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Shadow Work for Nice Guys (with Luke Adler) · Evolutionary Men

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All right, and welcome back, everyone.
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Super pumped to once again be joined by Dr.
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Luke Adler, my co facilitator for the Heart of Shadow program.
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And we have a pretty juicy
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and very exciting topic today that I think is going to land for a lot of you guys.
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And it's basically around shadow work for nice guys.
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So these are two areas I do a lot of work in as I've trained with Doctor Glover.
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And work with a lot of men around relationship issues with nice guys, and in the end, have discovered
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Shadow work is really one of the keys for unwinding so-called nice guy syndrome.
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And I think it's something both of us in our work with men have seen really showing up over the last years.
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And there's some reasons we can even talk about that, I think, at more of a meta
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Cultural level, but the idea that a lot of guys are coming to us wanting to get over Nice Guy Syndrome and feeling the consequences of having moved through their life
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Kind of embodying these nice guy traits, whether that's decades for some guys or even just kind of more recent discoveries.
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The real deal.
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And there is, this is the good news, there's a pathway out.
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And that pathway, I think, we have seen is most effectively
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Walked by going right to the heart of it, so to speak, and facing our shadow head on.
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There's six nervous system responses that we all have
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And they're reflexes.
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They're not things that we do consciously.
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They're ruled by the reptilian brain, the brainstem, the amygdala.
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They're connected to our innate sense of survival.
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And thank God that we have them, because without them, our species, of course, would have been obliterated many, many millions of years ago, likely.
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Fortunately, we have this ability just to survive, just to hang on.
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And so what's strange about this idea of nice guy syndrome is we don't necessarily think of it as a survival response.
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We just think of it as
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You know, maybe we kind of adapt to make things work better.
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We had instability growing up, and so we were
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Kind of caregiving for a parent or, you know, walking on eggshells.
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So we learn to be quiet.
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We learn to be kind.
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We learn to be nice.
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But
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Prior to even the behavior of being a nice guy, or being a people pleaser, or fawning.
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is that fundamental survival reflex.
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So the six nervous systems, we'll start out with the two primary ones, which most people know as fight and flight.
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And so in science, we talk about that as the sympathetic nervous system response.
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It's just a reaction, a reflex.
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But there are derivations on those two.
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So we have fight, flight, and freeze.
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Which you can see, like, oh, freeze, flight, fight, all those have something to do with fear.
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And then from freeze, we have this variation of please, so the pleaser, the nice guy.
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And then we have another kind of version of fight, which we could call freak out, which is you don't necessarily fight, but you just freak out and you're just running around like, oh my God, I don't know what's happening.
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And you're kerflummixed, you know.
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And you're befuddled by life, and so there's just this sense of total disorientation.
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So you have fight, flight,
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Freeze, please, freak out.
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And then the one that Jason, you and I talk about, but it we don't necessarily talk about it as nervous system response is fuck.
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And so that's kind of that whole kind of porn level that we get into as men.
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We're like, oh my God, I need to jerk off this pain, this fear.
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I need to get away from my pain.
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So I'm going to
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Use that fuck reflex.
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And again, they're all related to survival.
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The pleasing, the fawning, the nice guy.
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Gosh, my first experience of this was kindergarten has burned in my brain.
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Kindergarten, there was a bigger kid.
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In the playground, and he came over me and he was confronted.
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And my re it was a reflex.
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I just stuck my hand right in between us, like a handshake gesture, and said, Will you be my friend?
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And he said yes.
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And that was my winning formula.
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I was like, from that moment on, friendliness, friendliness, right, was how I was going to get through life.
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And I was I was voted at the end of that year the most congenial kindergartner.
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And it was like, I didn't even know what congenial meant.
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I was like, okay, cool.
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But you know, of course, it means friendly.
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And
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That response is so ingrained in me to be friendly, to be kind, to be nice, that it doesn't occur to me like I'm coming from a place of reactivity or fear or
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Distress, but as I slowed down that response, I can feel in my body
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Oh, I'm afraid right now.
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And again, there's nothing wrong or bad about being afraid.
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It just becomes.
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I wouldn't say inauthentic, but it becomes less useful when I'm unconscious, that I'm just responding because I'm actually afraid of something right now.
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And the missed opportunity is that.
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I'm actually not letting that fear inform what I really need to address in this relationship.
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I'm just reflexively so quick to want things to be peaceful and calm.
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that the friendly guy, the congenial guy, the nice guy has taken control.
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And of course, that might lead in lots of my relationships to dynamics and agreements that aren't
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Aren't equitable, aren't don't have an even exchange, that don't feel good in my life.
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And I've had to do a ton of work around that.
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But fundamentally, how it exists in my mind-body
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When the nice guy, the pleaser, the fawner takes over, is that I'm afraid of something.
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And it doesn't mean I don't get to be a nice guy.
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I can still be nice and kind.
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But my work is
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Where is this coming from?
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Where is this?
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What is the origin of this behavior?
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Yeah, I think that's such a beautiful pointing to the depths of Nice Guy Syndrome, which
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Right.
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Like you said, is really fear based and the primary fear that I've experienced and now I've seen in so many men I work with, and Doctor Glover would be right in line with this as well, is it's fear of losing connection.
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And attachment, right?
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The fear is if I am fully my authentic self, that will come at the cost of some kind of relationship.
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And safety.
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And so, what I'm going to do is always prioritize connection and attachment with other people.
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And often,
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at the expense of my own authenticity and truth.
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And the problem with that, what that ends up creating for so many of us nice guys, is we have tremendous issue with boundaries.
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And conflict in building up, particularly over time, a shit ton of resentment
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and anger about our relationships because we're not bringing things forward in a direct manner because there's fear behind
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What would happen when I do?
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And you know, some guys I've told this story to, but man, I was like, so
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Conflict avoidant when I was young.
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I just did not have it modeled for me.
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I did not have access to that.
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I remember it was like a year or two after I graduated college.
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I was living in this
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little apartment with a buddy in in Santa Cruz.
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And, you know, I would work nights, so I was free days.
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I think
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Fuck.
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I think I guess we had a phone.
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I don't remember.
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I don't even remember if there were cell phones yet at that time for me.
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But I was on I got a call and it was a fucking telemarketer.
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Selling, um it was like this thing where they'd sell like bundles of magazines or some shit back then.
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And I was on the phone with this guy for fifty-five minutes.
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And I was so collapsed, I couldn't get him off the phone and I couldn't say no.
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And I was like stuck.
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I was frozen, right?
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In my sense.
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I couldn't even get into fight or any of that.
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I was like in a freeze state of just something as simple as click, I'm done.
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But he just kept kind of pushing and I kind of kept going along.
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I honestly don't remember if I gave him a credit card number or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't at that time.
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Fell for the hooker swindle or something.
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But it was me just being afraid of voicing my truth, which was get the fuck away from me.
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You know, I don't want this.
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I just did not have access to that in my nervous system at the time.
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And that was something, as a nice guy, one of the
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Big places this showed up with me.
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I mean, even to the first time you and I met, we were on retreat somewhere.
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And I'm like in fucking Hawaii doing all this deep shadow work.
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I was working
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I had some pretty intense website clients, and I remember fucking pulling out my laptop on a break to handle some kind of crisis.
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And the man we were working with kind of looking at me like, What the fuck?
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What are you doing?
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But I just had no capacity to set boundaries and work and be like, No, I'm not available right now.
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that fire I cannot handle.
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And that's been one of my great pieces of shadow work over the last years is just no, taking space for myself, saying no to things, creating actual boundary in my life around my
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level of availability.
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But this is the the kind of key thing is, you know, wherever it starts as a nice guy.
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there's some experience, as there often is in the kind of shadow work we do, where we as men start to internalize that being ourselves isn't enough.
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Right.
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And so there's some kind of way we have to be to win approval from others, and often that is some kind of agreeableness.
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And sometimes it's pretty extreme, like in your case, where it's actually like a survival mechanism.
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And so, this, you know,
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One thing I would be super clear about is we're not here to shame you as a nice guy.
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I've got nice guy tendencies.
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A lot of us do.
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Oftentimes they are formed from necessary adaptations.
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to surviving in our life.
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But like all of those adaptations we often talk about, they end up not being the healthiest and most effective.
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For when we're outside of those initial circumstances.
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But our body, mind, our habit, our psycho-spiritual habit, doesn't know the difference.
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And so we're constantly
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kind of putting other people first, trying to make them happy.
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I mean, nice guy syndrome in a lot of ways, you know, is the root of this poison pill phrase we hear.
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happy wife equals happy life, right?
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How many guys do we get coming to us that that is not the case when you just continually
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acquiesce and say yes to whatever she needs, it actually erodes trust pretty quickly.
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And this kind of stuff shows up everywhere, and it is driven
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Sometimes once we've read No More Mr.
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Nice Guy, okay, I can kind of see it.
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But for a lot of guys, it starts in the shadow, right?
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In terms of
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Okay, I've named even like I do this, I do this syndrome, but why?
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Why am I taking these actions?
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And that's part of what you and I are pretty passionate about is going deep.
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in really going under the hood to where did these nervous system adaptations start and how do what do we actually do about that?
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So we're not just shifting
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Deck chairs on the Titanic, but like, how do we really handle this at the root?
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It's so tricky, of course, because what you're identifying here is that fear is driving it.
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And of course, fear is
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Like some of the emotions that we like less, very uncomfortable when it's present.
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Fear does a number of different things.
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Fear can freeze all of the
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kind of metabolic movement in the body just make it turn to ice quickly, meaning there's not a lot of movement, the breath stops, the blood flow can actually increase, but the tissues around the blood tighten.
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And then a number of things can happen.
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There can be collapse in the body, there can be prolapse, there can be kind of explosive energy moving through the body.
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People often say, hey, when they're afraid.
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Their adrenaline's pumping.
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They feel their blood really pounding through their chest, up through the heart, down through the heart.
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And you have this.
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interesting juxtaposition of the muscular system, the vascular system really compressing down, and then the blood pressure increasing.
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And then the mind itself just going blank.
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And so you go, wow, in that state.
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How can I be responsive to what's in front of me?
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How can I not be a nice guy?
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Right.
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And it is the question.
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It's an important question.
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And like Jason said, saying we're not here to shame or make wrong.
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We're just saying this is physiology.
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We're built this way.
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And because in culture, we often say, oh, it's better as a man to be nice and kind than maybe a macho jerk.
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You know, in general, that's kind of what men have been brought up with in their twenties, thirties, and forties-ish fifties right now.
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But what we're really trying to say is that that response to be nice, to be pleasing, is not coming from your most integrated being.
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And it's why, like you said, Jason, eventually in relationship especially, whether it's a collegial relationship, a business relationship or a committed romantic relationship
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Partners, friends, colleagues will start to trust you less.
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And I said, Well, why would they not trust me?
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I'm a nice person.
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It's like, well,
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There's something that they can't count on in you because they're not necessarily getting
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They don't feel your line, what you really want, what you really desire, because the nice guy was always like, well, what do you want?
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Where do you want to go to dinner tonight?
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I know you and I have worked with men all the time that are just so always in deferral of friends and partners.
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What do you want?
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What do you want to do?
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How do you do?
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What can I do to make you happy?
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And I work with couples often who are and the female partners often pissed off.
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Like, quit fucking asking me what I want.
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What do you want?
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And then, of course, he'll say, well, when I say what I want, you just tell me you want something different.
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It's like and there begins the path of authenticity, where the nice guy has to keep learning to advocate
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But more than that, stay in touch with what he really wants and bring that forward into the world.
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Shadow work for nice guys, shadow work for pleasers.
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What does that actually look like?
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Does that mean
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You just kind of slam your dick on the table and say, This is what I want.
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This is what I'm about.
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No, it's not strategic.
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Shadow work, like you said, is about getting underneath the hood.
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What's underneath the hood here?
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It's fear.
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How do you deal with fear?
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There's lots of different ways to deal with it.
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We talk about counterphobia, which is, you know, here's the cliff, just jump off of it.
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That's not how you really work with shadow.
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Shadow, you have to slow down enough to feel it and to metabolize it and be informed by it.
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To work with fear, it really does require a safe container to slow the scene down.
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And let the man breathe into the fear to actually feel it and to feel if there's rage there, if there's resentment there, that needs to move.
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But eventually just to feel the raw, the raw fear.
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And if we take the word fear away, all that's left there is just raw power.
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In our upcoming course from People Pleaser to Powerhouse, that's the opportunity
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For the nice guy is to really get in touch with his raw, primal creative power, which is linked to procreation, it's linked to desire
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It's linked to an innate sense of preference.
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And nice guys often are so detached from their sense of preference.
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Often in the shadow, what a nice guy will find is, fuck, he's got some he's got some interests.
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He likes certain foods.
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He likes certain sex.
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He likes to do certain things that he's totally unaware of.
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So, the powerhouse transition that a nice guy gets to experience is this entire world he wasn't even aware of.
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And to really touch that, we have to go through that gate of fear, that threshold that makes us vibrate, that makes us tremble, that makes us feel as if we are.
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we are going to meet our demise.
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And in a real sense, that is what's required here is crossing through a kind of ending, an end stage of being.
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And discovering a new one.
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Yeah, that I mean, that's so key because again, you know, there's
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There's kind of like cognitive ways to work Nice Guy Syndrome and do like worksheets and kind of map things out.
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And there's some real use to just kind of getting a frame in that.
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but it often doesn't go as deep as what you're talking about there, right?
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In some ways to think about this of why shadow work in particular
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Is so key for nice guys is shadow work is really wholeness work, right, is another way to think of it.
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In that
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Again, what you're pointing to is it's not that we I think there's a difference between I've talked about before, being nice and being kind.
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We don't have to stop being kind.
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The difference is
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What happens when we're doing that at the expense of our truth and parts of ourselves?
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So nice is when I just, hey, ha, ha, ha, ha, right.
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It's kind of this McDonald's fake
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Up energy that has nothing to do with where I'm at.
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So if I'm the cashier at McDonald's and
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I just got dumped and I'm having the worst day of my life.
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I still have to be nice.
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How's your day?
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What can I take for your order today, right?
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That's not what we're talking about here.
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And so shadow work is the path back to wholeness because what we're saying as nice guys is you don't have to stop being kind.
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which means orienting towards goodness for yourself and for other people, right?
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Caring.
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You don't have to stop caring.
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But you have to reclaim what you've dissociated from or been hiding, right?
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Which oftentimes for nice guys is anger.
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boundaries, desire, particularly including sexual desire, something we've worked with a lot of men, and power, right?
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Our capacity to go towards what we want.
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And when we don't do that, we have all these kind of split, repressed energies that, frankly, kind of suck us dry in a lot of ways.
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So, shadow work is a way to reintegrate these different parts of ourselves.
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So we have access to them, which does make us more trustable.
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And then as we do that, you know, it's
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Really, the idea of shadow work, right, is bringing into the light, bringing into consciousness what hasn't been conscious before.
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And that's something Glover really does nail with his covert contracts.
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Oh, actually, I'm running
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All of these under-the-hood contracts with people that if I'm not this nice to you, you got to sleep with me
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or you can't fire me, or you gotta wa da da da da da, that oftentimes, until we becons of them, they're quite literally running nice guys' lives.
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And through shadow work, we get to really presence those for what they often are, which are ways we're avoiding conflict, honesty, and risk, that fear.
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right, of what happens if my truth is different from your truth.
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And that's what often is quite scary for a lot of nice guys
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That might mean the end of our connection.
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And then what?
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I have to feel alone, not lovable, et cetera.
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And then, you know, it's really also the practice of.
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Turning conflict into connection.
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I think this is one of the
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key things we often see as we lead men through shadow work into facing conflict, which is really just, I want this, you want that.
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That's it.
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I want this, you want that.
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And that tension of what it takes to hold that when it's true is what so many nice guys are avoiding.
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And so instead of connecting to, I want this, all they're doing is overattuning to, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want, what do you want?
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And like you said, the cost in that is we become very kind of almost slippery, a little ghostly and frankly, not trustable.
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We're not trustable when we're constantly over attuning to the other and leaving ourselves out of that equation in
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As we start to bring that more forward, yes, things might get a little more heated, but it's actually realer.
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This is the thing we see, right, so much.
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We might support a guy into having a challenging conversation with his partner or wife or spouse.
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And it's intense, it's crunchy, but the feeling is
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Now we're actually being real with each other, talking about reality and truth.
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And that creates more connection, right?
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And
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Last thing I'll just kind of share is this kind of shadow work for nice guys is it's really the cure for resentment.
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Something that so many men build up, right?
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Working all hard all day, so she doesn't know how much harder I'm working, right?
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I do that shit all the time.
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This is the pathway out, right?
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When we start to be really clear about what I need, and then I actually have to ask my partner for it.
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Instead of assuming she's going to intuit this very complex covert contract I've created of actually, because I do all this, you're supposed to do all this, even though she never agreed to that.
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And instead, we have a frank talk about, okay, there's things you need, there's things I need.
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How can we start to
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Really bring that forward.
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And then, just final thing is: you know, this kind of shadow work for nice guys is it is the path to authenticity.
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Because it starts, paradoxically, with us getting real with ourselves about what we're actually feeling.
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So it's very hard to be authentic with someone else if we aren't even being real with ourselves, which might be something as simple as
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I'm really scared.
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Yeah, I'm scared.
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I'm scared to tell my boss I can't work Friday because I'm afraid he'll fire me or, you know, whatever that is.
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But as we practice the shadow work and come into contact with that fear, guess what?
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That's you becoming authentic because you're actually feeling what's happening in your nervous system.
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And that completely transforms, becomes the first steps to changing the way we then show up in relationship
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The real breakthrough thing that Jason and I discovered we've been doing men's work for twenty years, but when we started Heart of Shadow some four years ago four years ago and started working together eight years ago
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In a men's group, we discovered this kind of missing ingredient in work.
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And what's difficult about
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What you're probably hearing right now is like, okay, I got it.
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I feel the origin of the nice guy, of the pleasers, and I'm afraid so
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If I feel my fear and I speak it and I'm authentic about it, that will lead to a more kind of vital, authentic, connective life.
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And it's like
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Yes, in theory, that is correct, but the how to is another matter.
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And so Jason and I are talking about shadow work.
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And the breakthrough, which I'm getting to, is
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The reason why we became this way, right?
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The reason why we settled our nervous system in the nice sky lane of the six nervous systems is because it was
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Likely modeled for us.
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Or a healthier way was not modeled for us.
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By mom or dad.
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But in particular, likely dad, likely the male figure either wasn't there, was checked out.
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Himself was a nice guy, or some derivative of that combination.
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So, the how-to around this is what we want to highlight here.
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Shadow work is the method for sure.
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And shadow work is transformational work.
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So, it's not technique based.
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It's about
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Holding a vibratory lit space of love and care for you to feel things that you've never had the freedom or safety to feel.
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But there's one other thing that's required, and that's the consistent presence of the loving masculine, or the compassionate masculine presence.
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And you know, Jason and I didn't intend to discover this.
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We just did.
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It came through our innate longing.
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To offer deep work for men.
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And that's the consistency of quality masculine presence over time.
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And in Heart of Shadow
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That's what we offer: we offer this nine-week experience where men get initiated into the
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Culture of depth and care and authenticity with other men.
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And I'm being explicit about
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men and masculinity because when you start to experience the love and care of men over time, something that was missing in most of our nervous systems begins to be
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Filled in.
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We feel that there's space for us to feel things.
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That we were never allowed to feel.
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Mainly, that it's okay to be afraid in this case.
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It's okay to not know.
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It's okay to go through the typical archetypes that we were taught we had to be, to be impervious to weakness, to always seem competent, to always
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You know, have an answer, to persist, and to never show weakness.
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And so that masculine presence over time is designed in our Heart of Shadow program.
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We have nine weeks where the men bond.
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You have this incredible retreat.
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And then our intent is that
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The group continues independent of Jason and I, that the ten men that come together, they choose, should they want to, to continue the experience and to deepen the experience of care.
30:32
and collegiality and brotherhood over time.
30:36
And it's so beautiful.
30:37
We've had five cohorts move through this program, and all five are together in some variation.
30:48
The formula works in a certain sense.
30:51
And the cool thing about a formula is you take ten things, you put them together, and they become one thing.
30:56
They become one presence.
30:58
And of course, Jason and I have our own men's group, and Jason's part of some other groups, and I'm part of some other groups.
31:04
But this what's difficult to name here is as men who didn't have
31:11
We weren't brought up with this consistent, depth, holistic experience of masculinity.
31:17
And there's just, I've rarely met a man who has had that
31:21
I can maybe think of a couple that had dads that were really present, really there, and really authentic.
31:29
There's this medicine that starts to come into the mind-body where we get to drop the nice guy, we get to discover who we really are, and this whole new world arises through us.
31:42
That feels so freeing and relaxing and becomes the basis and foundation for all other pursuits in our life, whether they're spiritual or economic or romantic.
31:56
Or philanthropic.
31:58
And the how-to, the remedy here, the healing, in my view.
32:05
Is really shadow work, or which really is depth, very deep work that just goes deeper and deeper and deeper around connection, authenticity
32:14
and freeing up of your vitality and the consistent presence of masculine care over time.
32:21
And that's what we're here to offer.
32:25
Yes, just I kind of want to tie together a few things you just said there in that these are generalizations, so it doesn't always show up this way.
32:35
But that absence of masculine presence and love I think is so key.
32:39
Because what I've seen for a lot of nice guys is they don't necessarily trust the masculine.
32:46
Both in other men and then often in themselves.
32:50
And when dad's not kind of there, in a sense, to provide
32:56
The loving version of masculine energy, it puts extra pressure on the connection with mom.
33:03
Right.
33:04
And so a lot of nice guys in particular will have sometimes these kind of slightly more codependent relationships with mom and her well being, where we learn to adapt to keep her nervous system happy.
33:17
And on the other side of that, right, so maybe dad himself was just passive, wasn't connected in the ways he needed to be, so we didn't have that model of the passive.
33:27
The other thing you said with the counterphobic, right, I think shows up with a lot of nice guys too of, oh, actually, dad was the aggressive asshole.
33:37
He did hurt me, literally hit me or hurt mom, or was abusive emotionally or physically, or what you know.
33:45
The very many ways that shows up.
33:47
And so the pendulum totally swings to I never want to be that way.
33:53
And this is another kind of
33:54
Origin story we see of a lot of nice guys is the kind of baby in the bathwater, then, of seeing that damage that that aggressive masculine caused
34:05
Or sometimes it comes from the feminine too, but like aggression, what that causes, I'm just going to disconnect from all of that because I never.
34:15
want to be responsible for that in terms of bringing it to another.
34:19
And some of the deep work we do do with men is learning to differentiate.
34:24
between what is aggression, what is healthy anger, what is healthy boundary, and being able to reclaim that is incredibly important.
34:35
And it's really one of the main mechanisms of shadow work for nice guys, which you might be like, well, what does that actually mean?
34:42
And what it really is, is it's stretching and practicing
34:48
Bringing energy into our nervous system, right?
34:52
So that might be anger, that might be no, that might be contacting our power.
35:01
that might be really allowing ourselves to let the fear in.
35:06
Like you said, that's been running the show of right, I was just at retreat with a man this weekend and
35:13
Witnessing him do some deep work where he started he went into his fear and breath, right, was really fast, really shallow, body kind of almost shaking, and him learning.
35:26
To be with the fear, it wasn't about getting rid of it.
35:30
But suddenly his breath starts to slow down.
35:34
Finding his center in the fear, which then actually becomes a tool to help navigate life in a sense.
35:42
It's not something you have to live without.
35:44
But holding that, building that capacity in his nervous system, quite literally stretching.
35:50
Okay, I'm stretching my nervous system to hold healthy anger.
35:53
I'm stretching my nervous system to hold fear.
35:56
I'm stretching my nervous system to be okay with the part of me that wants to fuck.
36:01
right?
36:01
That actually has desire.
36:04
And I'm stretching my nervous system for how to keep a soft front while being in conflict and not backing down.
36:12
Right?
36:13
Something you and I have both had to practice in our own ways.
36:16
And then just last one, in terms of kind of this longer term thing you were talking about about the power of how we set it up
36:23
To be a group, a collective that becomes an engine for you to metabolize your life, even well beyond the program, is you get to practice
36:35
Authenticity in conflict in the group, particularly over time.
36:43
And that is the musculature.
36:46
By doing it in the group, you're developing the capacities you need to be able to do it outside of the group.
36:53
This is the safe dojo we kind of talk about of
36:57
In group with agreements and deep love and connection, it's actually okay to go a little far.
37:05
Or be a little sloppy.
37:07
And sometimes we actually create that opportunity for men of you don't know what your perfect no is sometimes unless you've gone a little too big the other way.
37:18
But then, ah, there it is.
37:21
Now I know what that feels like in my nervous system.
37:24
Or I've been so in my nice guy, unexpressing for all these years and holding all these resentments.
37:31
When I first open that door, it's like a tidal wave of messy, not clear language, kind of aggressive.
37:41
The group can hold you through that, right?
37:44
They're going to have boundaries around it, but there's space for you to find your way through that initial kind of sloppiness to
37:53
Hey, now I know how to express my truth without dishonoring you, because I've had practice and you've given me feedback
38:02
And guess what?
38:03
The way I was doing it in group was almost certainly the way I was doing it in life.
38:08
So, getting the feedback here in group
38:10
Is the feedback I need to bring it to life.
38:13
So you can consider the really unique group
38:19
Shadow work framework that we've created here is this is how you get out of the nice guy syndrome.
38:28
Right.
38:28
This is the pathway out because it takes training your nervous system to have some different choices from those initial six responses that you were talking about.
38:40
Of, ah, okay, I don't have to unconsciously drop into those now.
38:46
Now I have men to help get me centered
38:49
I have an engine to help me process my fears or angers or whatever that might be.
38:54
So I can come into the world with so much more authenticity and truth.
39:00
And guess what?
39:01
The great thing about that is
39:03
That quickly helps you shake out who you really want in life and who you don't.
39:08
Authenticity is one of the most powerful ways to develop deeper
39:14
Real relationships, another thing, you know, a lot of nice guys come into us are kind of desperate for
39:21
Because when you have the plastic smile all the time, it's not real.
39:25
They don't actually know you.
39:26
They don't actually see you.
39:28
So many nice guys, you know, last thing is
39:32
They have lots of friends or lots of relationships, but they often feel very alone.
39:40
Because they're not showing up with their real self in authenticity.
39:45
And that means, guess what?
39:47
The real you can't be seen.
39:49
And that's lonely.
39:51
And what we've seen in the Heart of Shadow time and time again now is bringing that authenticity forward through all those crunchy or scary parts of our nervous system, that creates the real connection.
40:03
And as we've also talked about, when we start to get that real connection in our group, we less tolerate the bullshit connection out in the world, and we less feel the need to fill our life with the fake ones.
40:18
And instead, it's like, I don't give a shit what you think about me because you don't know me, 'cause I'm not showing myself to you.
40:24
And that's a choice I make, right?
40:26
You're so-and-so, or whatever.
40:28
But these guys know me, they see me.
40:31
I trust their feedback.
40:33
I trust that they
40:35
When they tell me something, I listen.
40:38
And with their love and approval, I can go out and, you know, in a way, cause a ruckus in the world and do the things I really want to do.
40:46
And not have to be so nice, and instead be more in that kind place of, hey, here's who I am, here's what I want, here's what I see.
40:55
Right?
40:56
Just very straightforward.
40:58
And that does turn some people off.
41:00
But those people aren't your people.
41:02
That's the thing.
41:03
Right?
41:04
It's going to call in the right people, which we've just seen through the heart of shadow time and time again that you have to do.
41:13
Again, I just, there's no hack for this.
41:16
Right?
41:17
You can't think your way into having a more muscular body.
41:21
You got to actually get in there and train your nervous system.
41:25
And the best way to train and overcome the dehabilitating fear that powers so many nice guys or the complete aversion to anger
41:35
Is to actually get into your body and do the shadow work in person and have people lovingly hold space for you
41:43
To quite honestly go somewhere and feel something in your body you've never felt before.
41:53
The other thing I want to offer men out there is that hopefully you get a vibe from Jason and I that we're kind and we're
42:01
We're loving facilitators and teachers, and we are.
42:07
And we have that ability to hold these really dynamic spaces.
42:11
And Jason and I are teachers and guides that invite challenge.
42:17
We're not a
42:19
A school that says, hey, we're the authority and you have to do what we say.
42:23
And we've had men challenge us in the groups in different ways, and we welcome that.
42:29
And it's
42:30
It's not to say that we're authoritarian.
42:33
We open ourselves up.
42:34
We get vulnerable.
42:35
And we realize that for some men, getting into a group or getting into a group where there's male leaders is really scary.
42:43
And we just want you to know if you're out there, you're considering it, and you feel resonance, which likely you do, that you can bring that to us.
42:52
You can challenge us.
42:54
We welcome that.
42:55
We want to be.
42:56
And we stand to be a healthy form of leadership that welcomes that kind of spirit.
43:06
And so September twenty second, we have another cohort starting of Heart of Shadow.
43:11
If you're interested, you can find us on heartofshadow.
43:15
com and hit the chat bubble.
43:18
We're happy to get on a call.
43:20
We're happy to connect via email, via any means.
43:24
But this is a call.
43:25
We're calling to men out there that are looking
43:28
To really step into leadership, step into authenticity, step into community.
43:33
And here's the truth: we just can't do it alone.
43:36
We can't do it alone anymore.
43:37
That model doesn't work.
43:39
It's a failed model.
43:41
We need each other.
43:42
And so we're creating these little communities of authentic, loving, masculine presence and really claiming what masculinity is.
43:50
Which is loving, compassionate leadership that doesn't back down, that never backs down.
43:56
It's persistent, it's consistent, it's so strong, it's so stable, and it's backed by a group of men that stand in the same vein.
44:04
It's a kind of masculinity that just it doesn't break.
44:08
It bends, but does not break.
44:09
It's like bamboo.
44:10
It just snaps right back up.
44:12
So we have this principle of infinite flexibility.
44:16
Infinite strength.
44:17
That's what we're offering.
44:19
And if you're looking at the price and you're thinking, wow, it's a lot of money.
44:25
Honestly, I would have paid $100,000 for this experience with what it's given to me.
44:30
financed it, treated it as a school loan.
44:34
So, you know, there's value here.
44:36
The value in the course is absolutely there.
44:39
We'd love to have you.
44:43
Yes, if you got any questions, just head over to heartofshadow.
44:46
com.
44:47
You can email us there.
44:48
There's also a chat bubble there that'll get you a link up with me.
44:51
You can also book an exploratory call if you just want to hop on the phone with me.
44:55
I'll talk to you.
44:56
answer any questions or concerns you have about the program.
45:00
And we got a great cohort forming up here.
45:02
We'd love for you to be part of it.
45:04
And just head over to heartofshadow.
45:07
com.
45:07
If you're a nice guy and you're tired of living that way, this is the pathway out.
45:14
All right, until next time.