Conscious Masculinity: Acceptance Is The Answer

All right. Hello, Cadre Sphere. It is Saturday, first Saturday, the very first. Not only Saturday, but day of November. And so we're going to be exploring this theme of acceptance, which I think is a wonderful thing. Having been in recovery for a long time. Acceptance is a big, big part of kind of our culture, right? Especially in the 12 step culture. So the title of this is Acceptance is the Answer. And really that comes from 12 step literature where there's a story that's very, very popular, written by an alcoholic who got into recovery.

And it was called, well, at first it was called Dr. Alcoholic Addict. Then it became acceptance as the answer. And it became this huge, huge part of recovery culture. And part of it was because the guy says, and I believe acceptance is the answer to all of my problems. When anytime I find anyone or anything unacceptable, it's because I am unable to accept it, I am playing God. So that's a very powerful thing. So what does that have to do with masculinity? Well, I was thinking about that and I think part of it, right, is like the idea of self acceptance for men that's just like not even talked about.

But it's so critical because inside of the majority of men is a very, very self critical dialogue monologue. Not even like just yelling, right? So many guys have this voice inside of them constantly berating them, comes out onto others as well, kind of like, hey, what? Why is this guy getting on me? Well, he's getting on you because he gets on himself h*** of a lot more than he ever gets on you, right? And you know what? And some of those guys, they don't even, they don't even get on other people.

They just beat the out of themselves. So that right, is like self acceptance or a lack thereof. And so this idea of acceptance, this deep, deep acceptance of who we are and who we are as men and that we're okay, like, who we are as men is okay. And that like we can begin to notice how we talk to ourselves, how we pay, you know, how we. The dialogue inside of us, the monologue that is berating us, that is telling us we're less than, that is telling us, you know, we gotta work harder, that we haven't, we can't do this or we can't do that, or we haven't accomplished this, or this accomplishment wasn't worth anything.

And all of that, that at some level comes down to acceptance because it's about self acceptance. It's about saying like, hey man, wow, take it easy, take it easy on yourself. Take it Easy on myself. Like me being able to accept myself. And here's the beautiful thing. When we can accept ourselves, we can accept others so much more easily. When we can see our own imperfections and when we can see kind of how we're like just another person, man, another bozo on the freaking bus. When we can see that, then we can see that with other people, too.

And it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. Self acceptance is not something that is talked about much for men, and yet I think it's one of the more elusive aspects of a man's experience in a man's life. I don't know. A man of all the friends I know, they're all so hard on themselves. It's so hard for them to, like, really genuinely feel good about who they are and, like their accomplishments. And that's just sad, right? But that is masculinity in our culture. Masculinity in our culture is a constant need to prove yourself, reprove yourself.

And the line is always moving, right? You don't. You don't prove yourself. And then it's okay. It's like, oh, hey, congratulations, you've proven yourself. No, you have to prove yourself again and again. And the ability to kind of have your acceptance as a man revoked feels like it's often just. Always just kind of dangling right outside, right outside of our experience. And so I think this idea of acceptance is really, really powerful. It's accepting others, it's accepting ourselves, it's accepting circumstances.

And it's also, I think, accepting ourselves as men, right? Because so much I've seen of so many men is their attempt to prove their masculinity, prove themselves as men. And these young guys who say they're not doing. Who say that they don't care about that, sometimes for them, it's the hardest because they've. They've said, it doesn't matter. I'm not. I'm not living by that. And yet they are. They are in. In more insidious and subtle ways. And maybe it's not as obvious as my generation or older generations or whatever, but when I stop and take the time to really look at myself and the degree to which I am accepting myself as a man in all my imperfections and not holding myself up to this really, really challenging and difficult standard that so much of masculinity often is, right?

And this is where acceptance comes back. We come back and back and back, always to acceptance. And this idea that basically says, hey, you get to be okay, you get to be good enough, you know, you get to be man enough outside of these rigid and draconian kind of standards of masculinity that we internalize and we either bow to and constantly trying to live up to or we resist. And yet they still seem to have a lot of power when we resist them. So those are some of my thoughts on this beautiful day, at least out here in Los Angeles.

Hello, Alexei. Welcome. And you know, I think this idea of acceptance is. It's a powerful meditation. It's a powerful meditation. The more I can accept myself for who I am, warts and all, as we like to say, the more I can have peace. And the more I have peace inside, the more I project that toward others. And at the end of the day, that's really who I'd like to be. It's not who I am all the time, but it's definitely who I'd like to be. Have a great weekend.