Bill: Welcome to Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching. This is another episode with the undaunted man Geoff Laughton and Mark Johnson join us again today to continue the conversation we started in part one. Geoff, Mark, welcome.

Geoff: Thank you. Thank you.

Bill: Good to have you. For those that are actually watching the episode, you're going to see that Mark's in a car and when we started chatting just before the beginning of the episode, he was sitting in a dealership waiting about five hours past when he thought they'd be done with his car.

Bill: Oh my. And trying to manage whatever was happening inside of him while all that was happening. Oh gosh. Wow. So he's been forced into this situation where he's going to be recording this episode with us from his truck. And no, he didn't kill anybody apparently. And then Geoff, you're sitting in your your home office, is that right?

Bill: In Boulder? Near

Geoff: Boulder. Yep.

Bill: And Mark, you're in Denver right now. And Marty, you're still in Mexico? Just another 40 hours. Yeah, before you head back to Boulder? Near Boulder. Near Boulder, yeah. And I'm here in Liberty Lake, Washington. So just let's set up our conversation today. We want to get some completion around the idea of The feminine and the masculine in the undaunted man, which is what Mark and Geoff do with men's groups and but we also want to spend and hopefully the majority of our time talking about this idea of feel the fear and do it anyway, something that Mark said during our last episode and that elicited an internal response from me that really wanted to talk more about that.

Bill: So I'm going to hand it off, Marty, to you. And let's see where we go.

Marty: I think it would be helpful Geoff if you could just recap and maybe frame this again. And what does the undaunted man do? Who shows up? What is it that the conversation is about? Why do why does undaunted man exist? And what is it accomplishing?

Geoff: So to begin with, Undaunted Man has one core mission, which is to support men in getting clear on what their, one term we use is true identity, which is a term That we run into in with a pastor that Mark and I are both fond of and the way he talks about purpose and and being able to differentiate between what our egoic mind Believes our purposes, our identity is, et cetera, and get connected to what our soul, our spirit, knows itself to be and why it's here in a body at this point in time. . . And then support them in community and in one-On-one work we do with men to be able, not only to get there. But then, once they get really clear in their bodies what that is, how do we support them in living in alignment with that purpose? And that, and the vision that hopefully comes with it as they get more clear.

Geoff: And that, when the root of Undaunted Man began 16 years ago now that wasn't what it was about at all. Let's have, let's get together as men and talk about what we're challenged with and how we grow. Now, in the last year or two in particular, Mark and I have gotten crystal clear. That we are committed to helping people live from their soul's purpose and identity, true identity, as the start of everything.

Geoff: Now, the men, before we began recording, and Bill and Marty and I were talking, what brings men and has brought men for the last, really, seven years or so, eight years a lot of our men are millennial aged men some older, but in general, our average guy is in his thirties to mid forties. At the moment, we have a few stragglers that are like 29 or 30, and most of the men who have come to us from the jump have come either because they're really lonely, like they don't have men friends, they have men buddies that they might play sports with, or that they work with, and they can talk about stuff, but it stays superficial.

Geoff: For

Marty: I see.

Geoff: A lot of the men have come because either their relationships are in breakdown and they're trying to figure out what, how do I fix this? Or a lot of guys too, either can't make a relation, haven't been able to make a relationship work. We've had men in their thirties who have yet to be in a relationship.

Mark:And

Geoff: wondering what the hell, like we figuring out this is happening to me. So I gotta be looking in the mirror at what I know and what I don't know that I don't know. And then a lot of guys also come because they're feeling bored. They might be married. They might be parents. They, a lot of our guys are tend to be tech.

Geoff: Yeah. Industry people, not all, but a fair bit. And they're trying to, they've achieved what they thought they were supposed to achieve by this point in their life. And they're like the old Peggy Lee song that some of us are old enough to remember. It's not all there is. And so they're catching the internal drift that Mark and I certainly know, and I know you two know that if you're not connected to purpose at all.

Geoff: You're totally at the mercy of wherever life is going and it's it for me when I was in that place It was very unmoored untethered and really Difficult, so those are some of the key things We've had some people that have come in because they're trying to get sober and we're not an AA group We're not You know, addiction specialists.

Geoff: But we've just found that no matter what your issue is, you're going to get stronger if you have support in general. And every man on this call is a coach. We make our living doing that. And to have it in community.

Geoff: Which selfless plug for Marty's upcoming book, leadership is relationship, involves relationship.

Geoff: That's why we exist. Got it. Those are, pretty prevalent. And because a lot of our guys also, by the way, are tend to be tech professionals. They make their living being in their head. Yeah. So they're not, a lot of them aren't particularly connected to their emotions. But those of them who are in relationship, and this kind of paves the way a little bit for where masculine and feminine principles come in that we talked about last time.

Geoff: A lot of these guys grew up either with poor to no fathering. A lot of us have had moms that might have been smothering or were really. They turned this into surrogate spouses or moms who just shamed and dominated their sons. So now they're grown men, doing okay in the world, and they're in relationships where their woman's attraction to them has waned.

Geoff: and vice versa. And part of it is because they don't know enough about what helps, I'm just going to say your average, straight woman. A part that every woman has is a desire for safety, physical, mental, emotional safety. And the masculine energy, whatever body it's in we emphasize that a lot in part one.

Geoff: Doesn't matter what's between your legs. The masculine energetic principle is order and create safety, protects, provides, when a woman is with a man who's embodying, that kind of energy consistently and not without his feminine. I can't say that enough either. Neither of these are better than the other.

Geoff: They're complimentary. They're both required. And a lot of women in that are with our guys, many of them have really successful professional careers. Some of our guys Our househusbands. And so the woman can go to work where in a corporate setting that masculine energetic is, it makes a big difference in helping a woman be successful in that structure.

Geoff: I've got clients who do that all day and they go home to their husband and their kids and they want to drop into their feminine, feel safe, let, as one woman told me, I want to be able to take my penis off when I get home from work. But if you're with a partner who doesn't have that energetic strength.

Geoff: As a healthy, whatever that means for a given man, a healthy masculine energy that leads the women. You're like, oh, thank you. God. Yeah, they don't have that.

Marty: Let's take this into the fear conversation that we want to focus on unless there's something else. Somebody wants to say about what Geoff just clarified very well.

Bill: I still have a little bit of interest in that piece of the conversation.

Bill: If you can indulge me, and Geoff, you gave an example, and that's what I'm looking for is can you give us an example of. Whether it's typical or not, of how a man might be supported in the undaunted men's group around this idea of, where does feminine and masculine come in the conversation within the group?

Bill: How does it apply?

Geoff: Usually it starts in particular for men that are dealing with relationship challenges and also with men who in their career you know, thinking about one man from a few years back who just wasn't advancing in his career. And he was really befuddled about, I work hard.

Geoff: I know my stuff. I think I'm a great team player, but he wasn't, he couldn't understand that if you want to advance in the corporate world anyway, or entrepreneurs that we have in our community to be a successful entrepreneur. You really have to be good at making shit happen. You got to make it happen.

Geoff: You got to know where you're going. You've got to be committed beyond the beyond. And those elements in our minds are part of that masculine principle domain. Some of the changes that end up happening, firstly in a group, guys find out they're not alone. Because men have also been trained to be lone rangers.

Geoff: Don't admit you're struggling. Don't admit much. Don't ask for help. That means you're Yeah, don't ask for help. First, healing begins when they find out that they're not freaks. In fact, they're probably part of the majority of men. That struggle with these things in one way, shape, or form.

Geoff: We've had guys who have ended up completely changing their career. We've had guys whose marriages have been reinvented successfully. And, We've had men who got really clear that they needed to leave their relationship because they're nice guy. You guys interviewed Dr. Glover a while back, so their nice guy creates the kind of resentment that Glover talks about in that book.

Geoff: And so the woman can turn, resentful, domineering, henpecking, and guys get tired of it. So we help them see how they've created that. Yeah. Yeah. And then what can you turn around? So some guys have left their marriages. And are now in better relationships and they're showing up in a different way.

Geoff: And I'd say the third example was some guys that come to mind right now that, again, they didn't have great modeling for fathering in their childhoods and they've got kids and they really want to be good dads. That's another area where we talk about the importance of both energies, masculine and feminine, because our kids need our hearts, our emotional hearts, but they also need that beautiful kind of father energy that is wrapped in, can be in the masculine side of things that creates order and safety for their kid.

Geoff: Now you. Can't go ahead and light the house next door on fire, but if want to build a really cool Star Wars ship with Legos, let's do that, and help channel their kids energy in a really good way. So did that give you more in it? Yeah, no

Bill: I understand better now how you guys are using the masculine and the feminine and the undaunted man and I'll just say this before we move on to the fear piece and that is that it the use of those words.

Bill: is really hard for me to wrap my mind around because all that you've talked about could apply to a man or to a woman assigning it masculine or feminine energy to me is still quite confusing but I can understand now how you're using it with your in your men's group in my coaching and I have a men's group as well.

Bill: And I also have a separate women's group in my coaching. I don't distinguish between masculine and feminine. I don't actually honestly see the value in doing it and making a difference because for me, what there is to do is to help someone to discover as you're doing your main goal is to help people to identify who they truly are.

Bill: And that's my main goal, too, is to help people to tap into, to recognize, to discover, to rediscover who they really are so they can tap into innate resources and qualities that they have, regardless of what that wiring means for them individually.

Marty: It seems like the concepts that are so important for us, that undaunted is fortifying and nurturing the purpose, true self, true identity, integrity.

Marty: All of that. . Those seem like that's good. Women need that. Men femininity needs that just as much as men and masculinity needs those values.

Mark:No, that, that's absolutely true, Marty, but I, and I think that I can see that, that there's still a gap in understanding because it's not like when we're dealing with a man and having a conversation with the man.

Mark:We tell him that the solution to his problems is to be more masculine. The masculine feminine dynamic is very specifically. Relational. If a man is struggling with his own, is having his own internal battle with something or hasn't his own internal obstacle to get over the solution to getting over that obstacle is not to man up, that, that's not the, that's not the context in which we use the terms are understanding how humans.

Mark:interact with each other, whether it's two men, whether it's two women, whether it's a man and a woman, whether it's a romantic relationship or a friendship or professional relationship or in a corporate environment, the only time those concepts ever come up is in Understanding the relational dynamics and the relational dynamics.

Mark:We all know, if we have a room full of men, the energy in that room, the dynamic in that room has a certain quality, we have a room full of women, that room has a certain dynamic, a certain energetic feeling, a certain quality, that's very different from the room full of men. If you put men in with the women, or women in with the men, the energy in the room changes again.

Mark:The dynamic in there is very different yet again. And what we're, in the simplest, most basic terms, we're simply talking about masculine and feminine energy in those contexts, and that simple analogy probably describes best the way we use the term. And what the purpose of using the term. It's a critical error, almost a, it's a borderline fatal error relationally for a man to walk around, assuming that a woman is going to respond to him in the same way that a man would respond to him and vice versa.

Mark:No scenario where a woman should expect a man to respond to her the way a woman would respond to her. That. It doesn't and number one, it never happens in reality. That's number one. That's a universal truth. And number two, you're setting yourself up and the people that you are operating with for failure by creating that expectation.

Mark:Because in order for a man to respond as a woman would, he would have to go out of integrity with who he is in order to do that. And vice versa. We're in one of the, and Geoff alluded to this very strongly. We're all about being in integrity with who you are. I would never ask a woman to go out of integrity with who she is.

Mark:To respond to me as if she was a man. I want her to respond to me from who she is. Period.

Bill: An example of that, Mark, would then be a man who has taken on the nice guy facade in order to make, try to make things work in a relationship. Yes,

Marty: but women can be nice guys, too

Bill: Definitely.

Marty: Yes

Mark:They can't be nice guys, but they can there's a feminine equivalent to it's a nice guy.

Bill: Exactly they can be nice I restated all of those characteristics out of lover's book And then brought them to my women's group and I said anybody relate to these All hands went up for almost every single one of them,

Mark:right?

Mark:Absolutely Yeah, but the way it meant and so the reason why it's important. It's not that there aren't universal truths that apply But it's the way they apply To a man and a woman is different. We experience things differently. We experience life differently We understand The filter through which we see the world is different

Bill: for so many.

Mark:That's why that Exactly. There's so many that's the purpose of that distinction.

Marty: But then we get into the fact that we all are a mix of both right? Nobody. There's well, there might be somebody who's purely masculine and has no femininity and there might be something like that or the or vice versa.

Marty: But most of us are somewhere in the middle and

Mark:I don't know that I'd agree with that assertion. Most of the evidence that I've seen, and the evidence is very thin to be honest, is that most people are mostly one way, maybe not 100%, I wouldn't make an absolute statement, Close enough to 1 into the spectrum or the other as to have the, any ever be meet, effectively 100%.

Mark:And that's why

Marty: you talked about somebody has been at work calling the shots, being assertive, directive and all of that and then comes home and wants to. Be snuggled and pampered and soft and cuddly. That's there. There's a typical human being.

Mark:For example, I'm very good at going feminine when that nurturing.

Mark:Feminine energy is what is required in a moment. And I've got, I could tell you a great story about that. That just happened to me last week, actually. So I can do that very easily, but that doesn't change my primary identity, it doesn't change my primary way of being in the world. It just means that I can.

Mark:Nurture when nurturing is what's called for.

Marty: I get confused because, and so I thought that what my primary identity was beyond this and that, these questions come up in relation in relating. I was also confused in your email when you said that mathematics is, math is masculine in psychology, that's outside of relationship.

Marty: That's a field of study. It's not about a relationship. This just gets more confusing for me. I think we should.

Geoff: I'm going to reframe it. Another way you could look at what we're talking about is to have a thriving, fulfilling life, in my opinion, requires mastery of the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual.

Geoff: We all truck in those arenas, whether you know it or not, or believe about it or not, care. What to achieve all that there are fairly predictable stages of growth and development that we're going to go through if that's what we're going for. So in a way, what we're doing is trying to give men the most diverse and useful tool belt.

Geoff: That they can have to help lead themselves into the life they want. And so the masculine feminine principles in the relational context, like Mark was saying, they're tools. And, I keep thinking of, remembering. My dad always saying, make sure you always have the right tool for the right job.

Geoff: And I had plenty of examples in my life where I didn't have the right tool for the right job. I think all of us would agree that very little is absolute. We're really just talking about what tools. Do the men that come to us, distinct from the men and women who might come to Bill or to Marty, they happen to be looking for tools that we have years and years of experience to show they work.

Geoff: Because really in the end, I don't give a fuck what tool you use. If you want your life to look a certain way, And you've got your own innate knowing of what's effective or not, then not every tool is going to be effective. You got to find the right ones. I

Mark:said this to somebody last night, we don't really, we are 100 percent path agnostic in the undaunted man, completely path agnostic, completely tool agnostic, all we care about is getting people from where they are to where they want to be.

Mark:And whatever tool gets them there, that's what we offer. Yeah, we don't care about anything else. We're not political. We are not here to make a philosophical stand for one thing being right and another thing being wrong. We are here to help people get from A to B. And what we look for, point B being, meaning where they want to go, is that they feel fulfilled.

Mark:They feel like they are living their life in alignment with the world. Their true identity with who they are, with their purpose, and that their life is, regardless of circumstance, relatively easy to do, relatively easy to live. Awesome. That's the goal.

Geoff: Awesome. Which then, if I may,

Geoff: one of the things that all of us know that we've had to do over and over again to grow, And evolve. One of the biggest impediments to growth is the ego attachments that all humans have, as far as I know and the fear of challenging them, getting uncomfortable, feeling pain, having to struggle.

Geoff: And that's why at the end of episode one with us two, that, feel the fear and do it anyway. That probably was languished a little overly simplistically, but the fear, I'll just speak for me, my biggest obstacle, my whole life has been fear. My life took off in ways that I would have never that younger version of me, not only a boy version of me, but even 10 years ago, five years ago, it really took a lot for me to push through fear, but every growth.

Geoff: For lack of a better term that I've gone through and I'm currently going through, I am having to acknowledge the fear work with parts to, use bills, Bailey wick.

Marty: His tool belt or purse.

Geoff: Yeah, exactly. It's use whatever we use. But what I meant when I made that comment about feel the fear and do it anyway is I just know for me, but I've been doing this a long time. Everybody I've ever worked with that advanced had to deal, if nothing else. With their fear of pain.

Marty: Yes. Yeah. Or fear of change. Or fear of not being the me I've always known myself to be. I think you're right that, I've heard it said from many different schools that there are basically two ways to be in the world. There's be loving or be fearful and. And that's very instructive, I think, a lot of times.

Marty: And yes, if we're not loving life, it's probably because we're in a fearful place. So how does undaunted work with this? If it's not quite as simple as just feel it and go ahead, go through it. How do you work with that? What? How do you like it? And then I'd like to hear, also Bill, 'cause this, I think this is a real one of the fortes, one of the strongest things about IFS.

Marty: So I, I'd like to hear, how you look at this too.

Bill: Yeah. Let's do it in that order, I'd like to hear from Mark and Geoff about this idea of field of fear and do it anyway. Which again I'll remind the listener if you didn't listen to part one. A book written by Susan Geoffers in 1999.

Bill: She's since passed away. She's, she died in 2012. So this book's quite old and and yet the idea is still here and it's a good idea. But let's talk about how it can be a good idea and not just another way to stuff feelings. To bypass them. Yeah.

Mark:Yeah, bypassing is that's actually we spend a lot of time actually talking about bypassing spiritual bypassing psychological bypassing all that a lot.

Mark:But the first thing to do is to actually find out for each person has their own specific flavor of fear that's stopping them, whatever it is that they're afraid of and frequently the the low hanging fruit is You know, fear of it's, fear of not being enough, fear of success, fear of failure, whatever those kinds of kind of what standard kind of bread and butter peers in the modern world, these days, there are a lot of other fears that are really front and center.

Mark:There's. There's fear of being wrong. There's fear of being fear of offending people. There's fear of being politically incorrect. There's fear of being ostracized by your friend group. There's fear of being cancelled. There's fear of being even if you're not cancelled, criticized by your friend group, or mocked on social media, or so the, Number of sources of fear has expanded exponentially over the last 15 to 20 years, especially with the explosion of social media over the last.

Mark:The, this you want to say it's a one size fits all solution and in a way it is, but we get each man to, to the point where he recognizes and can articulate what his fear is. And then we support him through confronting that fear and no longer being stopped by that fear. So when we say feel the fear and do it anyway, if we know that fear is the obstacle or it's.

Mark:Just the next obstacle between where that man is and where he wants to be. The only way he gets where he wants to be is to confront that fear and do it anyway. So he feels it and he does what needs to be done anyway. There isn't any other way to do it. So that's our kind of basic, general approach to this.

Geoff: Yeah. Yeah. I agree with everything Mark just said. With me, it always starts with identifying the fears. And then, in one on one work, there's often more room to, go into, getting the root causes and healing that so that you're. In more self command of your mental, emotional and psychological world,

Marty: as you were talking I just went, just took a deep dive quickly and I think my 3 greatest fears are.

Marty: Of making a mistake that will be harmful like when I had my motorcycle accident broke my leg as an example, right? Or, forgetting that something's cooking on the stove and the house burns down. I have that's 1 of my deepest fears is making that kind of a mistake. Another one is fear of poverty.

Marty: I think this goes back to the conversation around money and the household that I grew up in. We, my dad provided for us very well, but there was always that threat. You don't know what it's like to live through a depression and you better watch out and buh, and. I remember one time I called up when I was, it was during a time in my life when I didn't have a lot of money.

Marty: And my dad said, I'm always afraid to answer the phone when you call because you might be calling from a dumpster. So I grew up with this. That's my second big fear. The third one is fear of madness. Just like the, crazy, irrational behavior that you can't explain, you can't talk to, you can't do anything about.

Marty: It's just madness. That's another one of my greatest fears.

Marty: Fear of coping with people that are coming from madness or fear of madness that you would, that would be coming from you. What are you saying? Either way. Either way. In this conversation, what I've been thinking about is 1997, 1998. I was trying to find my way and what had really determined whatever occupation I was involved in was, would it pay the bills?

Marty: Never did I consider, is this my purpose? Is this, it's what I was born to do. I spent 21 years in the grocery business and I loved the grocery business unless I hated it. And it was that extreme. I either loved it or I hated it and I did it off and on for 21 years in, in those breaks in between when I would quit and then go back to it again and quit and go back to it again, I was.

Marty: I sold cars. There's the you talk about fear. Oh my god fear so i'm Raised a catholic boy and i'm told that i'm a bad person if I don't tell the truth and now i'm on a car Lot, which is where mark just was a couple hours ago or now Fortunately for mark, he was just having to wait to get his vehicle repaired, but I was there You Trying to talk people into buying cars and even though they were great cars And I felt good about the car and the quality of a court car that I was selling What they trained me to do is lie deceive Manipulate coerce people into buying a car and to get as much money as I could from them and make as much profit as I Could for the dealership and no holds were barred I could do just about anything that I could think of to do to get people to say yes to buying a car you and the entire time, and I did this for three years, the entire time that I did it, there was a knot in my gut.

Marty: And that knot in my gut was screaming at me, run from here. Don't do this. You don't want, this is not you and the fear, my greatest fear, Marty you mentioned yours. My greatest fear has always been, what are people going to think of me? Are they going to judge me? Are they going to, are they going to see my imposter?

Marty: Are they going to judge me as wrong and bad? And of course then are they going to reject me? And then contagiously spread the news about what a bad, dishonest person I am. So for three years, just to pay the bills, I'm selling cars. Now, I learned a lot from that. I learned a ton from that experience.

Marty: Most, most of it I won't use, but most of what I learned there was that I can do things even if I'm afraid. I can do things even if it makes me want to puke and if I'm scared enough. So for me, it was a balance of how much fear did I have and what, which fear was going to dictate what I did.

Marty: I was scared enough of not being able to pay the bills and support my family that the fear of being rejected and criticized and judged was not quite as great as that. So therefore I took the job selling cars. The fear that I would have to go do something I hated doing, which was the grocery business.

Marty: Interestingly, After those three years of being in the car business, I found the grocery business to be refreshing.

Marty: All I have to do is unload the truck, cut the tops off the boxes, put the stuff on the shelf, check people out, take their money, say goodbye. That's it. That's all I have to do. Sign me up, please. Yeah, that's exactly what I did do for the next several years, went back to the grocery business. So 1997, 1998.

Marty: Now I have a rare opportunity to get my insurance license and sell property and casualty insurance and life insurance. don't know anything about it. I get, I study, I get my license. I'm set up in, in a sales center situation that's hosted by the sponsored company, which is an insurance company.

Marty: And they say, here is what you need to do in order to stay here in the sales center. Otherwise, you have to go out and pay for your own office and equipment and hire staff and all that stuff. Otherwise, we'll support you as long as you meet these benchmarks. I'm there for a month. They don't expect much.

Marty: But after a couple of months, they, I need to have at least 10 policies in the bag. After three months, so on and so forth. I'm falling way behind. Way behind I'm spending a whole lot of time getting ready to get ready to get ready to sell something I'm so scared So one day dave the sales center manager calls me To the to his office and says bill if numbers don't change.

Marty: We're gonna have to let you go I've never been fired from a job. I've always been one step ahead of him. I always quit I've never been fired from a job and I said You I remember feeling this just intense, overwhelming fear Oh, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Cause I don't want to do what they tell me I should do in order to get the those insurance policies sold.

Marty: And that is to cold call. They want me to, to cold call. They had one evening a week where all of the guys there, no, there was one woman, all of us in the sales center would get together and dial for dollars. And we would just go through the phone book literally. And it's just call people and say, Hey, I'm so and I'm selling this kind of insurance. Would you like a quote on your home and auto? And, 19 out of 20 times they would hang up on me or just say no and use bad words. But one time out of 20 they'd say, your timing is great. Yeah, I'm looking for insurance right now. And I'd get all, I quote the insurance and sometimes I'd get a policy.

Marty: And it worked. It worked, but I hated it and I was so scared. So yes, I know how to feel the fear. And if the fear of not doing it is greater than the fear of doing it, I'll do it. But what a way to live what a way to live. And so when I discovered, first of all, the work of Byron and Katie, and then eventually the internal family systems, what I found another way.

Marty: And that is that when there's fear, that acknowledge the fear and recognize that it's a part of, unless there's a bear busting through the door. Or there's a car coming on me head on the fear. The fears are really not very valid and yet my body feels them my emotions feel them and I react viscerally and My impulses and my actions my reactions.

Marty: My thoughts are all surrounded around and organized around that fear Ifs internal family systems has shown me is That if I can recognize that the fear is coming from a part of me that has taken over my seat of consciousness and now is running the show and my job is to get that part out of the seat of consciousness so that I can step back in there as white as Terry real would say as my wise adult.

Marty: Then, there's no fear to contend with, because I've separated myself from it all together, and it's the wise adult that is doing it anyway. In the meantime, with IFS, I go back to that part of me that has the fear and say, what's going on, bud? What scared you? When did you first get scared? And how is that fear related to what's happening right now?

Marty: And heal that. By healing it, it won't come back into that seat of consciousness, and I'm not feeling the fear and doing it anyhow, I'm healing the fear. And doing any,

Marty: So there's a process that either by Katie's question or the work or the best, having a conversation with the part. And I, some people say let's consider the worst case.

Marty: What? What? What are you afraid of? What could happen? Talk it out. Let's actually go through it. In, in the just in conversation before. So there are processes that it's not just, oh, I'm scared to death dive into the breach. It's there's a process. Is that what you're saying?

Bill: That is and I loved your example. There it is useful. I believe and helpful to go through processes. What's the worst that can happen? However, if that's all you're doing. Then that's a temporary fix to a perm, to an otherwise permanent problem will remain and last until it is healed and the way it is healed is to allow the parts of yourself, access the parts of yourself that are holding that history and the experience that informed the belief, a fear is simply a belief.

Bill: What if this happens is really a belief. This is going to happen and it's my job to make sure it doesn't is what the fear is.

Marty: one of the things that I've noticed that is said about enlightened beings, like Baba Muktananda, for example, is a famous example of a, an Indian yogi Swami who came to the United States and started meditation centers all over.

Marty: And one of the things that was often said about him is that he was fearless. And I remember 1 story told about him was that there was this house that everybody knew was haunted. Don't go in there because terrible things always happen to people when they go into that house and the house was just being, let to rot because nobody Baba went into that house and he sat in there and meditated for 3 days.

Marty: And when he came out, he said, okay, it's safe now. And people started going to that house again. And it's an interesting story but that just goes to show that he had faced and processed all of those beliefs that had led to any fear he could possibly have such that he was fearless.

Mark:Yeah. Yeah. And so we do something similar and undaunted. We don't use, a lot of the concepts overlap, but we clearly don't use IFS. We're not trained IFS practitioners. Our methodology is to is very similar. We don't use exactly the same language. But we work with men to learn how to proactively initiate that process for themselves in a community of other men.

Mark:And that is, that, that gets to the root of how we help each man deal with their fear. And heal their fear, we use, and there's an old acronym that goes back decades, fear is just an acronym. This is false. It's false evidence appearing real. Yeah. That's what fear is. And so we help these men we have all of our men accumulate evidence of the falseness of the fear.

Mark:And what's key, what's most important is they learn to self generate that evidence. They learn to debunk the fear themselves. And that energy that comes from that, that helps them debunk is internally generated and then cultivated and supported by the community that they're in. But that, that, that.

Mark:The impetus comes from them, eventually they get to the point where they self generate that. That's a crucial piece for us, because that's when people start becoming self actualized. That's when they start to become fulfilled.

Marty: What gets that self actualization going? How do you nurture that? Are there certain questions you ask or things you say to them?

Mark:It's always the questions are always specific to the person. And the moment and the fear. So there's no formula really means how we what we do is, you could argue, I guess it's for formulaic.

Mark:But this very specific words that we use are always very different, but it's always a process of helping them. making sure that they know that they're getting over the fear through their own effort with our support. It's not because Geoff or I whispered some magic words and sprinkled some fairy dust on them.

Mark:It's not because of the community. We are simply there as a support mechanism to amplify their own internal strength. And that helps them move forward. And that forward that self generated forward motion. Is what generates the self actualization.

Marty: That community piece seems really key to me. Oh, yeah. If you've got brothers witnessing you being afraid. And you're finding a way to put it in its place and ground yourself in what's really possible who you really are. And that's seen by others that's going to make a big difference than if I just go, in a cave by myself and decide, I better go ahead and do this anyway, you know, it seems crucial.

Geoff: Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead, Geoff. I'm sorry. How many people do that, right? Yeah, I can do it myself.

Marty: Yeah.

Geoff: And it, just the first time when I was, it was about 30 years ago, that I really dove into inner work. I went to do this weekend in California and on day one, the first activity involved rock climbing and I had a horrendous fear of heights.

Geoff: I also, was well over a hundred pounds overweight, so rock climbing sure didn't seem intuitive to me. And and I know that even if I had been with the same trainers that were leading that. And it was just me and them, probably would have been there all day, and I might have gotten one foot off the ground.

Geoff: But the combination of their encouragement, because they never shamed me or anyone, they just lovingly, encouraged me, take one step. And taking one step, And having about 10 other people in the group cheering me on. I didn't grow up with any of that. And that was a life and game changer.

Bill: Yeah. I was just going to say Geoff before you shared that story that and reflecting what Mark was saying too, is that the original community was family and if the families that we grew up in. didn't provide the context that we needed to know that when scary or hurtful or painful things happened, we were still okay.

Bill: We didn't get that. Then we concluded just the opposite, that we're Yeah, thing happened. I have no power over it. Therefore in order to have power over it I must blame myself. So at least now I have something to work on So that's that forms the beliefs that forms

Bill: the fears that forms the imposter syndrome That important informs the insecurity and that informs all the strategies such as nice guy In order to survive in the world when we have concluded that there's something wrong with us.

Mark:Yeah, absolutely true the other side of there's a compliment to what Geoff was referring to with the, because there is this un unlimited bottomless well of support and encouragement along with that, there's also expectations and accountability and responsibility to each other and for each other to be integrous, to keep our word to each other.

Mark:Keep our word to ourselves. All of that is part and parcel of this. No one succeeds based on encouragement alone, if they lack those other pieces. And so we, the way we design the community, it provides both of those things.

Marty: What do you say to somebody who that's the very thing that they're afraid of?

Marty: That's why they're trying to handle it on their own because they don't want what if somebody were holding me accountable? What if I really had to show up like, in community? I think I'm just going to stay home and not check out this undaunted thing because they'll hold me accountable.

Mark:Oh, we get that.

Mark:But then there's that's the conversation. That's where we start. Because what are you afraid of? Sure, you say you're afraid of being held accountable. What are you really afraid of? What's the real fear?

Bill: What's afraid? What are you afraid is going to happen if we hold you accountable?

Mark:Yeah. And then we always say something like the worst thing that can happen is you get everything that you want and you are surrounded by love and encouragement constantly. But, hey, if that's not appealing for you.

Bill: That wouldn't be appealing if you don't have the tools to be able to process that.

Bill: And that is to have something good happen when your life's been bad for most of your life is scary. What am I going to do with that? Watch, look at all the people that win the lottery. And then it's gone a few months later.

Marty: That's a really good point. I think it points to sometimes what it is that we've been told.

Marty: It means to be sounded by love, surrounded by love and encouragement and having all the things we want in life is not what we want. It's there's something in our true self that wants something other than what we've been told we're supposed to want. And so we're afraid of winning at life because it that's not really what I want.

Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's where we have it. We have a very interesting distinction there because we use a concept from a book called the inner game of tennis. And because we are a path agnostic group, but we are. There's a clear spiritual component to everything that we do, but we don't care what path you're on.

Mark:We use terms like self 1 and self 2, which is directly out of the inner game of tennis. Self 1 is the conscious egoic mind, the thinking mind, and self 2 is all the rest of us. And 2 is where the truth of who we are resides. Self 2 is where our true identity resides. That's where God, however you define that for yourself, speaks to you.

Mark:That's where your connection is. That's where your true identity is revealed from. It's not something that we deduce with or using deductive reasoning or anything like that. It's something that's, it's a felt inner knowing of who you are. And in our definition of winning at life, the only definition of winning at life is Getting what's in alignment with that true identity.

Marty: That's beautiful.

Bill: My timekeeper is reminded that we agreed on a secret phrase for when we were approaching the hour and we are

Marty: Shut your mouth!

Bill: And so I won't repeat what the phrase was going to be, but it had something to do with stopping talking. So let's wrap this up. I really want to extend a gratitude and appreciation and acknowledgement, Geoff, to you and Mark for the difference that you're making in the world with these men, for joining us today, and previously earlier last month for these two episodes of Not Your Typical Leadership Coaching.

Bill: You

Bill: should know that you're

Bill: the

Marty: first guest that we've ever had back a second time.

Bill: That's right. That's right. Thank you for that Yeah, thank you very much. They didn't agree to do we just haven't asked anybody yet. Let's do some. This is something that I do in my groups. And I think it'd be fun to start doing with our guests.

Bill: Marty. I didn't pass this by you before, but it's spur of the moment, but I'd like to hear this from each of us. What is 1 thing you're taking away from this conversation that you didn't bring in into it with you.

Geoff: Confirmation that we're on the right track.

Mark:An interest in IFS for me, a sincere interest in understanding more about that modality.

Bill: I got the correlation between I never read the inner game of tennis but Geoff and I both have been learning about and maybe you have to mark about positive intelligence PQ and I see a real correlation there between that book and that that new model that I've been introduced to. Yeah.

Bill: How about you, Marty? What are you taking away?

Marty: It was great that we talked about fear, and I used the opportunity to really get in touch with mine. And so I feel a little liberated. I've named them. I've talked about them. I'm starting to be able to see that I am not them.

Bill: And, the, what is it now?

Bill: 3 million listeners that we have to our podcast. We'll all hear your liberated fears, Marty. Hallelujah. I'd be off in those numbers, if you enjoyed this episode and listen to the rest of our episodes, please, and like us and help us to get our listenership up. Thanks, Geoff.

Bill: Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Bill. Next time. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Mark:Take care.

Geoff: Bye.