
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  becomes an actual generative field that other people can feel and want to be around.
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  And then it starts to support them in doing the same.
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  This is part of the new masculine leadership.
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  Taking utter responsibility for the state of my nervous system.
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  How grounded am I right now?
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  And what am I grounded into?
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  And the more you do that, the more you build that network,
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  the more you're creating the web for other people to plug into.
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  And in times of great instability, in uncertainty,
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  that's something I think we all need.
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  Again, the practice of generating the state experience of getting grounded is relatively easy.
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  We can work that.
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  We can do that over Zoom.
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  It can just take a few minutes.
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  You still have to do it.
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  Right?
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  There's no shortcuts.
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  You still have to do it.
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  And that is a meaningful practice.
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  And we can train and increase that capacity.
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  But it has to be matched with what are you grounding into?
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  What is your life?
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  What is the network?
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  What are the systems?
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  What are the relationships?
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  If those aren't strong, durable, meaningful, and conducive to wellness,
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  that temporary state is only going to take you so far.
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  If you want to get some help, reach out.
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  I can help you get grounded both into the moment of yourself
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  and help you take a long, hard, important look at what are you getting grounded into
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  and very easily start to plug you into a community of men to support you.
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  All right.
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  Until next time.