Author: Advisor to Men

SHADOW CALLING

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

SHADOW CALLING
Listen to me: A woman secretly craves
being possessed by her man
Not just possessed but taken.

That’s not a rape fantasy
(though for some kinky broads it might be)
but it’s not holding back.

I contend women need a powerful man
with whom she can surrender herself completely,
feeling safe enough to temporarily visit her shadows.

That does not mean rough sex
(though it could for some) but it does mean
you better be the goddamn maestro

in the behind-closed-doors personal porn film
being recorded in each other’s minds.
Where all your secrets are laid bare.

I am fifteen years in with missus
and have never banged her the same way twice
(though I’m not opposed to that).

Her complete surrender to you sexually
is PART of what helps her replenish her power
after making sacrifices under the caregiver archetype.

The nastiness she engages in with you privately
is what allows her to function as the goodly wife in public.
She needs the contrast, as do we all.

It’s the calling of the shadow

 

Power & Love
©CHRIS WALLACE, 2022, all rights reserved

RAPPORT MADE EASY

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

Could you make her smile?
Could you get her to trust you?
Could you make her feel safe?
Could you do that just because you can?

RAPPORT MADE EASY

Here’s the secret to building rapport. Never mind Tony Robbins’s long-winded and over-complicated videos teaching NLP modalities like matching and mirroring. Go ahead and watch them but you won’t learn rapport that way.

Listen to me and you’ll do just enough of what some of those cover, but instinctively. Why? Because I’m not going to ask you to be mechanical or to be anything other than yourself. I will do is teach you how to adopt the kind of mindset you need which will make the rest of it come naturally.

Do you believe you can reinvent yourself if needed? Can you rise to a challenge if circumstances merit? And this: act as if and soon you are. Because it’s no more complicated than that.

Neither did I pull this out of my ass this morning. I have a long history of engaging with people and this has left me with an intuitive approach around others. I have also taught my technique to hundreds of people over the years, male and female and watched their success with people improve immediately. It is easy to learn once you know how.

And that is the thing: It is also unlikely I would have ever noticed these rapport factors if I weren’t forced by context to tease out its component parts so I could teach it. I ran door to door crews for most of my adult life. Well, at least the parts where I had a job… where I had an actual job. You get what I mean.

In a family of eleven, I was smack in the middle (with four brothers and four sisters, and a mom and a dad). I went door to door as a kid single digits in age looking for a job to earn a few dollars shovelling snow or mowing lawns and canvassed all the businesses up on Bank Street near my parents’ home looking for work. At eleven, I worked the carnival, first sweeping floors in a midway restaurant for 12 hours per day, but eventually working a dime-pitch right on the midway.

I started working door to door selling Maclean’s, Chatelaine and TV Guide for Maclean-Hunter in 1972. I’ve run sales crews and trained hundreds of reps on the finer points of sales and crew managing. I’ve worked retail in men’s clothes at several shops. I sold one of the first customer loyalty discount cards in the early 1980s using teams to the public and to businesses. I ran flower teams in Southern Ontario and BC until the late 1990s.

I sold energy to farms and businesses and manufacturers for three years until a few years ago.

Before that, I organized teams to sell subscriptions until newspapers were hurt badly by the move to digital, ending after 13 years as senior VP of Canada. I had up to 150 reps under me with 15 managers in 7 cities working for a dozen newspaper clients. And I have coached, counselled, and mentored people professionally for the better part of three decades.

I realized what I teach you here was the key to it all by watching myself and then recording what worked and sharing that with my reps over the years. Through repetition, I was able to boil it down to two parts of the same factor. To apply it as I teach it requires you shed all neediness and insecurity and expectations. You will soon see why.

The secret to building INSTANT RAPPORT with people is to treat them AS IF you have ALWAYS known them while assuming YOU ALWAYS WILL.

That’s it. But you must believe it to pull it off because it’s no small thing.

Come from THAT place inside you. Do not give yourself a moment to think anything or anyway else. When you look into their eyes, you see someone familiar. You see their history, and you see them yesterday and today and tomorrow and long into the future by just glancing at their face. They must see this in your eyes in return. They must.

That is a critical factor: authenticity.

Sweep your side of the street. Be pure of heart. Your words and affect and body language must be congruent. Failure to be real instils distrust.

You have people in your life you have always known. Perhaps it’s siblings, parents, children, long-time friends. What does it feel like to interact with them? Easy? Good. Make it exactly like that with everyone. No exceptions.

Would you hide yourself from your brothers or sisters, or from your mother or your father, or from someone you had worked with for many years? No. You would be natural and easy-going and even vulnerable and open. Your life before them would be an open book, and because of this, more often than not they respond in kind.

Why is this? Because the congruency of your approach makes them feel safe.

It’s the key to human interaction, to something called the social engagement system. When we meet someone or feel under stress, the ventral vagus connecting the brainstem to the heart and lungs and the trigeminal (tri-facial) nerve is activated. We look to people’s faces for signs of acceptance and especially, for reassurance.

The prosody of one person’s voice calms the other.

In fact, all arguments between people have this at their crux. One or both feel unsafe and want reassurance and is not or are not getting it. All those fights you had with your girlfriend were because you or she needed reassurance. Are you there? Are you with me? This is how human beings attach to each other. Same for women or men or old or young.

Wherever I go, missus is always surprised how people respond to me. If I’m left alone with someone, she expects I will know something personal about the individual, sometimes in minutes. It’s just because I treat people like I have always known them and always will. And I assume the same about them. Because of that, I’m an open book and they feel safe.

Can you use this for evil? You can but it’s hard. People’s sixth sense for safety is strong. Most can spot a fake (incongruency) a mile away. Others scare easily and take a bit more to warm to you.

Hold fast to the good in you.

To genuinely and openly treat people this way takes power. It takes love. It takes your masculine power and love—of which you have an abundance in reserve. Do not deny it from yourself or others, share it with the world. A man who uses his power and love in service of himself and others finds meaning and freedom.

Part of that freedom is being able to talk to anyone at any time in any circumstances. It results in a little less pain in a world built for suffering.

Warren Bennis (1925-2014), a great American leadership scholar said “Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it’s also that difficult.”

The simplicity is in self-acceptance. It is compassion for yourself which leads to compassion for others. It works the other way around too. When we love others, in no small way we love our self.

We are all perfectly imperfect souls.

Just do that, everywhere, always. Lead with power and love. No burned bridges, no unsaid or unfinished business. We are all brothers and sisters here folks: kin in the great human family. Can you use this for good?

Stay powerful, true and free…

Power & Love
cw

 

© CHRIS WALLACE 2020, all rights reserved, advisortomen.co

TAKE A WALK WITH ME

Advisor to Men 4 Comments

TAKE A WALK WITH ME
If I could encourage you to do one thing in the coming year (or tomorrow), it would be to commit to daily walks. I have been doing them for years, and they are integral to my mental health. Turns out I did not just discover this, having felt the pull of the woods since I was a little boy.

On my parents’ street growing up in the 1960s, ma once told me there were some sixty kids on just our end of the two-block length of Falcon Avenue in Ottawa’s south end. The city put a tree in front of every house property road allowance. These were small saplings which grew a little each year.

But a few TALL trees grew on property lines in people’s backyards, towering over the houses, like giants to a young boy’s perceptions.

Refuge for most of us meant the fields at the end of the block where three primary grade schools, one French Roman Catholic, and one of each Roman Catholic and Public schools in English. All these were once part of Grandma Mason’s farm who kept her home still on Brookfield Avenue between the schools. Behind her place was a fallow ten acres but could have been a hundred to my little boy’s mind. I found great spiders and bugs there all summer.

Beyond all this were train tracks, and beyond these, Sawmill Creek. That is where I spend my best times as a child, rafting, exploring, hunting with bow and arrow, tobogganing in winter, and swinging from a great rope at the swinging tree in summer.

There was a well worn single-file trail along the north side which contoured the winding creek but also rose and fell with the grade. Marvelous, the kind of path you felt you could just walk on forever. It was a place to imagine, to simplify, to recover and soothe.

I was not doing anything others had not done before me. Maybe you remember something like this from your younger years. Most of us spent some time in the woods as kids. Indeed, it is how we evolved, to be outside and explore and revel in nature every day. It turns out our minds calibrate to the outdoors.

A little science
Researchers have discovered a 20-minute walk in nature acts as well as medications like Ritalin to improve impulse control and focus for ADHD kids.

Walking through an arboretum sees working memory improved by as much as 20%. Come back in from a walk and your ability to proofread and catch errors in your writing goes up. You can answer questions quickly and more accurately if given a speedy cognitive test.

And what about that incessant worrying we sometimes do? There is nothing like walking outside among the trees and plants to alleviate symptoms of depression. No wonder people love to nourish their soul with a little (or a lot) of gardening. It is better than valium. Your best stress reliever is not a few drinks at the end of the day, but time spent in nature.

Very little of our time is in the fresh air. Most city kids do not even play outside daily. With more than half the world’s population living in cities, a number which could reach 70% by mid-century, we are outside starved. This is unnatural, counter to how we evolved over millennium.

A reference
In The Extended Mind, Annie Paul notes that many of the man-made landscapes around the world carry influences from our past. The way Japanese gardeners prune their trees to look like the branches of trees found in East Africa to the great estate gardens of Europe to New York’s Central Park to how southern US landowners irrigate their rain-starved properties all stem from the same archetype.

“We like wide grassy expanses, dotted by loose clumps of trees with spreading branches, and including a nearby source of water. We like the capacity to see long distances in many directions from a protected perch…  And we like a bit of mystery—a beckoning promise of more to be revealed around the bend,” she writes.

Turns out it’s embedded deep within our psyche.

With nature around us we are smarter, more emotionally stable, less stressed, and more productive. Hospitalized patients who have a window view of nature recover faster and require less pain medication. Big companies are on to the production connection and are adding plants to their workspaces.

How I use it
Since I moved on to acreage almost six years ago, I have benefited from daily walks. I intend to do four per day but often get less. And, I rarely skip a day. To that end, I keep an uneven trail of about a quarter mile mowed of grasses in summer and cleared with a snowblower in winter. I sometimes exercise by tossing a 20lb ball around it at least once in the several times I go around in a day.

Do this tomorrow
Normally it is a walk of about 15 to 20 minutes. Most people over-breathe through the mouth in their daily life at 12-18 breaths or more per minute, according to Daniel Nestor in his book Breath. He says optimum health require 5.5 breaths. So, I take these occasions to practice slowing my nose breathing to 5-6 breaths per minute by counting to six on the inhale and to six on the exhale. Once I have the pattern down, I just relax and look around while I walk. Sure enough, I come back to my office feeling like I am ten feet tall.

Mix it up
Often I will take one of the side-paths off the main trail and head in through the trees just for a change. I have Cedar woods to the north and Pine to the south. This random wandering helps me regulate my body’s stress but also acts as a salve for my mind, kickstarting problem-solving and making my writing easier. It also helps me better serve clients each day.

One of the most peaceful things I do for my self-care is to meander through the two-hundred acres without a real plan. This is often my “big reward” on a Sunday for a week well done. I am well-equipped with woodsman tools and can be gone an hour… or be gone for three or more.

I will bush whack a bit here and there, look for animal sign, find plants I’ve never seen before and a lot of green. The predictable repetition of being in the forest is a bit like being in the relaxed state of a hypnotic trance. If you step into the woods, in less than a minute, its effects take hold and heart rate and blood pressure settle down.

The BIG picture
The forest is always bigger than I am. “Nature… inspires a feeling of abundance, a reassuring sense of permanence” says Annie Paul. In that sense and beyond, it can trigger awe, that wow feeling we can often find in nature. When I found a Red Trillium plant growing by a creek in the back woods last June, I sat there just admiring it for about fifteen minutes. I had never seen one before and didn’t know they existed. I felt the same way the time I found Doll’s Eyes flowers in full bloom not far away. So cool.

Professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, Dacher Keltner, calls awe an emotion “in the upper reaches of pleasure and on the boundary of fear.” It is from there that we open our minds to discover and assimilate new perspectives around us, especially the possibilities and potentials in ourselves and in others. We are all of us under the same heavens of infinite wisdom.

I hope you go for more walks. What would it take for you to make this part of your life? That, no matter what, you give yourself the gift of time in nature? Put away your phone, and allow the left-right-left-right cadence of a walk in the woods activate the harmony of your hemispheres.

I am going for one now.

May you all be awed…

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you and yours.

Power and Love,

Chris Wallace
advisor to men

I do free calls to help men and sometimes agree to work with them.
If you are up to it, here’s my scheduler
https://go.oncehub.com/ChristopherWallace

ADVISOR TO MEN: SEMI-PALEO COOKIES

Advisor to Men Leave a comment
ADVISOR TO MEN: SEMI-PALEO COOKIES
TURN ON OVEN pre-warm oven to 350 degrees
2 cups almond flour (I like the whole nut grind—sometimes I substitute a bit of coconut flour)
½ teaspoon of baking powder
1/3 cup organic dark chocolate chips (omit if desired)
1/3 cup coconut flakes (or substitute with any dried fruit)
1/3 cup crushed fresh walnuts
¼ cup butter
3 tablespoons Maple Syrup
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
1-2 eggs
____________
Mix the almond flour and baking powder with a whisk. I add the dry chips, flakes and nuts and mix it all while it’s dry, while others might fold it in as they add the wet ingredients
Mix the butter, vanilla extract, maple syrup and egg(s) together and then add to dry mix
Fold and stir muscularly by hand with stout baking spatula until well mixed.
Place golf ball sized balls of mixture on parchment paper on your baking pan or size as desired.
Flatten with spatula and round edges to hold shape given chips and nuts
Bake for 20 minutes. Cookies don’t expand like regular flour.
Keep a watch after 15 min checking the bottom of one for just the right colour.
You may need to exercise cook’s prerogative and test by nibbling on it.
Place remainder on cooling rack and call the kids to see who gets dibs on which ones…
Watch a family movie with your children or read them a story before bed.
Tell them you love them even more than cookies. Swear it’s true.
No kids? Practice this recipe in case one day…
Or do the same with your missus or partner.
Tell them you love them more than cookies. Swear it’s true.
Enjoy this minor reward guilt-free.
Tell yourself you love you. Swear it’s true.
True and Free
©2021 CHRIS WALLACE advisortomen.com

ALPHA-BETA

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

ALPHA/BETA
One way to approach this subject is to look up Frans de Waal’s video on Chimpanzees to better understand the term alpha.

Labeling someone an alpha or beta is demeaning to people. For one thing, no such thing exists in humans. Why not? Because human life is too complex for such a simple term.

If we were limited to a highly predictable existence where we ate leaves all day and slept in a nest of grasses at night, interspersed with banging a few females, maybe. But, we don’t.

I like to say that if you are broken down at night in the middle of buttfuck nowhere your money or muscles don’t matter. The only alpha around is the tow truck driver who shows up to rescue your stranded ass.

Men defer to expertise. That’s one reason we build cultures. And, everyone has something to offer. None of us is expert at everything. “None of us knows the all of anything,” is the quote by Robert Louis Stevenson my father had written in marker on his bookcase at home.

Sure, we exist on a continuum of maternal care at one end and predatory aggression at the other, and we tend to form hierarchies. But those tend to always be job or context specific.

When the general gets to a river with his army, he calls in the raft guys to get across—if they are successful, they win the day and are celebrated (like the tow truck operator in the middle of the night). When the general gets to a castle wall, the siege machine operators will carry the day. And why is there a general? It’s because he knows enough shit to lead an army. It’s all context. In fact, context is everything.

If you work at a high-tech company and you’re the smartest engineer out of 200 and can work hard and be social, expect to rise to the top. Everyone under you is beta? Come on.

No man is all things in all situations.

The other issue is labeling in general doesn’t allow as easily the transition from weakness to power. It says you are “this way” or “that way” when in fact, all of us have the capacity to be weak at times, just as we all have the capacity to be more powerful.

I’ve had occasion to think hard about labels because of my own life and expertise around addictions. I’ve known too many hard-core gangsters who became decent men, myself included. And, I have known people written off as hopeless alcoholics or junkies who defeated their compulsion. Too many to call them names.

I much prefer to use weakness and powerful because any weak man can act and be more powerful in an instant if he’s called to do so by his spirit. That’s why we love the come-from-behind story of the underdog vanquishing obstacles to succeed at something. From weakness and insignificance to power and significance is within reach for each and everyone one of us.

Self concept is how you see yourself contrasted against how you believe others see you. One is the character you build and the identity you form, the other is the remnant personality and habits derived from your environmental feedback loop.

The younger you are the more you experience your environment physically (read family, school, etc.). Those experiences are recorded into the very neurons of your body. That’s where feelings and your subconscious exist. You have the same neurons for life.

The male brain doesn’t fully develop until age thirty. That’s why addictions are often picked up before that age. It’s also the age where a significant amount of people give up an addiction on their own. (the rest need extra help and keep men like me busy).

So why would we saddle a male with a term like beta? I’ll tell you why: Competition derived from predatory aggression and our tendencies to hierarchies.

There are two main ways males tend to compete.

In one way, we go head to head, mano a mano, or often against a group of men. Each lays down their best performance and may the best man win. This is how we discover who among us has expertise we can use for the group’s benefit. Afterwards, in that context, we remember who our top man or men are, so that if that situation arises again, we know who to call.

Men tend to have relationships with a wide variety of groups of other men. They can form loose bonds and move in and out of these groups with a fair amount of ease. Women, on the other hand, tend to have just one or two (and usually no more than five) girlfriends she guards jealously. These she uses for emotional regulation. Men generally have no such need.

This is another reason why men build cultures; and why women tend to stress-test them.

But it’s the second way men compete which is often problematic: It’s the put down.

Men test each other from an early age. You can see it in kids as young as grade two or three, where boys push each other to find out if you are a girl or a boy. Researchers who study this figure it’s because it is boys who grow up and defend their tribes and nations.

It is said the calling out and such is an early form of making sure the other males will be able to stand next to you and fight the enemy later in life. The literature suggests an innate trait.

Little boys create imaginary enemies early in life. Little girls do not do this. Give a piece of cloth to five-year-old kids and a boy will make a cape and become a superhero; a little girl spreads it on the ground and has a picnic with her dolls and stuffed toys.

If you hook up fMRI to males and present them with two situations, one where he competes head to head fairly, and one where he competes by putting others down, the same reward centers of the brain light up, and doesn’t discern between the two.

This may be why bullying will never completely go away.

Examining these two approaches used by men, one is prosocial, while the other is not. Anything beyond mild ball busting is, in most cases, very much antisocial, but derived from that insecurity found in children who test each other’s interdependence.

We don’t apologize for being men. That’s my stance. Yet, that doesn’t mean we don’t try to become better men. Or, in fact, grow into becoming the best men we can be.

So, men’s way of challenging each other exists on a competition continuum. It might go from head to head group or individual competing to mild ball busting to calling each other out directly to outright bullying to punching each other in the face.

I’d ask anyone reading this if calling others “beta men” is just a way to affirm their own status, a way to aggrandize themselves at someone else’s expense. What’s behind that?

Given what we know about how people take in information from their environments below age thirty, who does it help to call someone beta?

That part of self-concept which derives from how you believe others see you can both propel you forward but also become a burden. For many, their family of origin programming and childhoods are a cross they bear.

Trust me when I say I have lived too faulted a life to judge anyone else’s with much conviction.

I was once diagnosed an antisocial after I shot someone and spent 30 days in a locked psychiatric ward being assessed by the courts. You can bet that label followed me thereafter.

I’ve also been weak in my lifetime enough times to know people can and do change. I’m living proof a man can claim his power for good if he wants. Yet, it is only by bringing things into awareness that we advance the possibility of change.

Which brings me to my last point: something I call PHD. The paradox of human development says adults make your decisions when you were a child experiencing your environment physically (remember, your brain does not fully develop until near age 30).

You needed protection, shelter, sustenance, and nurturing, and so, created a conforming ego to survive. You did this with the heart and mind of a child, internalizing sensations, images, behaviours, feelings, and meanings, which obscured your true self.

We all have this judgmental side to us as a result. When we judge ourselves, others, or circumstances harshly, we are operating from the basis of what Freud called the superego. Carl Jung called it the conforming ego.

It’s Grandma’s law: “eat your vegetables before dessert.” It’s: “don’t talk back to adults.” It’s all the rules you were told to follow… for your own good. It’s the demand you tow the line.

It’s that part of you which was taught to you by parents and teachers and other adults around you as a child echoing in the back of your mind, often showing up as the “inner critic.”

These thoughts are usually expressed under the tyranny of words like “should, would, could, what if, if only and must,” serving to remind you that you are not good enough, keeping you fearful and uncertain. Not only do we beat ourselves up under this conforming ego, but we project it out to the people around us and our circumstances. We make demands of others.

We have studied this: it’s not your best side. I go further: your quest in life is to dampen this conforming ego and develop your own identity, one which manifests your gifts. The conforming ego is stultifying, existing only to keep you safe. It keeps you playing small.

Watching Frans De Waal’s talk about alpha chimps—who do spend all day eating leaves and sleeping in nest of grasses at night and banging chimp wenches—you will discover the basis of what Jung called the King archetype in humans. Chimp DNA is less than 3% different than that of humans (male and female humans have less than a 2% difference).

De Waal’s alpha chimp not only get to bang the wenches, but also get to look after ALL the members of the troupe, right down to the weakest. Roosters do the same thing.

And, if an alpha chimp doesn’t work to benefit the whole troupe, a few lesser males will get together and take him out. Humans do the same thing. A version of this leaked out from Vietnam vets in the 1970s about “fragging” a bully unit commander. In the heat of battle, it was “sorry, somehow, Sarge took one to the back of the head.” Happens with gangsters all the time as well.

That’s another compelling reason why using the term alpha for humans is misplaced.

Archetypes are instinctual energies found in all of mankind. Everywhere you go, people are afraid of the dark. Everywhere you go, people are afraid of heights. And, the same metaphors are repeated in cultural histories the world over despite being continents and millennia apart.

Carl Jung said these archetypes were proof of the existence of a “collective unconscious.” One such energy is the King archetype. It exists in every man.

According to Jungian analysts Moore and Gillette, the archetype of the King is responsible for order, fertility, and blessings.  What is a realm without order?

Now, we are not referring to wanton order imposed by a tyrant. No. We are speaking of order in the sense the needs of the many outweigh those of the few. We are talking Golden Rule.

Fertility is all about the mental, physical, social, and spiritual health of the ruler whose acts are in service of the greater good. It’s the benevolent King. When the King is healthy and rules with passion for his people, the crops grow, the granaries and pantries of the kingdom are full, and the loyalty of the people is assured. And, the women willingly produce offspring.

Blessings are the Kingly equivalent of encouragement. In a monarchy, the King might “Knight” a subject as a way of recognizing their contribution to society. He may even create an “order” bearing their name. The King can hand out “merits” and other rewards to the citizens of the realm.

Suffice it to say, a man aware of his King energy will see the good in people, often before they see it in themselves, and makes sure to let others know they are appreciated.

Look, I’m not perfect at this but you can bet we all live more powerful lives when we embrace our King energy and live up to our “true self.” Judging others always comes from a place of fear. Better to just notice how others are and then rise to your best self.

The advantage of the higher self is that it sees the silver lining, the gift in anything. This energy can spot the gold in others and serves to bring out people’s best.

Your duty to the universe is to find your true self once more.

It is to examine the beliefs, meanings, sensations, images, feelings, and behaviours inherited from your PHD upbringing, discarding what you have outgrown while adopting a truer identity with which to manifest your gifts.

Not because you can, not because you want to, but because it is what you owe.

Stay powerful, never give up
cw

©CKWallace, June, 2020, all rights reserved
Advisor to Men, Mentor at Large
advisortomen.com

CLICK HERE FOR A FREE DISCOVERY CALL

CHIVALROUS BOYS

Advisor to Men Leave a comment

CHIVALROUS BOYS
No one becomes a parent with the intention to fuck a kid up. Every parent has good intentions. It’s a paradox of human development that we arrive here out of chaos but also from the infinite wisdom of a universe which does not make mistakes. It would be hubris to believe otherwise.

When it comes to men and women, it has been decades since I abandoned the notion that the two genders are similar enough to assign differences to some minor configuration of upbringing or inborn temperament or personality.

To be sure women can do pretty much anything a man can do but will have durable preferences found around the world. It is said there is less than 2% difference in male and female DNA. Not much, until you consider the DNA differences between humans and chimpanzees is somewhere around 3%.

The important of fathers to young boys is in the news, with many believing it is a crisis prevalent in western culture. Books and blogs abound on the subject, not only about absent fathers but inadequate ones too. We have suffered several generations of decline in the role of men in their children’s lives as the move to cities replaced the family farm of old.

For men actively raising sons, I want to urge caution when confronted by the egalitarian forces of political correctness. While my daughter should have equal opportunity in life as should my son, they are too different to be called equals outside that they are both little humans beloved by their parents.

Recently, a large study was undertaken in New York and Illinois involving 200 kids. The study tested for chivalrous behaviour in young boys. The international study, carried out in partnership with New York University (NYU), found that “both boys and girls have ingrained sexist attitudes towards women.

Girls change these attitudes as they age, however, boys tend to keep their “benevolent, patronizing views”, surmises the study published in the scientific journal Sex Roles.

It is my contention these kinds of studies, often widely reported in the news, are not worth the paper they are written on.

Authors of the study asked a couple of hundred kids questions and used benevolent statements like ‘men need to protect women from danger’ as well as hostile questions, like ‘women get more upset than men about small things’.

Incredibly (or laughably) researchers found “hostile sexism decreased with age for both boys and girls, benevolent sexism decreased with age only for girls.”

So we are not talking about the idea that women get more upset or are more emotional as a prejudice carried into adulthood, but specifically “benevolent sexism” such as wanting to protect women from danger.

Furthermore, the authors contend this means little boys grow up to be “patronizing” to women. Because, of course, wanting to protect women (and by extension, children) is somehow putting women down.

It is precisely the kind of white night claptrap that has good-intentioned men everywhere confused. Thank the social constructionists for this one.

These two men, Matthew Hammond from University of Victoria and Andrei Cimpian from NYU are idiots. Hammond insists, “these principles (men defending women from danger) could be harmful down the track.”

Let me bring you in on a little secret. Girls are egalitarian, boys are competitive. In study after study, at very young ages—well before nurture can supplant nature—little girls and little boys see and act in the world differently.

Scarcity creates value. That’s why diamonds and gold are expensive. A man produces billions of sperm per month, she usually produces one egg.

Her value as a caregiver to young and old and everyone in between makes her the more precious sex. In the most egalitarian cultures of the world like the Scandinavian countries, women with the greatest options still choose to become teachers and nurses and caregivers.

Give a 2 x 3 foot piece of material to a 4 year old boy and one to a girl and he’s making a cape to become a superhero to fight enemies while she spreads it out on the ground to have a picnic with her dolls and stuffies.

Give kids in grade school word puzzles in a team of eight, boys will compete and give each other answers contributing to the whole while girls find ONE girl they can pair up with and work on their puzzle, effectively turning a team of 8 girls into four teams of two. They get things done but in their own way.

Get grade school kids to race each other. Boys and girls together: best times; boys against boys: best times; girls against girls: times drop. Why? Because to standout among the other girls means risking social exclusion. We compete differently.

A study of almost a half million over twenty years in Europe confirmed men’s advantage in all things spatial whereas women were better at reading emotions and verbal skills. Things or people is a real male to female preference.

So, none of these require men to protect a woman. They are just differences between two complimentary sexes. Nature had a plan.

However, men are heavier, taller and have greater lung capacity. They have bigger hearts and more red blood cells. Their wounds heal faster. The cranium in males is thicker in front.

Men have denser and stronger bones whereas women have more delicate skeletons, including a thinner cranium (I cringe watching female boxing). Men have larger teeth, more muscle and less fat.

We are stronger by 50% in the upper body and by 40% in the lower body. Our hand strength is greater—which is why you open the pickle jars at home.

Men’s brains are about a quarter pounder bigger but neurons fire differently. His connectivity is more back to front and within hemisphere, whereas she has greater connectivity between the two hemispheres.

But where guys like Hammond and Cimpian get off the track is in decrying that little boys are being nurtured to have patronizing views of women just because they carry chivalrous tendencies as children that endure. There is no such danger.

Would you have women not be defended by men? What kind of culture would that produce?

Intra-partner violence occurs at the same rate of less than one in five couples with differences in how men and women fight contributing to varying consequences. There exists a tiny percentage of males who are serial abusers. One of the best remedies for such a woman is to surround herself with other men who can protect her from such a man. It works, well.

I have a young son going to turn seven and a daughter who has just turned nine. You can bet I want my boy defending his sister. Just as I want her looking out for him as he winds his way through school two grades behind her.

Little boys grow up to be the young men who defend nations, standing shoulder to shoulder with other young men and fighting enemies. They prepare their whole lives for this possibility. It’s a hardwired trait which shows up in the crib.

There is good reason we admonish young men with scolds like “that’s no way to treat a lady” and “ladies first” and so forth. Would you have a sinking Titanic with the men leaving the women and children on deck and filling the lifeboats to save themselves because otherwise their chivalry might seem “patronizing?”

Look, these fuckwads who call themselves social scientists are a passing fad.

I want to bring your attention to the Lindy Effect: a book which has been published for one hundred years and still being read is almost assuredly going to be read in one hundred years more. A book published three months ago has almost no chance of being read in a hundred years.

See the difference? I’ll bet on nature. Maybe you should too.

Human sexes are complimentary. We came to fit each other like a lock and key over millions of years of evolution to the efficiencies of modern existence.

We have always banded together and taken advantage of each other’s strengths while shoring up each other’s weakness. In my humble opinion, it is unnatural to NOT defend a woman who needs it, just as it is unnatural to discourage this essential protector spirit in our young boys.

Every young man needs to learn how to treat a lady. Not only is it polite, the differences in how women process information and their differing priorities in life, as well as the contrasts in approaches to competition and to intimate relationships require finesse.

A boy should learn this from his mother for she is his model for love. And as surely as he must leave her to become a man, his respect for women hopefully remains. It is her prerogative to teach her boys what she feels they should know, just as it will be part of their maturation to leave behind that which no longer serves them once they reach and live their adulthood. Besides, that’s part of what dads are for: to offer perspective as well as their experience.

We need more chivalry, not less. The answer to problems of masculinity is more masculinity, not less. The young boys in this study display some of the best of what it is to be male and these dipshits sociologist want to erase it in the name of remotely possible “patronizing” behaviour later. This is male weakness at play, the feminization of the school system all the way past graduate levels.

Besides, the challenges and fun between the sexes are mostly in our differences. These we should celebrate as fantastic challenges for which we were made.

Stay powerful, never give up
cw

CHRISTOPHER K WALLACE
Advisor, mentor

©2019 CKWALLACE all rights reserved

Chivalrous boy behavior Hammond

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2020/04/chivalrous-behaviour-from-boys-may-be-early-warning-sign-of-sexism-study-finds.html

Physiological sex diffences
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_physiology

Racing grade school kids
The Sexual Paradox, Susan Pinker (2008) chapter 8

Grade school word puzzle teams
Warriors and Worriers, Joyce Benenson, (2014)

Other worthwhile reading:
Men and Women, an Inside Story, Donald Plaff, (2011)
Sex Differences in Cognitive Abilities, 4th edition, Diane Halpern, (2012)

SOUL AND SPIRIT

Advisor to Men 1 Comment


SOUL AND SPIRIT
I think most people have an inkling of their two selves: a rational thought and logic-based self for day-to-day utility using primarily language as its means of communication within consciousness; and a deeper, emotionally intuitive self where their passions, wishes, dreams and aspirations reside communicated through the body’s dreams and somatic experience.

Whereas the thinking part of self is always located in our heads, the intuitive and emotional part is more physiological. People will often point to their heart or mid-chest towards the sternum as the location of this part of self.

We are advised to listen to our gut when appraising circumstances and deciding things, as if this gut and heart experience represents a truer form of our internal identity and might bring a closer understanding of our needs and a better path to our end goals. We could call this the body mind, appreciating how it bypasses the strictly rational self (and comes before it seeking self-preservation) and often seems to speak from a wiser or higher form of self.

We seem to instinctively know the gut is less encumbered by the rules and expectations we’ve picked up conforming to the wishes of  adults who raise us. We can bypass the intrusiveness and often endless complications of our thinking by going directly to the gut. We realize our trust in thought alone is faulty because we know our thoughts are informed just as much by other’s wishes for us (or for themselves in our regard) as they are our own.

I read that we often have tens of thousands of thoughts in a day. How many feelings will I have in that period? Because of the power of focus, I’ll only become aware of a tiny portion of either of these. Feelings paint my experience with much broader strokes than do my thoughts, which are often errant and imprecise themselves.

We realize our very survival depends upon having a well-honed intuition for danger. That “sixth sense” we sometimes detect when confronting a puzzling or uncertain circumstance can make the difference between life or death. There is more than a little truth to the maxim, “if you’re in your head, you’re dead.”

Often enough, thinking gets in the way, and feeling and acting saves the day.

A hundred years ago, Carl Jung’s model of the human psyche described how we have a “true self,” something we are born with. It’s our essential nature, what we arrive with, perhaps in terms of raw material encoded in our DNA. It is also what becomes obscured by ego formation, the process of learning to conform with the adults upon whom we depend for sustenance and protection. Later, the psyche is further divided as the ego adopt various masks to wear in public or in private performing differing societal roles.

You may be one way at home, another at work, and adopt differing personalities as a father or mother, lover, friend, community member, churchgoer, etc. Jung called these personae and we can see how this ego buries true self even more.

The true self idea is interesting because it suggests we arrive in this world with a blueprint, a “truth,” which is later forged into a self concept which takes into account those around us. Our idea of who we are, then, becomes how we see ourselves contrasted against how we believe others see us.

This inner self would contain our “potentials and possibilities,” something the mythologist Joseph Campbell mentions in his books, “the Power of Myth” and “Pathways to Bliss.” We could even call it something like a soul. Jung himself authored a book called “Modern Man in Search of a Soul” in 1933.

They say Immanuel Kant gave us back our concept of “soul” in the late 1700’s, wresting the idea from the rationalists, saying, “I, as a thinking being, am the absolute subject of all my possible judgments and this representation of myself cannot be employed as a determination of any other thing. Therefore, I, as thinking being (soul), am substance.”

Kant seems to say because everything we see, think and feel, can only be through our personal lens. It is this internal system which allows us to project a systematizing force upon our environment. It precedes reality.

Our DNA blueprint is ours, and how it is manifested upon the world around us is filtered by ego and experience but still entirely personal.

And what would this “soul” be made up of? Is there proof of its existence beyond a sense that is there? Can we point to some tangible proof from the sciences and the metaphysical arts? Something which would tell us it is more than a simple heuristic? Let’s take a shot at it:

First, we know influences on ancestral DNA are passed down through the methyl groups. This is field of “behavioural epigenetics” holds a lot of promise. I have often thought it might even explain why alcoholism runs in families. Grandchildren of holocaust survivors are affected by their ancestral experiences.

Furthermore, we’ve identified inborn temperaments such as labile vs non-reactive; dysthymic vs optimistic; anxious vs calm; obsessive vs distracted; passive vs aggressive; irritable vs cheerful; shy vs sociable and mood suggesting methyl group influences. We are not born as a blank slate but come programmed in advance.

Wouldn’t that be part of the soul?

What about Carl Jung’s idea of collective unconscious, humanity’s shared memory? Pointing to the mythological record, we see variations of myths have been repeated throughout history, often continents apart and in different era, in cultures which had no contact. This gives us an idea of our connection to each other.

Similarities occur from Egyptians and ancient Greece, China and India and even North and South American Indian myths and rituals, to the three Abrahamic religions, and we see the same stories in variation. The two books by Campbell mentioned above are a good start if you are interested in learning more.

Jung suggested we all possess this common background. We are all born afraid of the dark and of heights. If you showed a snake to grade school kids in Siberia in the 1950’s where there are no snakes, half of them would recoil in fear. Why? Jung would say that’s the collective unconscious. It is our instincts, the ones we have in common with others.

We know from the baby gaze studies at Yale that we are born with at least a rudimentary sense of justice. We can tell good from evil almost right away. Far from arriving into this world as a blank slate, we each come pre-programmed with some of our direct ancestry’s influence and archetypes—qualities of memory which govern all men (and women).

Couldn’t we say that’s part of your soul?

With what we know about how emotions are made in the last ten years I’d add at least one more thing: we know the brain is “predictive,” not reactive.

In any given situation, beneath your awareness the brain receives messages from the body (called interoception) through the tenth cranial nerve wired to the brain stem. It uses this information to put you in the best-guess state to meet circumstances relying on your databank of prior experience since birth. Then, your brain corrects after the fact according to the social reality before you. All this happens mostly beneath awareness.

Arrive home later for supper and snap at your significant other over something trivial. Later, while eating you realize you had not had any food since late morning and were famished. The body responded and you lashed out without even realizing what was driving your impatience.

The whole brain works predictively this way, subconsciously running things beneath the surface. You only get the results. Thoughts reflect what is happening in the body. Then, we use those thoughts to make sense of our world, applying an ample internal bias to the process.

So, we possess an inborn temperament and we share a collective unconscious… so wouldn’t a databank of prior experience become part of your soul?

This would suggest the idea of a soul made up of your personal ancestry, a species-wide shared memory, and a personal lived history, forces informing the present with what is brought forward from the past.

We could add another influence to account for gender.

In his book, The Psychology of Transference, Jung wrote: “The “soul” which accrues to ego-consciousness during the opus has a feminine character in the man and a masculine character in a woman. His anima wants to reconcile and unite; her animus tries to discern and discriminate.”

Since males have XY chromosomes and females XX chromosomes, it would mean Jung’s masculine and feminine “energies,” as such, would be less derived from DNA per se, simply because women with two X chromosomes would not experience influences from the “male” Y chromosome.

Rather, it is the varying levels of the male and female sex hormones testosterone and estrogen, which occur because of the XX and XY differences. Both sexes have some, though men far higher levels of testosterone and women far higher levels of estrogen.

As men age, their level of testosterone wanes. Is this why aging men often find they can access the anima (feminine sourced energy), becoming more compassionate and finding the inter-connectedness between all things? That’s fine with me and as good a guess as any. But let’s leave that aside for now.

Combined, this gets us to the present, but how does the soul manifest itself?

What about spirit? We see it in admiration of types in the animal kingdom, appreciating a spirited horse, for example. We may find ourselves stirred with the animal spirit when we consider the great migrations of African Wildebeest or Canadian Caribou. Or the majesty of a Bald Eagle, an Asian Tiger or African Elephant. It’s clear we have a sense of spirit if only in the way we might admire those whom we find “spirited.” My adopted “animal totem” is the rooster, standing for loyalty, flamboyance and protection, among other qualities. It was the first animal heard in the morn after a battle and the Celts said it was communicating with the dead. Mysterious.

And who can see a sunrise or sunset and not feel a connection to spirit? Go into a desert or Canada’s arboreal forest at night far away from the lights of the city and gaze up and the sky and the Milky Way. If you have never seen the Northern Lights, I say go see them and tell me about your spirit.

Great art, cathedrals, music, nature and people all lift spirit. And why is it we cannot help but be attracted to the underdog in any story? Why is it the quintessential human experience is to root for the downtrodden? From Rocky Balboa to Luke Skywalker to Florence Nightingale and Joan of Arc, we appreciate heroes for their spirited commitment to a cause.

Because it always involves the spirit acting to overcome a challenge. It is always about being lost but somehow, our hero finds themselves again. It’s the great Hail Mary Pass of life, the long shot, the one in a million chance. It’s irresistible.

And that’s because so are you. It’s the Hero’s Journey, something the mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote about in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” In this collection he shows how the Hero’s Journey is the story of human beings. It is the stuff of our legends as told around fires for thousands of years.

We live these stages repeatedly in our lifetime, roughly following these steps:
The hero is confronted
The hero rejects the challenge
The hero accepts the challenge
The hero undergoes a road of trials
The hero gathers allies, gaining power
The hero confronts evil—and is defeated
The hero undergoes a dark night of the soul
The hero takes a leap of faith
The hero confronts evil—and is victorious
The hero becomes a teacher

This is our shared destiny and your soul and spirit are compelled to contribute. You see, the universe doesn’t make mistakes.

Though you began as a glint in your parent’s eyes, something like 40 million to 1.2 billion possibilities competed to bring you to life. You could have been born a girl, a boy, with missing limbs or whatever. But, no, you were born you.

You were the underdog and you vanquished all others and won the race. This is a staggering feat: the universe in its infinite wisdom, the same force which put a billion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy, chose you. Your prize was a life.

I suggest your soul represents your true self, the gifts you bring to this existence. The spirit is its voice. One is the present and past combining into your potentials while the other is the present and future suggesting your possibilities.

Consider that your self concept is made up of how you see yourself contrasted against how you believe others see you, maturation involves strengthening your inside game, relying less on what can become the tyranny of external influence. Soul and spirit are your keys to a more powerful you. It’s how you gain awareness of what was previously only in your subconscious. This is what brings about the possibility of change. It is where your free will begins: personal power equals agency.

Kant said, “two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral laws within me.” It is your duty to share your contribution with the world. “Be afraid to die,” said Horace Mann, “until you have won a victory for mankind.” Give us something, anything, it says, if only the goodness you spread among your fellow man.

The soul and spirit are the forces behind your Hero’s Journey. Not because it’s what you can do. Not because it is necessarily because it’s what you want. No. It’s because it’s what you owe. The miracle of your life demands it.

Take time to honour your soul and listen to your spirit.

Stay powerful, never give up
cw

©2020 Christopher K Wallace
all rights reserved

BOOK A FREE CALL HERE

Further reading:

Methyl groups and epigenetics
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/grandmas-experiences-leave-a-mark-on-your-genes

Joseph Campbell:
The Power of Myth, 1988, Anchor Books
Pathways to Bliss, 2004, Joseph Campbell Foundation
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949, Meridian Books

Carl Jung:
Modern Man in Search of a Soul, 1933, Harvest Books,
The Psychology of Transference, 1983 Routledge Books

Lisa Feldman-Barrett:
How Emotions are Made: the secret life of the brain, 2017, Pan Macmillan

Hero’s Journey interpretation
Steven Barnes, Lifewriting

Katharina T. Kraus, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2017
Kant’s Critique of Metaphysics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2004
The Soul as the Guiding Idea of psychology: Kant on scientific psychology, systematicity, and the idea of the soul

SOCIAL DISTANCING: lessons from prison

Advisor to Men Leave a comment



SOCIAL DISTANCING: lessons from prison

As unprecedented as this pandemic situation is, whether you conceive it as highly intrusive or a mere inconvenience, a re-alignment to daily living which permits you to maintain your sanity is needed.

The goal is to isolate people so that the virus can run its course while we chase it down and remove its ability to replicate itself. At some point, we hope to see the last patient or person affected and see it off forevermore.

We don’t have a choice.

If we do nothing it would mean an overwhelming of our current medical resources with no guarantee the virus wouldn’t just keep mutating. Then, the whole round starts over again. The idea of catching the affliction and becoming immune could be a fleeting strategy.

The ideal solution is to let it die by not hosting it anywhere.

Of course, governments are falling over themselves to enact powers allowing them to get this done. Freedoms will be curtailed, if not voluntarily, soon legislatively.

It is your freedom I’m going to refer to here.

Specifically, you have no doubt by now been told social isolation is required. The Spanish Flu of 1918 (50,000,000 deaths ) and SARS (10% death rate) in the early part of the 2000s are our comparisons.

This time, no one is messing around. You are staying home.

_________________

HOW TO DO TIME

A guy appears before a judge for a minor offense. Judge finds him guilty and sentences him to 30 days in prison. The convict pipes up, “30 days judge? Ha! I can do that standing on my head!” So, the judge calmly replies, “Is that right Mr Defendant? Well here’s 30 days more you can do standing on your feet…”

Case closed. Next!

Every kid going to prison for the first time hears about the dummy who doubled his sentence. It never gets old.

So how do you handle staying indoors or at home for up to the next 8 months or longer?

I’m reminded of the times I was in prison. I know, I know, already I’m referring to having to stay home as prison instead of the modern conditions most of us live in. For sure, the penitentiary or reformatory or county jail is not the same thing.

Regardless, there are many similarities depending on your frame of mind.

I tell you this because several times in my earlier years I was tossed inside. Most often, my life began to unravel immediately. Why wouldn’t it? Fact is my life was hardly “together” in the first place. Usually, I was apprehended and kept in prison on remand until I pled guilty.

The problem with doing time is all the stuff you had going on out there on the street either falls to shit or must be done through intermediaries. That is risky because the more people between you and your “stuff,” the higher likelihood of things going wrong.

Look, plenty of guys have done more time than me. I was lucky. Hell, I am lucky to be alive. But I bet each of them will agree with the things I’m about to tell you.

You might be like the newbie con whose life has imploded and he (or maybe she in your case) is still attached to the life they once lived (as good or as bad as it might have been).

In prison parlance, we call that, “shaking it rough.”

So, in case you are shaking it rough, here are my rules for doing time.

1. Forget about the outside
Nothing torments a new guy in prison more than to find his body is behind bars while his mind is still on the street. The first few months after going in he’s arranging visits and mail and phone calls trying to control the uncontrollable. It’s enough to drive him nuts.

The day I decided to NOT think about any of that was when I lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I remember that decision like it was yesterday. I was walking through C3 range, it dawned on me and said fuck it… and I let it go.

It wasn’t like now I could enjoy myself. No. Not at all. But the difference was palpable. I probably stood two inches taller. And I laughed a little more.

The infamous ball-busting you see in movies like Goodfellas really happens. I never laughed so hard as I did in prison. At times, I felt a little guilty having so much fun. It’s all in how you look at it. You can laugh like that.

Plus, we have the internet. From home use any number of platforms like Zoom and Skype and WhatsApp and do calls all over the world. All videos and all, mostly free services so  you can ball-bust online as good as the old days. Fughetaboutit.

2. Make your cage a home
In prison, we didn’t have much so I learned to appreciate the smallest thing. Taking the environment where you will spend most of your time and making it work well for you is a critical step. Sure. happiness is a decision, but your environment is a BIG factor.

There’s not much you can do in a regional detention center but once you are sentenced to a prison, you can put some of your stuff in your cell. And you can barter with other guys to enhance your limited ambience. If you must be somewhere, (like a prison cell) and you have access to materials and have a say, why not make things as homey as you can?

Nothing gets wasted. A paperclip or a pin has a value. Take an old cassette player motor, a Bic pen tube, a hemming pin (or sharpened paper clip?), a splinter of wood like an eighth of a Popsicle stick thick and some ink from an art supply kit and a little scotch tape or thread and presto, you’re in the tattoo business. OK, maybe don’t try that one at home.

What could you do to set things up for a long-term stance at home? I bet there are many things. With the right mindset, you can make anything work. The trick is to focus on what you have and not on what’s missing

3. Embrace the suck
Sure, maybe you run a company or a department or some other “important” job which requires your expertise. How will the world ever operate without your wonderfulness? Truth is, it doesn’t matter. If it runs or does not run is no longer the question, at least temporarily.

This is the situation we are in and come hell or high water the powers that be are going to insist everything is shut down. And, there are NO bombs dropping outside. How nice is that?

Just as I couldn’t walk out of the county jail while awaiting sentencing or later, the penitentiary, you will be encouraged to NOT leave home.

By the time I got to the farm camp where I could walk away if I wanted, albeit for an illusory short term freedom while on the run and more time added to my existing sentence once apprehended, I got good at doing my time. See the parallel?

Embrace the suck. Do your time. Otherwise, you will shake it rough. You don’t want that.

4. Routines equal predictability
When you first get to the Big House, you do ten days or so in a newbie range. The only way you can communicate with the guys “in population” (who are there doing time already) is through a window overlooking the yard.

I was a common room man. Guys I knew reserved the job for me right while I was waiting to be transferred in out of the holding range. Once I adjusted (read: said fuck the outside), I took pride and care to set up my rudimentary environment with as much certainty as possible. This despite living with a bunch of killers and other assorted deviants.

This is a saviour… the habits that is.

I followed a daily routine with only slight variations on weekends for a Sunday visit and the odd Saturday movie night in the gym. Otherwise I did almost the same thing every darned day. I was up first and went to get food for the range. I used contraband and influence with the kitchen guys to make sure our range had lots of eggs and milk and other stuff.

While everyone else was at work (making license plates, etc.), I had the freedom (said loosely) to read, write, nap or hit the weights. After lunch every day I ate four pieces of toast with honey with a glass of milk, took a 20-minute nap and headed to lift. Like clockwork. I didn’t even have to think, just do.

Soon, one day blended into the next and I lost track of time. I didn’t check the calendar and just lived moment to moment, putting one foot in front of the other and appreciating only what had to be done next.

Eventually I felt like I was suspended in time, not aging, just… recharging. You are recharging your life.

5. Growing means not dying
You want to learn new stuff whenever you get some down time. Sure, you could take up welding or become a good chef inside. You can do that at home too. Speaking of kitchen crockery, I learned advanced crookery.

This including having an Ace lock gaffe made for me by the guys in shop. It was beneath me to ever use it when I got out… but I had one. Opened any pop machine or laundry room locks at the time.

I made a variety of contacts I could exploit later, dealers, importers, thugs. I learned the dissection of famous crimes from the actual participants and added to my knowledge about everything gangster.

It was decades ago. I’m not that man anymore, not by a long shot.

You will use your time more productively. I have faith in you. What’s something you can do? Learn a language? Write a book? Do your ancestry? That last one will pay dividends for generations. Bada boom!

6. Imagination is your best friend
The thing with not being able to go anywhere is it’s all in your mind. I read. You can read, right? I read James Michener among others, Hawaii, Chesapeake Bay, South Africa and was transported around the world. It was pure escapism. And I read other stuff too. I even read the bible. Where there are books, you can learn.

And I wrote, a lot. I couldn’t write worth a shit, but I had a letter per day going out and a letter per day coming in from my gangster’s moll on the outside — all in pink envelopes doused in perfume. Nothing gets the conversation going like the scent of a woman.

Remember the heroic lessons of psychiatrist Victor Frankl surviving the death camps. It’s almost embarrassing to compare that to this but the point is to honour what he taught us: you decide what meaning to give things. No one gets to take that from you. You are a meaning-maker.

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” You can’t write anything these days without a Friedrich Nietzsche quote so there you are, one of his best.

7. Accepting others as they are
In many ways the “law of the jungle” prevails inside but there is ample opportunity to grow as a person too. Well, maybe “ample” is the wrong word.

What it does is force you to accept others as they are. You know why? Because at that point we are all in this together and no one is going anywhere. Familiar?

The hitman and the bank robber, the crime of passion murderer, the mob guys and the entrepreneurial cocaine cowboys, the dealers and the pimps, the bikers and thieves and the drug addicted, all of them are in the same place, with all their faults… and possibilities.

In such a predicament, it’s a good idea to suspend judgment and look for ways to survive and even support each other regardless of what brought you to where you are. You’ll avoid shaking it rough and do easier time.

8. Authorities are just doing their job
We called them screws. The prison guards unlocking and locking our cell doors or the access doors to various parts of the prison are just human beings like everyone else.

They work for different masters perhaps, the warden, society, a higher morality, their wives and children. But at their core, they are to a man (or woman in some places) just doing a life bit on the installment plan.

That means if you are doing less time (sentence), you have an advantage right? You go home one day.

See what I did there?

Often, we see freedom where there is none, and see a prison where none exists.

9. You can’t sleep away your time
The idea was you were “robbing the man” of his sentence over you the more you slept. This appealed to the immature nihilist in me. “Fuck them.” I thought, “I’ll sleep more than anyone.”

This meant I developed a BIG Valium habit for a few weeks trying to game my sentence. It was bullshit.

I was like a dog chasing its tail. It left me open to attack and caused me more trouble than it was worth. At the crux of all addiction is a quest to narrow focus. Truth is, I can choose my focus without any help.

Lucky. I figured it out fast. Time is time, just do yours.

Also, what if every addiction craving is just the universe demanding you be more powerful? What if not answering that call is a denial of your spirit? What if it’s just a way to stifle the voice for good in you?

Ever hear of a guy who is sentenced to a long term and has an epiphany at some point? Mutha starts to study and gets an education and eventually gets out and TURNS IT ALL AROUND. (I sort of fall under that category).

You know why we like underdogs so much? Because that is human spirit in action. It’s an irresistible force within each of us demanding we overcome. It’s the will to live and live more; it’s the best of us, the best of you.

How else might we answer such a call? Horace Mann said, “Be afraid to die until you have won a victory for mankind.” Do your part… however small.

Look after your sleep and your body.

It’s the Bodymind, not the Mindbody.

Locked in a cell, we’d use whatever is at hand to create our own gym. Heavy books strapped with a towel becomes a dumbbell. A stool and a bunk become a perfect place to do endless dips.

There are countless ways you can innovate to take your environment and turn it into something which will ensure you are tired enough to sleep like a baby soon after lights out. All health is predicated on sleep.

Which reminds me, lights out is always ten o’clock.

Inside or out. Good habits. No excuses.

10. Everybody gets out
In my country, almost every inmate eventually dies or gets out.

Sure, there are hoops to jump through. You might have to appear in front of a parole board to show you have taken an interest in your improvement as a human being. Courses, training, new attitudes. they all count. Outreach to the community is another way.

You could first get escorted passes, then unescorted passes, then maybe live at a halfway house while you find a job. Finally, full parole and a form of freedom.

It’s likely this current set of circumstance evolves in the same way. Expect there will be a staging back into normal life at some point.

That’s not now. Not yet. We’ll let you know. Did I mention there are no bombs dropping outside? Remember that. But you will be ready when the time comes. Stronger, calmer, more confident and assured. And, rested.

In fact, I was talking about this in one of my men’s groups last weekend. One of the fellas is a refuge from the Syrian war and talked about what it was like to be in your home where you normally think you are safe but only, some people are bombed and die there anyway.

We don’t have to worry about that kind of bomb. We must live in our houses and apartments for a few months. When you get out of prison, depending on the length of time you spend inside, things are different, a lot different, or almost incomprehensibly different.

A buddy of mine did 18 years for a crime he didn’t commit. He finally got the conviction overturned and gets out to no business and no wife and his only son had been murdered. He survived, found a strong woman to love and goes to work everyday. He’s the only guy I know in his 60s who is in better shape than me. He went in with no internet and came out to websites and email, and no family.

Trust me, you can do 8 months. You can do it standing on your head.

Things will be different. Nothing stays the same.

But you will be out.

Stay powerful, never give up
cw

Christopher K Wallace (Wally)
Advisor to men, mentor at large
websites
advisortomen.com
ckwallace.com

©CKWALLACE
2019 all rights reserved

reach me here and we can talk/

MEN: STEP IT UP

Advisor to Men Leave a comment


MEN: STEP IT UP!
During this pandemic, you will find women are especially worried. Don’t give me some bullshit about equality, women are the primary caregivers for young and old the world over.

Not men. WOMEN.

If a child lives through its first few years of life it is almost always due to its mother. And, who predominantly looks after the elderly and the sick?

Humans have such a long maturation process. A child needs to be attended to EVERY SECOND OF THE DAY for years and years.

Men solve problems and back off until the next one comes along.

Women ‘s work is NEVER DONE.

To take a kid to age 16 involves a half billion seconds she spends thinking of how to keep that child safe.

Men? Not so much. In fact, not even close.

When she’s worried about this pandemic, a couple of things to keep in mind about your approach.

1. Don’t take on her worry as yours. The last thing she needs is for you to mirror her anxiety with anxiety of your own. She’s turning to you for your strength and power. Don’t let her down.

2. Act if you can. That’s what men do, act to shore up the safety of our families. If there is something you can do to make her life a little less worrisome, do it. Protect her.

3. Talk to her. Make a plan that both of you buy into. By having a structure in place, even if it’s doing the best you can under the circumstances, it will go a long way to alleviating her fear. Leave no stone unturned.

4. Prioritize. Be mindful she’s in a “all-hands-on-deck” mode and so it’s not time to goof off doing unnecessary stuff that does not directly relate to ensuring everyone’s safety. Stay focused.

5. Watch for negativity. Recognize that doubting voice at the back of your head and allow it to just pass you by. Instead, ask yourself, “What’s my highest-self response to this?” and take that route. Be powerful.

6. Bring her back to the present with your presence. It’s easy to live in the anxiety trap of the future when so much is unknown. What’s before you, today? Do that. One thing and one day at a time.

7. Encourage her. Let her know you are proud of her and can rely on her. Take the extra time spent together to rekindle your respect and awe for her and her journey.

8. Practice self-care. Sleep allows diet and exercise to be healthful. Practice ten or 20-second three of four deep breath meditations all day long like reps. See if you can get everyone to do them.

9. Be a hero. The Hero’s Journey is always about transcending one’s self for the sake of someone else or a greater good. To be someone’s hero, for your family, for her, your children, and others close to you, is a privilege.

10. Look for a silver lining. What other opportunities can you make of this challenge? How can you turn this situation into something positive for you and your loved ones?

A man who uses his power in service of himself and others finds meaning and freedom. FREEDOM!

Use your King energy to help your Queen bring order to her world. Encourage and bless her.

Stay powerful, never give up
Chris Wallace
advisortomen.com

*Graphic is from King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Moore and Gillette, Harper One, 1990

THE SELF DEVELOPMENT TRAP

Advisor to Men 1 Comment


Here’s a trap you may not have thought much about:

EXTERNALIZING RESPONSIBILITY

How? the self development rabbit hole.

That’s when you are so consumed by the overwhelming amount of information available online through posts by “influencers” and especially by YouTube “gurus,” as well as an overabundance of books and blogs and essays written to inform you of what you didn’t know. Never ending rabbit holes

Why don’t I allow links to the above in my groups? Now you know. Why over-complicate things?

Not only do I refuse to act as a funnel for every two bit online entrepreneur (though there are some good ones as you know) who has watched a few Tony Robbins videos and attended Date with Destiny (Happy Birthday to Tony by the way), I cannot in good conscience sanction post and links I have not personally vetted for quality. And for simplicity’s sake, I wouldn’t anyway.

I take my responsibilities seriously and do my best to provide a forum from which men can relate to each other as men, while adding content to both teach and encourage discussion, in addition to what group members post.

When guys have a question I think it will serve the group, I post something. Many subjects I have at least a good understanding about and some  things I know in-depth.

These are not off-the-cuff ramblings made by a glib marketer who has speed-read a book here and there, or videos done in one take in front of a laptop camera. Instead, posts are evidence-based, by research and training, and added to by personal experience and a long history of helping others. That said, back to my point:

You can spot the guys in the throes of externalizing responsibility for their personal growth by the latest and greatest recommendations they often espouse, without any evidence they are doing much work on themselves.

I’m not saying that is you. I am saying to be on the watch for this incidental cost to self-development:

A tendency to become lost in a never-ending story of ever-increasing fractions of improvement.

It’s no wonder some guys do nothing much, slowing their progress. Our eyes see out and we look to the environment for simple solutions to our problems. Given the overwhelming amount of information out there, it’s not surprising to see this paralysis of thinking in the well-intended, a guy who just wanted to make life better for himself and the people around him. Admirable goals for sure.

So, this post is to encourage you to keep it simple.

“What is to give light must endure burning.” Victor Frankl

I advise this progression:

The body: The body is the universal address of your existence.

If you are not sleeping well, everything else is going to be half-measures. Learn self-hypnosis and defeat insomnia. Anyone can do it. I have a cheap course on it I often give my clients access to, not because it’s particularly comprehensive but because it contains the 12 ways which I personally used to take myself from a raging 20 year insomniac to quality sleeper in three months.

I still use the techniques.

Now, I can nap by the side of a highway now… with trucks roaring by. Come on…

When my son was born in a high-risk delivery room full of beeping machines and nurses talking and coming in and out, I figured it’d be a long while and so, sat in a chair, just feet away from her bed.

And, I was out like a light in a minute or two. What I did was pretend to be in a submarine and used the surrounding noises as “deepeners” while I went down, down, down in a rapid descent in my imagination into the cold blackness of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean.

“WALLY , YOU’RE GOING TO MISS IT” was what woke me a few minutes later. I’d forgotten the second pregnancy delivery often comes faster because her parts are now, “broken in” …

It’s why I demand my clients hit the body somehow. Martial arts, burpees, walking, gym time and body weight exercises. It all starts with the body. The brain needs oxygen and exercise makes the brain work better and longer. Intensive cardio in short intervals will extend your whole operating system.

It can make the difference between dying in your sleep at the end of your time, or suffering a long decline plagued by debilitating physical illness and heartbreaking cognitive decline. You don’t want that. I repeat, you don’t want that.

It is sleep that allows diet and exercise to be healthful. Get that right first.

And so. diet is also a key part of your self-development lest you race ahead and forget another fundamental. That would be like building a house without a proper foundation. Do you put diesel in your gasoline powered car? Diet gentleman.

Quote:
“If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.” Walt Whitman

The spirit: The soul is where you carry your potential and possibilities; the spirit is its voice.

This is where you found the wherewithal to even consider changing the approach to life you have now. It’s your yearning to overcome, to survive and thrive. It’s the quiet voice inside you insisting you have more to give than you presently allow. The spirit speaks for the soul.

Oh yes, you have a soul, some say reclaimed by Kant from the rationalists in the 18th century.

What I can tell you is we know epigenetic influences on ancestral DNA is passed down through your DNA methyl groups. Subsequent generations are affected by the ones which preceded them at a cellular level.

That the existence of similar mythologies in ancient times around the world in cultures which had no contact with each other is irrefutable evidence of mankind’s collective unconscious. We are also all afraid of the dark, of heights, etc.

And we now know that the brain operates predictively based on messages from your body (interoception). But more importantly, based  your databank of prior experience (what else was it supposed to go on) all way back to your birth. This is all done subconsciously to inform the brain of the best-guess state to put you in to meet the circumstances before you, and then corrects afterwards according to the social reality present before you.

But it’s that databank of mostly subconscious experience states I find interesting.

I’d suggest these together might constitute what we suspect is our soul.

After all, our operating system is set up in such a way that focus is a super power of being. We can only allow tiny bits of stimulus to enter our minds and disregard most of our experience. We clearly carry some of our past with us and I’d argue that past might be centuries long and perhaps goes back to all of mankind’s existence as a species.

Contrast your environment with that whatever pre-existing programming you arrive in this world with (such as inborn temperament), which would contain the blueprints to your potentials and possibilities, and an argument for something like a soul becomes stronger.

A good part of which was imparted to you at the very moment of your inception by a universe of infinite wisdom.

I’d go further and suggest each of us has a voice within which calls to us. It is unquestionably loudest in childhood but is quieted or silenced while we learn to conform to the demands of the adult groups around us and adapt to environmental circumstances.

But it never really goes away does it? Often we can have at least an inkling of its presence if not hear it whispering, urging us on… to become more, to rise and faces challenges. This is true in times of pain. Often, it’s what allows light to shine through clouds of darkness.

It is the over-comer, the fight-backer, the rise to challenges challenger.

Your spirit is an indomitable part of you, the voice of your soul.

A quick example is addictions, which is both physical and mental, and which I characterize as a denial of spirit. An addiction is a mistaken refusal to honour your God-given (Universe-endowed) obligation to contribute your uniqueness to your environment. It’s an abdication of your King energy, a descent into shadow. There can be many reasons for it, all stress induced, and overcome with guidance.

Quote:
“Be curious, and however difficult life may seem there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don’t give up. Unleash your imagination. Shape the future.” Stephen Hawking.

The people: Compassion for others helps you have compassion for your self, and vice-versa.

Neither understanding nor taking responsibility for our relationships leaves us confused and often angry. All our disappointments are driven by our expectations.  Buying into the myth of  mother’s unconditional love and projecting that need onto the adult members of our tribe leaves us weak and ineffective. Worse, it brings us their contempt.

Refusing to honour the fundamental order which drives the masculine and feminine energies is at best frustrating, at worst, a disaster. Women’s model for love is the powerful father, yours the maternal energy imperfectly showered upon you by mom.

Staying away from the comparative harshness of men leaves you soft and immature, a boy in a man’s body. Agreeableness is either an adaptation for maternal care at one end of distribution or an adaptation for predatory aggression at the other. Male disagreeableness has been brought under social control in a goal directed collective and drives your competitive spirit. Stop being so agreeable.

Embracing masculine maturation in full soon brings with it a powerful sense of self. A man who uses his power in service of himself and others finds meaning and freedom. A man’s relationships should come from his power as a man and never be his power. If not her, someone else. If not them, others.

Quote:
“Les femmes aiment les coqs. Elles essayent d’en faires des poules, mais elles preferent les coqs.” – Old French maxim

“Act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.” Imannuel Kant

The work: a man must have his own mission and let his purpose find him.

Men build and defend things. We can quickly move from a small group to working within an ever-increasing larger group of other men working on a common goal. It doesn’t matter if that is defending the walls of our city or the borders of our nation. It doesn’t matter if it is building a business, a local shelter for the homeless or a barn for a neighbour. We cooperate.

Men build cultures and women stress-test them. Men work best as a competitive team, women work best in pairs.

Men operate at a more superficial level emotionally, can repress feelings with ease, experience less fear and worry, and have no problem deferring power to the expert among us who has expertise and knowledge in a subject. It’s why there are no true alphas with human males.

If you are stuck on a lonely country road in the middle of the night in butt-fuck nowhere, your muscles and your money count for squat. The only alpha in the circumstances is the fella driving the tow-truck who comes to your rescue.

SO, my call to you is to be careful of using self-development as camouflage for progress. Lip service, they call it.

If you find yourself starting and stopping projects, reading books halfway, doing exercises half-ass or not finishing them, here’s your wake up. Haven’t finished the book? Read it first. Haven’t done the exercises? Do those first.

Haven’t even started to read the book that is sitting on your shelf? Come on, what are you thinking? Don’t buy one until you have finished the previous one.  Have you joined one of my Saturday groups? What are you waiting for?

Quote:
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Frederick Nietzsche

The woods: Give me an ax and point me to the forest and I will go and build a life.

You are a man. Expendable and wonderful. We are here for you. Your role in society is glorious and underpins the whole of it. Never apologize for being a man nor allow public trends to change your essential masculine nature. The answer to problems with masculinity is more masculinity, not less.

But mark my words: being a man, no one is coming to rescue you. It’s a bit as if you are lost in the woods and you must find your way home. People may not even notice you are missing. That’s part of a man’s sometimes lonely journey.

Yet, from when you were a little boy you were hardwired to stand side by side with other men and fight enemies. Other men can help so much with this as we provide each other guidance…  but the walk is yours alone.

During peacetime, usually the enemy is within.

Fight on solders, fight on brothers.

A last quote: “Nobody ever knows the whole of anything.” Robertson Davies

Stay powerful, never give up
cw
©2019 Christopher K Wallace
All rights reservedNew
For a free strategy call click here