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35 - The Controversial Case for Masculine Containment · Masculine Containment

• 0:00
  Today I want to make the controversial case for masculine containment.
• 0:05
  And it's actually become a lot more controversial than I ever thought it would be when I started sharing what I was sharing and talking about this work.
• 0:12
  In the last episode, if you haven't had a chance to listen to it, I made the case against masculine containment.
• 0:17
  I wanted to answer the most intense and most frequently heard objections seriously.
• 0:24
  I think every new idea deserves criticism.
• 0:27
  Every new idea should be tested.
• 0:29
  And so that's what I spent last episode doing.
• 0:32
  And so if you haven't had a chance, you might want to listen to that first.
• 0:36
  Because today I want to do something different.
• 0:38
  When I started doing this work, I actually made a list.
• 0:42
  I sat down and spent some time in solitude and spent some time really breathing and thinking about what has this work done for me?
• 0:51
  What has masculine containment done in my life?
• 0:54
  And if I carried that equation forward, what will it do for me?
• 0:58
  What will it continue to do in my life?
• 1:00
  And so I wrote down a number of assumptions or hypotheses or guesses that,
• 1:05
  And some of them are pretty outlandish and probably pretty controversial.
• 1:10
  Actually, some of them have been pushed back on pretty hard.
• 1:12
  So they have been controversial.
• 1:14
  And so today I want to share those with you because I think that this work is completely different than anything else that's been out there.
• 1:22
  It's the work I've been looking for my whole life.
• 1:25
  And what I actually believe is possible if enough men learn this discipline is like literally world changing.
• 1:32
  And I think it really will change not just the men who practice it.
• 1:35
  It will change their family, their children, the people around them, their teams, especially their relationships.
• 1:40
  That's a big part of this work.
• 1:42
  But it's not where this work starts and finishes.
• 1:44
  It's where a lot of this work is done.
• 1:47
  And some of these predictions may sound a little outrageous.
• 1:50
  And I definitely want pushback.
• 1:52
  I want objections.
• 1:54
  I want you to let me know what you think, please.
• 1:58
  And I hope they do.
• 1:59
  Because I think we're dramatically underestimating what happens when a man learns how to contain himself.
• 2:04
  And I think a lot of people are dramatically underestimating –
• 2:09
  just how powerful this work can be.
• 2:10
  And I've now seen it and I'm seeing it and I'm watching it in the men that I work with.
• 2:14
  So I wanna go through a number of predictions with you.
• 2:16
  So the first one is, my prediction, my belief is that men are far more willing to do the work than we've been told.
• 2:24
  Now, this is actually a place of a lot of controversy.
• 2:26
  You know, I post on Instagram.
• 2:27
  I post on Facebook.
• 2:28
  I share this work where I can.
• 2:30
  I want as many people to hear it as possible.
• 2:32
  And one of the things that I get often, repeatedly, in the comments from mostly women is that men just don't want to do the work.
• 2:41
  And men aren't willing to do the work.
• 2:43
  And that gets carried forward too.
• 2:45
  Men don't want to do the work.
• 2:47
  They aren't willing to do the work.
• 2:48
  They're selfish.
• 2:49
  They're not capable of doing the work.
• 2:52
  They're not capable of seeing past their own needs.
• 2:54
  All kinds of opinions and somewhat violent opposition.
• 3:00
  And I get that.
• 3:01
  A lot of women have encountered men in a stage in life where –
• 3:06
  Maybe they didn't appear willing to do the work and maybe they have been hurt and traumatized.
• 3:10
  And, you know, I have found that there are some men out there that are rigid and not willing to look into themselves.
• 3:16
  And, you know, some of the men who profess to want the most help are some of the ones who have been the most rigid when I've shared this stuff with them.
• 3:24
  But here's what I now know.
• 3:26
  I reject the narrative that men don't want to grow.
• 3:28
  Right.
• 3:29
  Men spend billions on coaching and fitness and martial arts and personal development and self-improvement on all kinds of stuff like that.
• 3:36
  And I don't really believe that men avoid hard work.
• 3:40
  I actually believe that men avoid like crazy work that doesn't create results.
• 3:47
  And I think far too often, relationship work is really hard work that either fails to create a result or makes things feel worse.
• 3:56
  I know this happened to me and Katie in our relationship.
• 3:59
  You know, one of the things we tried was couples therapy.
• 4:02
  And if you've tried couples therapy and it hasn't worked for you, this might be the reason.
• 4:06
  Most therapists do not understand that there's a natural power imbalance in the nervous systems in a heterosexual relationship.
• 4:13
  And I've explained this before.
• 4:14
  I'll go over it quickly if you're new to my work.
• 4:17
  And what I mean is that men, we are stronger, more physically capable, more capable of violence than our partners.
• 4:23
  Our nervous systems are programmed to detect a neutralized threat.
• 4:28
  And women's nervous systems are programmed to seek safety and security and for them to be okay.
• 4:35
  And so as a result, when there is a conflict, the more physically capable, stronger, more capable of violence person has a much greater impact on the person who's seeking safety and security.
• 4:48
  So men, there's a power imbalance where men affect the woman in a way that is just not reciprocal.
• 4:54
  We don't actually feel like we're under real threat and her nervous system does.
• 5:00
  And so as a man, if you've been trying to do the work and you're in couples therapy, which Katie and I did, it was hard.
• 5:05
  It was sometimes excruciating.
• 5:07
  Sometimes we went into couples therapy not having an issue.
• 5:10
  We left in rupture.
• 5:11
  And oftentimes it was because I was in a safe space.
• 5:15
  I didn't understand the power imbalance that I just described.
• 5:18
  I would use that safe space to express myself in the lack of containment, not really understanding my feelings, just kind of boiling over.
• 5:26
  And Katie would feel threatened.
• 5:29
  And she would feel triggered and she would feel unsafe.
• 5:32
  And so in this really hard work, we made no progress.
• 5:35
  And in a lot of ways, I feel like we went backwards.
• 5:38
  And another issue, not just couple therapy, but an issue in just the world of relationship advice is that so much relationship advice explains the problem.
• 5:48
  It explains the wounding.
• 5:49
  It explains the attachment issue.
• 5:52
  It explains the place that isn't working, but it doesn't give the next step.
• 5:56
  It's not trainable.
• 5:57
  It doesn't give a man something he can practice to change his life.
• 6:01
  And here's what I know in the brotherhood.
• 6:04
  Like men are coming into this work and they are doing hard work on a weekly basis.
• 6:10
  And they are looking at their trauma and they're wounding and they're examining what's gone on with themselves.
• 6:15
  They're going into a place of self-forgiveness, into a place of understanding, into a place of really getting in touch with who they are, which is not easy for us as humans, not men or women, but humans.
• 6:28
  And they're looking at, you know, what is their wounding?
• 6:30
  What is the stuff in their life that is before today that is not in the present but has happened in the past that's causing them to react as though there's a threat?
• 6:40
  And here's what I know.
• 6:42
  Like I said, my prediction is men are far more willing to do the work than we've been told because if you give a man a practice that changes his life, he'll practice it.
• 6:51
  I've watched it over and over again in the brotherhood.
• 6:54
  And you know what?
• 6:54
  Just the very numbers of the membership of the Brotherhood kind of proved this to me.
• 6:58
  I started doing this work late last year with a group of three men, three guys.
• 7:03
  They got into a 10-week program with me.
• 7:05
  I gave it to them for free.
• 7:07
  I wanted to see if this would work.
• 7:09
  And they had extraordinary results.
• 7:11
  Before we were done with the 10 weeks, I started promoting a second container, a second initiation.
• 7:17
  I thought I'd have 10, 15 guys.
• 7:19
  It'd be a huge multiple over the three that I had in the first one.
• 7:22
  I gave it away for free as well.
• 7:24
  There was 111.
• 7:27
  And I watched men every week do the work.
• 7:29
  Then I did a third container because the second one was successful.
• 7:32
  It actually worked.
• 7:33
  I gave it away.
• 7:33
  I wanted to prove the model.
• 7:35
  I wanted to make sure that there was like reality here, that I wasn't selling something that wasn't going to change men's lives.
• 7:41
  That third container closed, or sorry, that second container closed, and I promoted a third one, and this time I charged for it.
• 7:46
  It wasn't free anymore, and we had 127.
• 7:49
  So the numbers are going up.
• 7:51
  Even though it was free to begin with, now it's paid for.
• 7:55
  Numbers are going up.
• 7:56
  More and more men want to do this work.
• 7:58
  See, here's what I believe.
• 8:00
  Containment itself doesn't heal you.
• 8:02
  It creates the conditions where healing finally becomes possible.
• 8:07
  And when men feel that, they will do the work on a weekly basis, just like any other practice, just like any other martial art.
• 8:13
  You know, I ask men all the time.
• 8:16
  When was the last time you started something for the first time, like a martial art?
• 8:20
  And they'll remember something they started.
• 8:22
  And I ask, how good were you at the beginning?
• 8:24
  And they all say, I was terrible.
• 8:26
  And I said, well, if you cared about it and you put your, I would say, if you care about it and put effort into it, did you get better?
• 8:32
  And they all say yes.
• 8:33
  So if men believe in the practice, they will do the work.
• 8:35
  And we're proving it every single week in the brotherhood.
• 8:38
  Now, my second prediction.
• 8:41
  Masculine containment is one of the most powerful healing forces there is.
• 8:48
  Now, here's what I want to make clear about healing.
• 8:52
  And I think this is one of the big challenges when men are told they need to do work to heal or they need to do work to process trauma.
• 9:00
  Healing is not simply talking.
• 9:02
  Right.
• 9:04
  I know I tried talk therapy and it just, it really exposed the wounds, but I didn't really feel like I was moving forward.
• 9:12
  And a lot of men agree with that.
• 9:14
  They come and say the same thing.
• 9:16
  Healing is not simply understanding where you are.
• 9:19
  Healing happens when you start creating enough nervous system safety so that change finally becomes something that feels possible.
• 9:28
  It feels safe and containment creates that safety.
• 9:33
  And when I say create safety, it creates safety for you first, for the person who is containing.
• 9:38
  You stop surviving long enough to actually heal because so many of us,
• 9:43
  We get up in the morning, we are in this like running forward, doing everything we can all at once and right away, just surviving, just keeping up.
• 9:53
  And instead, when you start practicing masculine containment, when you get in your body, when you start practicing embodiment, stillness, slowing things down, really starting to understand yourself, you begin feeling instead of just reacting.
• 10:07
  Right?
• 10:07
  Your trauma, your wounding, your conditioning finally has somewhere safe where it can surface, where it can be seen, where it can be addressed, where you can start moving past it.
• 10:20
  You know, one of the big challenges in the world of healing is that so much of it revolves around identifying what like issue or disorder or issue or challenge you have.
• 10:30
  And so many men come to me like clinging to those things.
• 10:33
  They say, here's my attachment wound.
• 10:34
  Here's my mother wound, my father wound, my childhood wounding, my...
• 10:38
  And sometimes I just have to say, hey, you know what?
• 10:40
  The fact that you've identified the wound is fantastic, but now you need to get into an environment, into a process, into a structure, into a system where instead of just identifying the wounding, you start processing it.
• 10:52
  You start moving past it.
• 10:53
  You start overcoming it.
• 10:55
  You stop letting it drive you on a daily basis.
• 10:58
  You stop letting it drive your behaviors.
• 11:01
  You stop letting it show up as who you are, but instead it's something that you understand and you're overcoming.
• 11:08
  And when I say masculine containment is one of the most powerful healing forces there is, I don't think that's just for the man, just for me.
• 11:16
  Here's what I know.
• 11:18
  When men in the brotherhood go into breakouts, and we usually do breakouts of three, there's one man sharing and two men holding containment.
• 11:28
  And they're sitting there and they're breathing, they're processing, they're staying in their bodies, they're giving their full attention.
• 11:34
  They're allowing that masculine containment to hold that other man in truth, in responsibility, in love.
• 11:41
  And what men say when they come back from those breakout rooms every time, when we do
• 11:48
  I really feel like that shifted something or I've never felt so seen and heard or I feel like I let go of something by just sitting there and talking to the other guys.
• 11:57
  The comment we get most often is the breakout wasn't long enough, even though we spend a lot of our calls in breakouts.
• 12:04
  Why?
• 12:05
  Because men are healing each other by holding each other.
• 12:09
  Masculine containment in and of itself, that presence, that security actually changes things.
• 12:16
  And so does containment itself heal everything?
• 12:19
  I don't think so.
• 12:21
  But it creates the conditions where healing finally becomes possible.
• 12:26
  So it is a healing force.
• 12:28
  It creates the possibility for healing.
• 12:30
  It starts moving us in the right direction.
• 12:32
  And maybe it does actually heal a lot.
• 12:36
  Maybe not everything, but a lot.
• 12:38
  And I know, again, this is going to be controversial.
• 12:42
  Now, here's my third belief, my third prediction, is that your relationship, healing your relationship, is not the destination.
• 12:51
  When it comes to masculine containment, the way that it's spoken about with the other people that do speak about it or containment in and of itself, it's always spoken about in a man-woman relationship.
• 13:00
  Like this is what's going on.
• 13:01
  It's right here.
• 13:03
  And I do believe the containment heals relationships.
• 13:06
  I've watched it.
• 13:07
  I know that it makes them better.
• 13:08
  I know that it makes it so that communication is possible and connection is possible and closeness is possible, but it's not the destination.
• 13:16
  I actually believe your relationship is the initiation.
• 13:21
  Most men think they're trying to save their relationship.
• 13:24
  I think that by practicing masculine containment, we are being invited.
• 13:29
  We are being initiated into becoming everything we've always been under the trauma, the wounding, and the conditioning that's been there for so long.
• 13:38
  We reveal ourselves to ourselves.
• 13:41
  Every trigger is an opportunity to train.
• 13:43
  Every conflict is part of the practice.
• 13:45
  Every repair develops capacity to be able to do more, to be more present.
• 13:50
  Every difficult conversation is another rep.
• 13:54
  Your relationship's actually the dojo.
• 13:56
  You know, that pattern that I talk about all the time.
• 13:59
  I say it all the time.
• 13:59
  I'll repeat it a million times.
• 14:01
  Trigger, escalation, rupture, withdraw, and repair.
• 14:04
  When you can stop things at the trigger and you stop repairing so much because you stop escalating in the first place, you change everything in your life because if you can do it relationally with the person most important to you, you can start doing it everywhere.
• 14:18
  Okay.
• 14:18
  Your relationship isn't interrupting your growth like so many believe.
• 14:23
  Your relationship facilitates the greatest growth you have available to you.
• 14:30
  And that's where I think this work is really going.
• 14:33
  Now let's broaden this a little bit.
• 14:36
  This is another prediction I had.
• 14:37
  I remember when I wrote it down.
• 14:39
  Masculine containment creates capacity.
• 14:42
  And there's a reason I wrote it down.
• 14:44
  When I entered into this work,
• 14:48
  I obsessed over capacity for most of my life.
• 14:52
  So prior to entering into this work, I was a biohacker and I had the devices and I do everything I need to sleep and I eat the right nutrition.
• 15:00
  I'm obsessed with it.
• 15:01
  I'm like extraordinarily disciplined and put a lot of intention into being everything that I can be.
• 15:08
  And what I found was when I started practicing masculine containment, I gained an amount of capacity that I didn't really know possible.
• 15:18
  I didn't know I could have this much energy, this much presence, this much capability, this much ability to go out and do things.
• 15:25
  You know, what I found was there was less emotional leakage, less recovery after conflict, less repair, less like running around and trying to fix things, which created for me –
• 15:35
  more focus, more attention, more presence, better decision-making, better leadership.
• 15:41
  It created a place where like I'm a better parent, better business person, way more creativity.
• 15:48
  It created a place where intuition and inspiration can actually be heard instead of me running past them every day, trying to get everything done.
• 15:56
  And it creates more influence.
• 15:58
  You know, I've created more influence in the past six months of sharing this work than I did in the prior...
• 16:06
  decade of sharing coaching work.
• 16:08
  I mean, I actually think more people have seen my work in the past six months than had in the prior decade online.
• 16:14
  That's how much different things have been for me in doing this work.
• 16:18
  You know, I used to, when I was younger, I used to be a little bit of a little bit of
• 16:21
  And doing everything all at once and right away.
• 16:23
  And I wasn't in a place where I was contained.
• 16:24
  I lived on energy drinks.
• 16:26
  I had afternoon crashes.
• 16:27
  I spent hours mentally replaying conflict.
• 16:29
  I spent so much time repairing what I had done.
• 16:33
  Today, I accomplish far more in less time than I ever have.
• 16:37
  Because reactivity and reactions are expensive.
• 16:41
  And containment actually creates massive efficiency in your life.
• 16:47
  When you're present and grounded and aware, I'll personalize this.
• 16:50
  When I'm present and grounded and aware, I make less mistakes.
• 16:53
  I step out of line less often.
• 16:55
  I challenge the people around me far less.
• 16:58
  And when I say challenge, I make them feel challenged far less.
• 17:02
  But I get far more capability and productivity out of them with a lot less communication.
• 17:08
  You know, there's something about being contained that actually makes it so that I get heard and seen and people understand what I actually want.
• 17:14
  And we make way less mistakes.
• 17:17
  Now this last prediction kind of bleeds into the next one.
• 17:20
  And when I wrote this down, I remember thinking, I wonder if this is going to be real.
• 17:25
  Because what I found was masculine containment radically improved my health.
• 17:30
  I am 53 years old.
• 17:32
  I'm in the best shape I've ever been.
• 17:34
  I don't share stuff like this often, but I have a body weight scale by a company called Embody, and I'm in the top 1% of men.
• 17:42
  In my age, I'm in the top fraction of 1%.
• 17:45
  In all men, most days, I'm in the top 2%, maybe 3%.
• 17:48
  Some days, I'm in the top 1% of all men when it comes to body composition.
• 17:53
  My wife and I have an exercise machine called the Tonal that like electronically takes, takes a stats and records all your exercises.
• 18:01
  I'm in the top 1% of all Tonal users in the top 1% of all men in strength and in capacity on that machine.
• 18:08
  And I wasn't there when I started this work, but being in containment and, um,
• 18:14
  eliminating reactivity has changed everything.
• 18:17
  Because when you really think about it, reactivity and constant reactions is chronic stress.
• 18:23
  And chronic stress affects your hormone balances.
• 18:26
  It affects digestion, recovery.
• 18:28
  It affects your ability to sleep.
• 18:29
  It affects your immune system, your nervous system, testosterone, cortisol, inflammation.
• 18:35
  Everything is affected by your nervous system and by reactivity and stress.
• 18:40
  And so when I cut the lion's share of reactivity and stress out of my life,
• 18:45
  my body completely shifted.
• 18:47
  Like I said, I have the best body composition metrics I've ever had at 53, and I've been obsessed with health and working out and spent thousands of hours in a gym my whole life, but now it actually works, and my hormones are regulated, and I sleep better, and I feel better, and I don't have afternoon crashes, and I actually am healthy.
• 19:08
  See, I don't think most men are tired because they're working too hard,
• 19:12
  I think they're exhausted because they're constantly leaking capacity through reactivity.
• 19:19
  And when I say reactivity, they're either exploding or imploding.
• 19:22
  Either one of those takes so much energy.
• 19:25
  That reactivity, and if we're not doing one of those two things, we're suppressing and repressing and holding everything inside.
• 19:31
  And so when you stop doing that, you get all of that energy back.
• 19:36
  Now this next one will probably create some more controversy because anytime I use the word leadership or dominance, people get really upset.
• 19:49
  A lot of people say like there doesn't need to be a leader in a relationship and dominance is an old construct and it just doesn't make sense.
• 19:56
  I want to reclaim this word dominance because when I say real dominance is self-dominance
• 20:06
  Here's what I mean.
• 20:09
  When we as men create dominance over our impulses, our fear, our defensiveness, our anger, our shame, our survival mechanisms that just run wild, our nervous system reactivity, we change everything in our lives.
• 20:25
  And when I talk about dominance, I'm not talking about dominating another person.
• 20:28
  I'm talking about creating dominance and dominion over yourself.
• 20:32
  And real dominance is self-dominance.
• 20:34
  And when we as men become dominant men, when we can dominate ourselves, when we can understand our feelings, when we can spend time in stillness without freaking out, when we can allow intuition and inspiration to come into our lives, when we let go of fear and defensiveness and shame and all the spirals that they create.
• 20:55
  We change things.
• 20:56
  When you look at martial arts, the most effective fighter is not the angriest and not the most reactive.
• 21:03
  The most effective fighter, the most strategic fighter is the calmest.
• 21:07
  The man who can't be destabilized is the one who's most incredibly powerful.
• 21:13
  And so when it comes to masculine containment, I think that this world of a man aspiring to be dominant is coming back.
• 21:23
  I think as men, we should actually bring that back and reclaim that word.
• 21:27
  And every man should aspire to be a dominant man because the highest form of dominance, the most important form of dominance is dominating yourself.
• 21:36
  And when you create that atmospheric of dominance of yourself, you create safety and security around you.
• 21:42
  And it's amazing how the world and the universe will flow with you when you're in that state.
• 21:48
  Now, my seventh, second to last prediction is that
• 21:52
  As men, when we step into this work of masculine containment and we take 100% responsibility, it will change every area of our life.
• 22:02
  Now, this one's controversial with men because I've shared before, as men, we need to take 100% responsibility.
• 22:08
  Here's what men say.
• 22:10
  You're causing men to take all the blame.
• 22:12
  You are saying that men are at fault.
• 22:16
  You're saying that men should absorb all the criticism and absorb all the anger, and I'm not.
• 22:22
  Here's what I'm actually saying is that responsibility creates influence and influence creates change.
• 22:28
  And when I say 100% responsibility, here's what I mean by that.
• 22:33
  If there's challenges in your relationship and you say, hey, it's her fault, you're never going to have the capacity to change anything.
• 22:39
  You're just going to sit there and really by saying it's somebody else's fault, you put yourself in victim.
• 22:45
  And you just sit in a victim state saying it's her fault.
• 22:47
  There's nothing I can do.
• 22:50
  So if there's a challenge in your relationship and you feel like, you know, she's at cause of that challenge, take 100% responsibility.
• 22:57
  Have a boundary conversation with her.
• 22:59
  And if she violates that boundary, take 100% responsibility and stand up for your consequences in that boundary violation.
• 23:05
  You know, if you tell her that you're not going to talk to her when she's using contempt, she uses contempt, you very graciously, carefully, with humility, step away.
• 23:16
  And if that doesn't work, then you take responsibility for the fact that it didn't work and you need another boundary conversation.
• 23:22
  And if you get into this place where there's still that condition in the relationship and it's not working, you take responsibility for the fact you're in the relationship.
• 23:31
  If you continue to ask how much responsibility can I take, you will stay out of victim and you'll change not just your relationship, but your entire life.
• 23:39
  I've watched this over and over again with men in the brotherhood.
• 23:42
  What changes when you say, instead of, uh, what am I responsible for?
• 23:47
  You say, how much responsibility can I take or what responsibility I can, can I take?
• 23:53
  It'll change your marriage.
• 23:54
  It'll change how you parent.
• 23:55
  It'll change how you lead in business.
• 23:57
  It'll change your health and it'll change the friendships around you.
• 24:01
  Blame limits your power.
• 24:03
  Responsibility gives you access to it.
• 24:06
  And now this is my last and final and I believe most important prediction or controversial belief in the case for masculine containment.
• 24:18
  I think masculine containment is the beginning of a new model of masculinity.
• 24:24
  If I zoom all the way out, and I'm not going to talk about just one man, I'm going to talk about culture.
• 24:30
  I believe that 20 years from now, there's a very high possibility that we're going to wonder how men were ever expected to lead marriages or families or businesses or teams or churches or communities without first teaching them to regulate themselves.
• 24:45
  Because this is not something we're taught.
• 24:48
  We're actually taught the opposite of regulation as men.
• 24:51
  As men, every one of us has been told, you need to stop crying or stop making things so loud or stop making everybody else uncomfortable.
• 24:58
  We've been taught to suppress and repress.
• 25:00
  And then we've been given examples of explode or implode.
• 25:04
  What we haven't seen is examples of men who stay.
• 25:07
  Examples of men who feel their feelings, stay regulated and can lead any situation to a successful conclusion, can lead any situation away from more controversy or more conflict.
• 25:19
  And I think when you look at this, for us as men, when we understand that this is a discipline we can get better at, like strength training or martial arts or any of those things.
• 25:32
  It will change the world around us and it will change what masculinity is seen as because so often masculinity is seen as violence and winning the argument, winning the fight and pounding on the table and being more in your face.
• 25:48
  And what is masculinity?
• 25:50
  I said this in the last podcast.
• 25:51
  It's presence.
• 25:52
  The highest form of masculinity is presence.
• 25:55
  And so I believe masculine containment can become another foundational discipline just like strength training or martial arts or meditation or therapy or nutrition.
• 26:06
  When you look at those five things, strength training, martial arts, meditation, therapy, and nutrition –
• 26:11
  Today, we would look at those and say a guy who lifts weights or practices a martial arts or meditates or goes to an EMDR therapist or eats the right foods is a guy who's doing the right things.
• 26:23
  That used to be fringe.
• 26:25
  Strength training used to be fringe.
• 26:26
  Martial arts used to be fringe.
• 26:28
  Meditation used to sound crazy.
• 26:30
  But now we look at it as a guy who's doing the right things.
• 26:32
  So what I believe is.
• 26:34
  is that over time, masculine containment is going to become another foundational discipline.
• 26:40
  See, here's what I've learned in the brotherhood.
• 26:43
  Containment is actually contagious.
• 26:46
  When a man changes, his wife change, his children change, his friends change, his business changes, his teams change, his community starts changing around him.
• 26:57
  Men reflect this in the interview podcast.
• 26:59
  If you hadn't had a chance to listen to them, you'll hear it over and over again.
• 27:03
  They'll say things like, I started sharing differently in my church group and then everybody else did too.
• 27:08
  Or I've noticed that people are responding to me differently than they ever have in my life.
• 27:13
  I shared this with a friend and he asked me questions about it.
• 27:15
  Now he's trying it as well.
• 27:17
  Containment is contagious.
• 27:19
  And I fully believe that.
• 27:22
  And not just believe.
• 27:24
  I hope with every cell in my body that the more men that learn this practice, they share it and get even more men to learn this practice.
• 27:33
  Because in the last episode, I made this case against masculine containment and then argued the contrary of what I've heard.
• 27:40
  But today I'm making a case for it.
• 27:43
  Not because it's perfect, not because I think it's finished.
• 27:45
  I'm forever a student because I've watched it change my marriage.
• 27:49
  I've watched it change our members.
• 27:51
  I've watched it change their businesses, their families, their children, the world around them.
• 27:57
  I don't believe this is simply another relationship framework.
• 28:00
  I believe this is the beginning of a new model of masculinity, maybe even a new era of masculinity.
• 28:06
  One built on capacity instead of performance.
• 28:09
  One built on presence instead of posturing.
• 28:12
  Responsibility instead of blame.
• 28:14
  Safety instead of fear.
• 28:16
  And if I'm right, the men who begin practicing containment today won't just build better relationships.
• 28:23
  They'll build better families.
• 28:25
  They'll become better leaders.
• 28:27
  build better businesses that make a bigger contribution in the world, better communities, and ultimately together as contained men, we can go out and change the world.
• 28:38
  Thanks so much for being here with me today.
• 28:40
  I appreciate you being a listener of this podcast so deeply.
• 28:44
  I watch the metrics all the time.
• 28:45
  I see how many listeners we have on a weekly basis, and I love that it's growing, and I love that the hours are going up, and more and more men are being exposed to this work.
• 28:52
  So...
• 28:53
  Do me a favor.
• 28:54
  Take a minute now and share this episode with somebody who needs it.
• 28:58
  I share this all ad-free because I want there to be no static between you and the message.
• 29:05
  So if you share it with somebody and send this link to somebody, that helps me keep doing that so that we can keep this work free and keep it growing.
• 29:12
  And if you have a second and you are called to this work, go to the brotherhood society.com.
• 29:18
  Fill out your information.
• 29:20
  We have another container opening soon and I'd love to be able to meet you.
• 29:23
  The brotherhood society.com sign up.
• 29:26
  It'd be my honor to walk this path with you forever.
• 29:29
  A student learning with you and understanding this practice of containment because it's changed my life more than anything I've ever done.
• 29:36
  And I want to help you.
• 29:39
  see how it can change yours as well.
• 29:41
  Thebrotherhoodsociety.com.
• 29:42
  I look forward to meeting you soon.