63: Ken Mossman - Integrated Adult Man

Monica: [00:00:00] Welcome welcome to the revelation project podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed. Welcome to another edition of the revelation project podcast today I'm with Ken Mosman. Ken Mosman has specialized in working with men for almost two decades with an international clientele from a wide variety of industries. From finance, academia and technology to entrepreneurship and the arts Ken's focus is on helping men expand their emotional literacy, fluency, and flexibility so that they can lead with presence and empathy.

Ken is a senior faculty member with CTI, the co-active training Institute. In addition to his coaching and training work, he writes regularly hosts the mojo for the modern man podcast and designs and leads intensive deep programs for men today. We're going to be discussing the state of men manhood as it results to recent history. I want to just own that in this particular episode, I am a mess. I am emotionally triggered I'm and when I get emotionally triggered I'm so ADD, I'm not gonna apologize for that, but what I will say is. There are some real nuggets of gold that come out. And I just want to thank Ken Mossman again for being so patient and generous with his time and listening. So without further ado, Hi Ken.

Ken: [00:02:14] Hey, Monica. That was a mouthful.

Monica: [00:02:16] Oh my gosh. Clearly my mouth doesn't work yet this morning. Its ok I AM with friends.

Ken: [00:02:23] Exactly.

Monica: [00:02:27] So, so good to talk to you. It's it's been a year.

Ken: [00:02:31] It has indeed been, it has a year is something that has, uh, it has indeed been.

Monica: [00:02:39] It has indeed been my goodness. Not a dull moment. No.

Ken: [00:02:46] So where do we dive in here?

Monica: [00:02:47] I know. Well, let's just dive right in actually to what happened at the Capitol. What was it like for you? And then I can talk about what it was like for me to just witness kind of what was going on.

Ken: [00:03:02] Yeah. Yeah. So I, so there's a little bit of a bit of a story here because I had worked the entire day up until about, uh, I don't think I walked out of the office until about three o'clock in the, maybe three 30 in the afternoon on the 6th of January. And I got a text message from my sister. Saying are you watching the news? And of course I wasn't. I was working and I stepped outside into the, into the hallway. And my son who's, who's living with us now look met me, met me there at the door to his room, you know, with just this look on his face. And I wasn't getting a whole lot of information.

Monica: [00:03:46] Yeah. I hate those moments. Cause you're like, what the hell what's going on?

Ken: [00:03:50] Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. And I didn't, you know, I had no clue. And then, and then I had a clue. Then yeah, big, big clue. And you know, like so many of us watched as the day unfolded, you know, wherever I went in the house I had, I had my iPad with me with, with NPR, actually playing, playing a live feed.

Monica: [00:04:15] Same.

Ken: [00:04:15] Then we stayed with it until, uh, I think about midnight, you know, about midnight. So the reaction that I had was. It was like a gut punch.

Monica: [00:04:29] I'm so glad you went there. Cause I was like, go to your body. I like, cause you're such an embodiment guy. I want to know like emotionally what was going on for you.

Ken: [00:04:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, there's all sorts of language for it. I felt, but I want to talk about the, the body piece first because I, I had a conversation with. A fellow by the name of Neil Edwards, who does amazing, amazing systems and leadership work and for, for his podcast and, and, and he really focused on the, on the body. And so what I can say is, you know, tension intention in my neck, my jaw felt like it was, you know, like just, just clenched. And like I mentioned, the, the gut punch in the emotional piece was a sense of. On the one hand a sense of, well, this is, you know, there's no surprise here on the one hand. And on the other hand, Oh my God, you know, this is shocking. And because it was, I would assert that anyone who was paying remote tension, evidently except for some people who were working security in DC, kind of missed the memo, but. The, you know, it was a sense of, it was not like not unlike 9- 11, just a sense of, well, any, any ounce of innocence that I might've had left, it just got stripped away. And, you know, I think there was my own shock, my own sadness, my own rage. Really, you know, if I'm going to go the whole distance here, I was completely okay. Outraged. And, you know, I'm watching people who are citizens of my own country storming the people's house. It was a freaking mess.

Monica: [00:06:19] It really was. I can relate. I also had like a deep sense of shame actually. Yeah, it was like, for me, it was like my people as a human race. Like these are my people as a human race who are acting this way and noticing right away that there was not, I did not see a black or Brown face in the mix of it, that it was all white, angry, entitled men and it felt, so it felt like this mix for me, between horror and shame and dismay, and like, how did we get here? And also what came up for me was pain in my heart. Like about. What I know as a coach creates that kind of behavior and feeling this deep sense of responsibility to help do something about this. And I also then as a woman, because there's all these layers felt a sense of. Here it is. This is what we see all the time in all these microaggressions everywhere out in the world. And I'm so tired of it. And I'm so like emotional about it, you know? Yeah. There's just a tremendous amount of pain and.trauma associated, I think for a lot of women with seeing, and of course there were women there, it wasn't just men.

Ken: [00:07:56] Right. Uh, so, you know, it's really been confusing to unpack, but I think one of the things that I just feel is so missing is accountability and also any kind of, well, there's two things here.

Monica: [00:08:13] One is it's like there was such a slow but steady. Wasn't even slow actually progression. Obviously it's going to end up in some ugly way, but when it actually happens, I don't think anybody's really, you know, there's this still, this cognitive dissonance that it's happening. And the other thing was just this. So let me finish that sentence. Cause I'm obviously emotionally triggered, you know, that we had seen the behavior, I guess. In so many ways, it was so blatant over the course of the last four years, the encouraging the, the emboldening. And then of course, all the ways that, you know, the language up until it happened was just really encouraging this insurrection behavior. And it got me really thinking a lot about kind of the difference between peacemaking and peacekeeping and how, how those of us kind of who've been. Keeping silent around all of these very kind of blatant overtures around aggression and violence. And just really recognizing that. Yeah. I don't know. I just, I like find myself getting back confused in the quagmire of what, what to do, which is one of the reasons I wanted to just really have a conversation with you about this. What it's going to take to actually kind of help our boys and men get to a place where we can really start to reveal and heal what's happening.

Ken: [00:09:53] So there's a lot to unpack. There's a lot of time unpack and everything that you, that you just mentioned from the roots of the event, you know, which go back years. Uh, and I think it's really important to look at this and even a larger timeframe, you know, in a larger, a larger historical and cultural timeframe. Because if we look at. And I, I did some writing about this, uh, several newsletters, and I want to point to some of what was said on the, on the floor of the, the house and the Senate later on in the evening of the sixth. You know, Joe Biden, uh, spoke earlier in day while all of this was going on. And the, you know, one particular notion this idea that, that this is not who we are, you know, we're so much better than this. This is not who we are. And, and first of all, that completely ridiculous.

Monica: [00:10:57] RIght, because it's like, well then why is it happening?

Ken: [00:11:00] Exactly. I was like, this is not who we are. We don't do this. Well, we just. You know, w we just did that. And then, and it wasn't like two or three people. It was, you know, it was thousands and yeah, we can look at the, the events and the kind of language that's been used over the course of the Trump administration, you know, and of course, leading up the 2016 election, you know, that started off talking about. Uh, rapists and murderers coming across the border. You know, we could look there could, we could highlight the, I could stand on fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose a single vote, which evidently has proven to be true. And, you know, we can look at all of that. But if we look at that without outside of the context of, you know, you talked about accountability outside of the context of our history and. I want to layer in a piece here that says we are a nation of the vast majority of whom are good decent people. And there's something about being able to rectify that. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, we're a nation of good. Decent people well-intended for the most part, loving people who love their families, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all that is true. What's also true is that our nation is built on a, as one of the guys who showed up on. One of my regular men's calls said, you know, we're, you can't deny that the nation is built on these wildly legs of genocide of forced migration and slate. Colonization. Exactly. Yeah. Condoms. Yeah. Yes. So that cognitive dissonance, so to be able to hold both those things at the same time. Oh, okay. You know, we're, we're a nation of, of mostly good well-intended loving people and by the way, We're in denial about how we got here, you know, and you know, what are the, what are the layouts or is it didn't have, it didn't have any sticking power. Of course, this notion that when we're teaching American history, we can only teach about, you know, we can only talk about what a heroic nation we are, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And not, not the parts of our history that. You know, we have to, we have to get that out of the, and this is from the Trump administration. You know, we have to get that out of the history books. The things that we teach are let's only teach them about the good, bright, shiny stuff, which is just playing silly. You know, it was just playing silly. And that, what that does is that it says that, you know, that comes from a place of, well, the people can't really handle what's true, which is again, that there's, that's just ridiculous. We're not children, which brings us, brings me to another point. Is that even though we're not children, we also live in a culture that. Places a high value on remaining, I think. And this is particularly for men. It's not only for men, but it's, but it's particularly for men that places a high value on these kind of adolescent ideals of what it is to be a man. And if we look at some of the images from, and I think they're so emblematic, great word. Yeah. There. So yeah, if you look at the, and I'm not the only person who's said that, so if you look at some of the images of, and again, this has been building this notion of paramilitary organizations of this kind of. Tough guy, tough guy with a gun wearing tactical gear,

Monica: [00:14:38] like a caricature, the anti femininity, the achievement, the violence, the risk, the emotional suppression that like all of the things that are kind of this. Man boxy type behavior. Yeah.

Ken: [00:14:55] There's all the ingredients of it. And as we peel it apart, it's, you know, it's a kind of fascinating mix and, and I don't mean that in a woo you know, yay, let's celebrate it, but really important to look at, Oh, what is in this? You know, what is in this mix? And, and this comes back to your question, Monica, about how do we raise boys and the same thing, by the way, there are similar things that happen. Two girls, this notion of, of, of an idealized, you know, an idealized feminine, feminine form, you know, there's this idealized masculine form. There's this idealized feminine form, neither of which are remotely realistic, both of which are dehumanizing in some way, shape or form. You know, if we look at the, the masculine side of the equation and you mentioned the man box, I love that language. The key messages. Are, and we can think about this in terms of, you know, how often does this enter into the life of a young boy? You know, big boys don't cry. Don't throw like a girl. So we got two pieces right there. Big boys don't cry. The message of that is, Oh, emotion, bad. Or at least that emotion is bad. You know, big boys don't cry by the way, you know, a big boy. Oftentimes when those messages it's like a four year old, a four year old is not a big boy. Right? Four year old is a four-year-old and a, the don't don't don't throw like a girl, you know? Uh, what's the message of that be anything, but don't be anything resembling something that might be girl, like. So, even as you look there, there's the, there's the well let's vote, let's vote the, uh, and I'm being really, really simplistic about this on the one hand, on the other hand there's truth to it. You know, vote the emotions off the Island, vote. Anything that remotely resembles the feminine off the islands. So right away, we've got, we're making space for stoicism, an over-reliance on the cognitive and the rational. And. Uh, really planting the seeds for in many ways. It's just like, be anything but that, but those, but within that are planted the seeds of misogyny. I mean, you just can't deny it. Yes. You just can't deny it. It's it's there, it's there. And then, you know, fast forward several decades and, uh, show up on the Capitol steps. Demanding that you, you know, you, you get to have your way, you mentioned the entitlement piece of it before yet fed, uh, fed a steady diet of missing this information over the course of the years and put on, you know, let's, let's get out our cosplay gear, which in this case also includes deadly weapons and, um, and the rest is rock and roll, you know, and again, there's not a lot of mystery to it.

Monica: [00:17:41] No, no, there's, there's not, I mean, it's all kind of right there. And you know, there are four things that I, that I was really kind of in an inquiry about, which came up in terms of just this, I guess I'd call it the toxic male. You know, and, and of course, there's, there's also toxic female, but for the case of kind of this conversation, what came up for me was like four things which seemed really important. One is understanding what are the factors that lead to male aggression and violence. The second one was addressing issues of male privilege and power. The third was. Promoting healthy and intimate relationships among boys and men. And the fourth was. Promote healthy father involvement. And those are things that I actually know that you teach and talk a lot about and work a lot to unpack and kind of deprogram men.

Ken: [00:18:52] Yeah. I wouldn't necessarily say deprogram, I would say, uh, consciously untangle messaging because yeah, the programs programming sounds a little bit. Tucked away in, uh, you know, taken away from your family and, uh, subbed an institution until we can get these things out of your head, which is, which is very different than consciously doing the work, uh, with a willingness to be there. So can we take those one at a time?

Monica: [00:19:17] Yeah, I would love to. I would love to, it is a lot. It is a lot, and I know we're kind of venturing into territory. That's really, really tangled for, for a lot of people. So I just appreciate, you know, you being so willing to kind of. Have such a, such a confronting conversation. It is for me anyway. I don't know if it is for you. It's like feels tender.

Ken: [00:19:42] Yeah. Bookmark on that because we want to come back to that, I think. Yeah. Okay, great. So yeah. Where shall we start

Monica: [00:19:50] maybe with understanding the factors. I think that lead lead to mail, we touched a little bit on it, but aggression and

Ken: [00:19:57] violence. Yeah. Okay, good. So there is this, Oh boy, there's a lot to this. So all of this is really complex and just know if you're listening that, that a lot of this is going to be simplified in terms of time, because we have a sneaking suspicion. We could talk about each of these things for hours and hours for hours. Yeah. So when we look at. At, uh, at aggression and violence, I want to set aggression aside for a minute and focus on violence. So there are, uh, in, in one of the models that I work with, some of my mentors say there's a, there's a drive in the human spirit. There's a drive in the human spirit to. To the, the language they use is be eternal to be eternal. And that doesn't mean live forever. It means create something that is lasting. And there's a couple of different ways. Actually. There's many ways to create things that are lasting there's legacy. There's you know, uh, giving and creating there's there's a lot. There's, there's, there's a lot. And the two primary ways are either creating beauty. Think art music song, you know, something that comes from a place of, of creativity. And on the flip side of that is destruction and violence. Both will create, can create a sense of, uh, eternity and. In the absence of a pathway to create something beautiful. It's really easy to flip it and go in the other direction. You know, I'm going to leave my Mark on the world. I'm going to leave my Mark on the world. I don't know how to, I may not know how to create something beautiful. And I've got these emotions that I have been told that I can't have. No, that are part of this very complex. I told you we would over simplify this, that our part of this very complex human equation, but in this drive to create something lasting, you know, and in, in a distorted sense with that distorted sense of entitlement coming into the picture now, where am I going to point that energy? Well, I need an enemy. You know, I need something to, in that case, I'm going to, I'm not going to wrestle with a canvas, you know, right. In this case, you know, or I don't know how to wrestle with a canvas, which is another way of going about it. Uh, but give me an enemy and all of a sudden I have, I have, uh, a place to focus this energy. That's so

Monica: [00:22:42] interesting. Yeah. I mean, you're pointing to something I think is. Fascinating. I think couple of things come up for me. One is that this idea of kind of. Creating or having that enemy to direct that attention. But also what comes up is how we do take art and creativity out of our schools, you know, which may in fact foster and help and create a path to what it is to create beauty. I don't know that just comes up in this space, whether it's so interesting. No,

Ken: [00:23:14] I don't think it's a bad place to look because in the. You know, again, culturally, we culturally replace so much importance on the, on the cognitive, on, on the things that, you know, we've thought of as traditionally academic reading, writing, arithmetic.

Monica: [00:23:30] Yeah. We're up in our heads and not in our hearts and our bodies.

Ken: [00:23:34] Right. Exactly. And by the way, the head absolutely has a role in creating any kind of art in creating any, any creative endeavor by creative. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely absolutely necessary. So, you know, when stuff like this happens, it's it's. No, oftentimes we move faster instead of moving, moving slower, move to move quickly. You know what we need unity right now, you know, unity again, coming back to unity. Well, does that unity include the accountability? Does that unity include, uh, the, having the hard conversations? Are we just pretty it up and gloss over it because we want to move fast to unity and really what's called for is. Is slowing way, way down. And I want to come back to this idea of having an enemy, because one of the hallmarks of, if you really look at well, what were the hallmarks of the Trump administration? Um, one of the hallmarks of the Trump administration was that here was a man, by the way, also emblematic. No, we can have conversation all day about the man himself, but, uh, but it's more important to see him as I think, as a symbol and a symptom rather than, uh, uh, the, the sole cause. Cause then we miss the big picture and having said that, you know, here was a man who, without, in many ways to find himself by, through having enemies, you know, through having enemies and, and in his language, You know, belittling them as part of, you know, as a function of elevating himself, you know, name calling, et cetera. So that's a piece of the, I mean, there's a brilliant example of it, you know, who am I without my enemies.

Monica: [00:25:15] Right. And, you know, that was just so on display and it was like modeling that type of way to be that way of being anybody. I think that was feeling, uh, resonant with that kind of aggression, or I don't even know if you can use the word resonance, but yes, it is just an ins, whatever it is. It was a feeling that obviously was, he had the ability to kind of really raise that in. People who were feeling disturbed or upset or anxious or. Things were not the way they wanted them or whatever it was, but I feel that was very much like the magnet that kind of pulled all of that discontent to the surface and agitated it.

Ken: [00:25:59] Well, he did a brilliant job and this is, you know, it, he absolutely did a brilliant job of tapping into the energy. Of rage. And when you look at the energy of rage, it's a combination of anger and anger and hopelessness, anger, and helplessness, anger, and invisibility. And we all, you know, anyone who's had a kid, you know, a three or a four year old kid yanking on their pant leg. Pushing them off to the side. You know, mommy, mommy's busy, busy, daddy's busy. I don't have time for you right now. You know, that child feels a child starts to get a little bit angry. Cause there's something that they need. No, one's paying attention. You know, they get angrier and angrier and angrier in, in moments you've gone from. We didn't even hear what the request was. We've gone from zero to rage in no time flat. And, you know, Trump did a brilliant job in his campaign, et cetera, you know, did a brilliant job of tapping into this segment of the population that felt like they didn't have a voice, you know, decades worth of anger building up there and was able to tap into that. Really tap into and explode in many ways that rage that was just lying underneath the surface. So that's another piece of the equation and it's one of the other piece getting back to the violence is, you know, there's also. We're also driven by a need to be long. And one of the, well, you know, part of the process of radicalization and this was mass radicalization, you know, make no mistake about it. This has been mass radicalization through a steady stream of lies, conspiracy theories, et cetera. As people we have this human need to be long, and if we're not going to belong and we're going to go where we feel welcomed. Since that's human nature, we're going to go where we feel welcomed. And if where someone felt welcome is a on online message board, somewhere on the dark web or online message boards, you know, anywhere, whether it was Twitter, Facebook before. Uh, they started a little more energetically looking at what people were posting parlor or gab, you know, all of the others. It really,

Monica: [00:28:11] it was like praying on vulnerabilities. I think, you know, it's like high risk. It occurs to me actually as really this interesting concept. Like if you don't feel seen, if you don't feel heard or if you've had that kind of, I guess. Trauma that that almost becomes a risk factor, like a vulnerability factor that you would then. Move towards a situation or a group that as long as they see you and you feel seen and loved by them, you're going to, you know, if you don't have the tools to kind of really unpack, what's, what's really going on for yourself. Your primary need is what you said, like belonging. And so kind of everything else falls by the wayside. Yeah.

Ken: [00:29:00] And again, it's, it's not that simple. If you start telling people a little bit of what they want to hear. You know, and this is this part of the mechanics of it. If, if you look at how, you know, how, how does this stuff work? It begins by telling people, telling people what they want to hear. And if you tell them enough of what they want to hear, you can start telling them little bits and pieces of what you want them to hear. And it builds over time to the point where they will begin to believe. Anything you want them to

Monica: [00:29:31] hear? Okay. So it's interesting because I used the word programming earlier and that sounds a whole lot like programming to

Ken: [00:29:39] me that I would assert yeah. That radicalization. I, yeah, I think you're right. That is a, that is a type of, that is a type of programming.

Monica: [00:29:48] Okay. And I would assert I'm not, God knows Ken, you know, like I know that there's so much here, but I would assert that those micro kind of ways that we raise boys are also really, I don't know, there's something there for me around unpacking that a little bit more with the, with the programming. But cause I feel like, you know, in my work with a lot of women, it's like a programming issue to kind of. UN to unbecome, uh, all of those messages, those subtle messages, all along the way that just are so insidious and invisible, but over time culminate into this. Real, what would I call it? Like trance. I like, that's the word I, that I use. And I think that, I don't know, you know, it's semantics of course, but it's, you know, I, I see how it's happening actually with my son. Yeah. In terms of just really, almost like the hen packing that goes on with boys and girls, but the hen packing that I see, you know, like don't be a pussy, like. All these ways that boys are constantly, like you said before, don't throw like a girl or whatever. It's constant. It's continuous. It's subtle. Anyway, it shows up for me, like when we were just talking about that as like, That feels like programming to me.

Ken: [00:31:08] Yeah. We could use that language. I mean, we could, we could use that language. Oh, I had a thought and I lost it. Whoops. Where to go. I think one of the differences are that, and maybe this, this isn't so much, I, I just tend to think of programming as more related to cults on the one hand, on the other hand, I could see if we followed this out to which logical conclusion what we're doing is doing is fighting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and just to be fair often, what tracks people to the work that you and I both do is that, and I love the language trans is that something has broken the trance and something has broken the trans and there's this realization like, you know, I'm doing it all right, but it's just not. You know, I I'm wearing the suit that I've been told to wear, but I'm noticing that my right pant leg is like three inches shorter than my left. And it really doesn't look good on me. And by the way, it's not even comfortable. And

Monica: [00:32:02] by the way, right

Ken: [00:32:03] now, yeah. Who knew, who knew

Monica: [00:32:09] it's like that waking up where you're just like, how could I not have seen how this doesn't serve me, how this isn't comfortable, how this isn't aligned with who I really am. Right. Yeah. So I know we're all over the place and I love it. I don't care. It's my podcast. Damn it. But I do want to go back to this other one and I know we are on time, but here's, let's do one more, which is how do we promote more healthy and intimate relationships among boys and men? How about that one?

Ken: [00:32:40] Yeah, that's good. There's a, there's a rich complexity to all of that. So I, again, I'm going to be overly simplistic with it. One of them is to. You know, I th I, I think that the place to start is to always watch. You know, mind your language, watch your language. And when I say that, you know, watch, watch the internal dialogue because all change begins with us. You know, the individual, you know, what's your own internal dialogue, the way you speak to yourself, you know, when you catch yourself saying as a parent, when you catch yourself saying things, Oh my God, you know, my mother's words are coming out of my mouth or my father's words are coming out of my mouth. And I swore I'd never say this. It's like, well, Take a moment there. Why did you swear? You'd never say that. Yeah. Right. You don't have a look. Yeah. Have a look swore. You'd never say that. And you catch yourself saying it, you know, note to self, uh, what is it you're saying? Why are you saying it? Why did you swear? You would never say it. Maybe the saying it is not a really good idea. Maybe you're seeing it differently and it depends on what it is. Maybe you're seeing it differently now in a more mature state and understanding, Oh, this is a perfectly reasonable thing to say here. And having said that it is challenging, you know, it is challenging because of the way we've all been raised. It's challenging to make space for emotions that are difficult, you know, and. Uh, I think probably nine times out of 10, the wheeze, the reason we want to say calm someone down is because their agitation makes us uncomfortable. Doesn't have anything to do with them that we use. And the reason, the reason I'm losing my RS, the reason, the reason we, you know, we want a child to stop crying is because there's something that is inconvenient. Well, it's inconvenient. You know, the timing's off. There's something that we feel like we can't control. No, we can't control their emotional state. So we try to put a lid on it, which is really different than welcoming, you know, welcoming, whatever the emotion is welcoming by the way. Distinct from indulging,

Monica: [00:34:49] right? To me, it's the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking. Say a little bit more about that. Okay. So when we piece key, it's like whose piece are we really keeping we're keeping harpies, right. And this is why I was starting to say earlier, it's we keep silent because it's so uncomfortable for us to say something right. Peace making can be really, actually quite uncomfortable. Yeah, quite loud, quite, quite inconvenient, messy, quite messy. And so peace making could be marching. Peacemaking could be rebelling, but not like what we saw. Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying?

Ken: [00:35:32] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Monica: [00:35:34] So to me, there's a distinction there that I keep that, that keeps coming up for me and. And today in this conversation makes me super add. So I'm just going to like Rocko and Monica claim that today because I'm S I'm so emotionally triggered and you've been like, so generous with me, but I can really, I love that what you just said, because it's so true. It's like us as adults when we have these small children and they are needing our attention, it's really like, we need to look at like, what. We need, how can we really start to fill our own sense of, I think what they're stimulating in us is kind of like our unresolved business, our unresolved stuff.

Ken: [00:36:22] In a, in a lot of cases, I think you're, uh, you're absolutely right. And in other cases, uh, I think there's this, like everybody who doesn't love the notion of control, I mean, really, you know, who doesn't love the idea of in some way, shape or form being in control. Let me phrase that in another way, who doesn't love the illusion of control and. Uh, you know, again, looking out we're part of a greater whole we're part of, you know, we're, we're a system unto ourselves, you know, we're a biological system, uh, where we are a system that contains parts of us that have the capacity for thought and consciousness, where communication systems, where these systems within ourselves, we're part of family systems. We're part of community, social, cultural, national, No, we can go, we can go on we're part of a system that includes that we are not separate from, we are part of a system that, that, that includes us as part of the natural world. And yet we have the audacity to think that we can control that, go out and rail against the weather as if we're going to be able to change it. And you know, this is another piece that, of course, you know, it brings us back to, it brings us back to the, to the violence piece. We can't, we can't control. We can try to control. You know, we can try to control, but it's going to come back and bite us in the ass. Eventually. I think I took us off the children track.

Monica: [00:37:51] Well, we were basically talking about though is relational skills, you know, and, and really, I think fostering are starting to notice where we don't have them. And so going back to kind of like addressing issues or promoting healthy, intimate relationships among boys and men, I think. I think, you know, we can't really expect like, as a mother, it's my job to start noticing where do I see some of this unhelpful man box dialogue coming in and having those conversations and cause like, how do we impact boys? It's really, and it's up to the men, I think to really also start to develop those relational skills. I mean, this is where I'm like looking at you, like, right, right. What do we do?

Ken: [00:38:37] Well, yeah, absolutely. This is one of the keys that we have lost somewhere. You know, it's, the keys are, have been lost somewhere under the sofa and it's time to dig them back out again. And the cell, I'm going to talk about a couple of ways to do that because yeah, of course, you know, children model themselves first on their parents and. What are they seeing in terms of, if they're growing up in homes with a single mother, then they're going to model themselves off of whatever, whatever they see, you know? And I don't know that I want to go down that track right now. Let me come back over here. You know, children model themselves off of what they see by the way, oftentimes talk about the messaging. Oftentimes, if, if I know that. I've never seen my father cry. I've never seen, you know, he gets, he goes to work in the morning and he comes home in the evening, pre COVID and post COVID, you know, I see him going off. So I'm thinking of my own experience. Like dad went off to some mysterious place and did man work during, I had no idea this, this deep, mysterious thing. How was your day at work? It was great. You know, here's some jokes, you know, those are the things that we, you know, those, those are the. The, the patterns that we shape ourselves off of. So. Is there a patience there? Is there a listening? Is there a practiced empathy? Is there, do children get to see, do they get to witness adults having healthy, having a healthy disagreement, you know, And, and healthy, uh, affection and appropriate, uh, you know, uh, uh, uh, affection for one another, you know, did they get to see the full range of emotional expression in the home and know that it, that it belongs? Yeah, no,

Monica: [00:40:37] that it's perfectly. Okay.

Ken: [00:40:39] You know, do they get, yeah, no, that it's perfectly. Okay. Did they get to have the, did they get to see mom and dad having some hard conversations without. Seeing them shut down, you know, they get to see, are they witnessing people who have done their own work, you know, in connection with one another? Or are they witnessing a overly dramatic adolescent shit show and people who are of procreative age, but never actually made it into adulthood. You know, is that what's being modeled for them. So there's no, again, there's a, there's a lot to the equation, but the starting place is always do I have the capacity to listen if I don't have the capacity to listen, am I willing to develop it? Am I willing to have the conversation that I love? Uh, you know, Rick Tamlin, who I think, you know, uh, he asks, how are you, how are you really? You know? And, and the understanding that fine. It's actually not a state of being

Monica: [00:41:42] right. Like what's under

Ken: [00:41:43] that. Yeah. What's, uh, what's under that and, and, and describe fine for me. I love

Monica: [00:41:48] that. I love him

Ken: [00:41:49] knowing that not everybody's going to have, you know, and to be patient also with, you know, because it's really common, you know, uh, adolescent boys, Speaking in one syllable sounds that are not necessarily

Monica: [00:42:02] entirely

Ken: [00:42:04] the groans, you know? Um, and I haven't had to be okay, you know, not demanding, you know, and here's the thing, because we cannot demand, this is a key piece too. We cannot demand an emotion from somebody else. We cannot demand

Monica: [00:42:19] it. We can't demand it and we can understand it of course, from adolescent boys. Right. And there's something here though that that's coming up for me around really, it becomes like. Men women, all of us starting to recognize that it really does start with us as the models for our children, both male and female. And recognizing that we have limit recognizing and being willing to say where our limitations are and where we're noticing our limitations and how we know that there are limitations is when we feel agitated about not being able to deal with something or anxious or want to go and have more bourbon or whatever. Thing is that we want to try to hide because we can't stand it because it feels so messy. It feels so out of control. It feels so it feels so uncomfortable.

Ken: [00:43:09] Yeah. And it is uncomfortable at times. And, but

Monica: [00:43:13] that's the place to look that that's the place to look. That it's, it's like, when I think about what's gonna get us out of this, it's us, us doing the work to help everybody are starting with ourselves.

Ken: [00:43:29] Yeah. And yeah. And if there were, you know, I have lots of wishes, uh, one of my. You know, one of my, my wishes, one of my desires, and I'll keep this focused on men for the time being is well, it's really for human. So let's not, let's not pretend otherwise, no matter how one, uh, no matter what you were identified as at birth or what gender you claim or are notice that you are, it doesn't matter. You know, part of the. You know, but to me, part of being a, a conscious presence adult is really is learning to be comfortable with discomfort. It's learning to be comfortable and embracing. I use the word complexity a lot, you know, it's learning to be comfortable with complexity. It's learning to, to really own the fact that, Hey, you know what, I don't know how this works, but that's the direction I'm going in. Well, where's your destination? No, I don't know. I can't see it yet, but, but, you know, I don't know. And being able to say and, and, and admit, I don't know, being able to ask for help and being able to say that to a child, it's like, you know, I don't, I really don't know by the way, that's not a problem. Not knowing is not a problem.

Monica: [00:44:44] One of my favorite things to be able to say to my children is like, that's actually not my gift. Let's find somebody who can help you.

Ken: [00:44:50] Yeah. Yeah. And being, being witnessed, this is another key piece. You know what our children say that what our children see, do they see parents who are willing to ask for help, particularly men, by the way, this I'm going to point, particularly to men. It is it, that can be a tough nut to crack because, you know, again, because of the function of the, of, as you said, because of the function of the man box, the willingness to ask for help, that's not a sign of weakness. That's a sign of knowing yourself. Yeah. That's a sign of having the confidence and enough self-assuredness and self authority to be willing to say, Hey, you know, I'm not an expert on everything. I don't know more than the generals or everyone, anyone else for that matter? Yeah. It's how do we end this Monica?

Monica: [00:45:41] And what comes up to one more thing is the willingness to say, I'm sorry. I screwed up.

Ken: [00:45:47] Yeah. Their willingness to say. I'm sorry. And before you say, you're sorry to find the part of you, that means

Monica: [00:45:53] it, right? Yes. Yeah, I think our work here has done. Can I think we, I think we uncovered the tip of the iceberg. I always like the huge conversation. And then I feel like we find these little nuggets of gold and we can always kind of come back and do another one and really kind of now unpack a nugget of gold that came out of this conversation. So I just want to thank you. I want to thank you for your work in the world. I want to thank you for showing up and tangling with me and being with all of my emotion and my add Denas today. Thank you.

Ken: [00:46:27] It's a pleasure. Thanks. Thanks so much for the invitation Monica. It's really an honor. Yeah. And just

Monica: [00:46:32] quick, just where can our audience find out more about you because you, I think, well, what I want them to know about you is that you have a podcast. This is a big topic, and that you work with men in a lot of men's group coaching. Yeah,

Ken: [00:46:47] so they can find more about me and my, uh, my programs. Uh, I have one called I am. That starts a couple of times a year, usually in March and September fans for the integrated adult man. And they can find me on LinkedIn, uh, Facebook of course. And, uh, probably the best place is my website, which is Cirrus C I R R U S. Leadership. All one word Cirrus is in the cloud Cirrus leadership.com.

Monica: [00:47:14] Awesome. Okay. We'll put that in the show notes and for guests until next time more to be ready field, we hope you enjoyed this episode. For more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.