Advisor to men

MYTH MAKERS

How does one find their purpose? I think in many cases it’s an accidental calling, a serendipitous landing somewhere in what my old psych teacher used to call “finding your place in the sun.” Some folks seem to know early on what they were destined for, others stumble upon it. And, regrettably, some never find it at all.

But what if this was your duty? Would it make a difference?

Could you see it as part of your pact with the universe? What if you were to live according to Horace Mann’s entreaty: “Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for mankind?” Would that help finding your purpose with reverence and resolve? No pressure.

Here are three approaches which helped me as I explored what to do with my life, and how to best use the time I have left. Though, while mindful of purpose, I think we always leave room for change, for a sudden veering from one direction to another as life summons our attention. What fun.

DREAM JOURNAL
The mythologist Joseph Campbell tells the story of Carl Jung having a crisis of meaning at a point early in his career, and deciding finding his personal myth was critically important.

Jung remembered as a child he like to build little play cities out of stones. So now, as an adult, he realized he could play with big stones. He purchased a property on the shores of a lake across from Zurich. There, he built a place at Ascona. A visiting Campbell said it was a house built out of the ground, an organic edifice, reflecting Jung’s local roots.

Jung recorded his dreams for inspiration, keeping a dream journal. This gave him ideas and even more meaning in the way he built his place and lived his life. Campbell’s advice is to ignore dreams about your daily life and look for big themes to emerge, paying special attention to doorways, entrances and pathways.

Remembering dreams takes practice, but not much. Just telling yourself before you sleep that you will recall and write down your dreams when you wake up works well enough. I cursed just how effective this is when I had PTSD dreams for a decade after leaving the street. I’ve since settled down and it’s a habit I’ve taken up again.

If you have a partner, sharing your dreams upon awakening is a delightful way to discharge disturbing images that linger, but also to share erotic shadow sides to each other. Show me a couple who talk openly about their dreams and I’ll show you two people who have a good sex life.

BOOK OF ME
In my opinion, if the question of finding your bliss has eluded you thus far, it’s worth assembling a book of self-evaluations. At least you’ll be doing something in the meantime.

None of these is likely to reveal your path, but what it does is answer long-held questions about how you operate in the world. It may also trigger helpful memories and long-dormant preferences. It’s an introspective set of exercises which trains you to listen to your inner self. Our eyes see out and life’s demands often leave little room for this kind of examination.

Start by doing the Gallup Strengthfinders test to rank your talents. Nothing reveals more about your capabilities than an objective scale like this one. Not only can it tell you what you might be good at, more importantly, it might explain why you don’t show much interest in other things. It’s both a confirm and encourage exercise, and an eliminator.

Take the Big 5 Personality test. It’s been soundly tested and is probably one of the most replicable psychometric tests.

While you’re at it, take one of the Locus of Control tests available online.

If you have the time, you could delve into your history by doing Peterson’s Self-Authoring Suite to record something of your past, present and future. The Peterson Suites have good science: students who complete them are more successful at school.

Do a Values Elicitation and rank your current top values 1 to 10. Most coaches do them as part of their practice. A shorter version is the Hartman Value Profile. Besides that, values conflicts are often at the root of much of our indecision, so having a clear picture of what matters to you helps.

Do Stephen Reiss’s Desire Profile: you can get a PDF version online which includes the full scale. This desire profile is a much more reliable measure than assessing needs. It’s about desire, thus passions.

You can skip the Briggs-Meyer’s test. Based on Jungian archetypes, just realize it doesn’t replicate well. Your letters may change as your life does so I don’t bother with this one despite its popularity.

Some people tell me the DISC profile helped them see themselves more clearly. Taking an aptitude test is sometimes worthwhile. Just don’t try to game the obvious questions. I skip IQ tests. Beyond just above average, discipline is a greater predictor of success anyway. We all know plenty of intelligent losers and this is about finding bliss, not who is smartest.

If you have access to family history, put up your genealogy on Ancestry to see who came before you. Examine your medical records and those of your forebears if possible. Where are you from? What kind of work did those who came before you do? Even if you only know one of your parents, sometimes this information helps to bolster identify. Ideas about life and living can come from the oddest places.

NEW EXPERIENCE
Camping trips, meditative retreats and spiritual practices can help find purpose for the way in which they allow us to slow down, listen and observe our inner selves. Long walks engage both hemispheres of the brain as you alternate right and left sides of the body. Twenty minutes per day in nature can do the spirit wonders, thereby freeing up the mind.

Travel can shake a person’s world up. How often does one hear of someone returning from somewhere with a grand plan of some sort hatched while far away? You can see the light on their faces and the fire in their eyes as they report their new-found direction.

Geographical changes have this effect because travel puts us into a heightened state of awareness and readiness while exposing us to new environments and people. Environments matter.

It is the epigenetically derived methyl groups of your ancestors influencing your present genetics, coupled with the databank of your emotional states since birth, contrasted against the collective unconscious (common instincts and archetypes present in any species) which comprises your soul in my take. It’s worth looking at it all to discover more about you.

Closer to home, what if you decided to say yes instead of no when you were invited along somewhere? Say no too often and soon, the invitations stop coming. If that’s you, what can you do to get out into the world and try something different? You may find your purpose with alone time or while your memories are triggered by others. Leave no stone unturned, I say.

If you are a drinker or a cannabis addict, you live in a partial state of fear as your homeostasis is continually off-kilter. This costs you because of the sensory input/confidence continuum. Instead, you may like to replace regular substance use with dance lessons, a martial art, or by joining your local Toastmasters to learn public speaking. Confidence is the stuff which takes thoughts and turns them into actions. How important is that then?

The point is by doing new things, the old creaky mind we’ve come to rely upon, with its predictable thoughts and feelings and behaviours, can always use a remodel. “Change or die,” someone once said. How’s that for motivation? Here’s a secret: feelings are based on experiences; therefore, the only way to create new feelings is to experience new things.

AWE AND MYSTERY
Campbell observed Maslow’s hierarchy gave five values: survival, security, personal relationships, prestige and self-development. These seemed strange to him until he realized these are the exact values the mythologically inspired person does not live for.

“Mythology begins where madness starts,” he says, “Maslow’s five values are the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for.”

So often what is required to find a pathway to your bliss is an awakening of awe. That’s when something becomes greater than you, reminding of your smallness. It’s what makes and keeps us humble. You are hoping to be seized and pulled along by something, the same way you may remember feeling obsessed with play as a child.

Often I like to talk about flow states. That’s when we engage our strengths, passions and supreme concentration in an endeavor of increasing complexity. It’s the only thing I know which seems to stop time while we do it. It’s also when we feel most powerful as human beings.

What we are talking about here is quest which has as its heart a mystery. There will be something which entrains your mind and being, inexplicably occupying your thoughts and feelings. What it does is it captures you, and it’s this awakening of awareness and transcendence of needs which points your way forward.

THREE PARTS OF YOU
For a moment, clear your mind of everything. Give yourself a blank slate.

If a husband and father, these are normal parts of a man’s life. Your adaptability is great enough to handle that role anywhere under any circumstances excepting perhaps war. They are a consideration but less a determining factor.

Now, think of your being in three parts.

First is your true self, represented by Jungians as The Divine Child within you. It reflects all your potentials and possibilities, the very gifts you were born with and which were still intact for a while as a child. This is the repressed part of you usually compromised for the sake of conformity.

Then, secondly, your ego, that part of you with the shoulds and musts you have accumulated from a lifetime of listening to others. It’s all those rules you live by, passed along to you from your teachers and parents, friends and culture. Morality is ego-based.

Lastly, your personae, the masks you wear as student, husband, worker, academic, friend, etc. Each of these will be different from the other, some markedly so, their contrasts a clue to their worth as truths.

Now, imagine 20 years, or even 30 years have gone by. Looking back, which of those three would you want to make sure has been served?

Which of those three is your priority? Which one needs honouring? Which one answers the calling when the universe decided, in its infinite wisdom, to choose you for life? Let me explain:

There was something like 40 to 200 million sperm in the ejaculate from which you came, yet, it was you who got to the egg. You could have been a girl or had all kinds of challenges beyond your own.

But no. The same force behind a trillion stars in the Andromeda Galaxy chose you. A trillion stars, it’s worth repeating. And, from that fantastic force underlying everything known and unknown, it was upon you that life was bestowed. How could this be? How could it be it was you who was chosen?

The universe doesn’t make mistakes. So, how could it not be you?

The question is: what will you do with your prize? What will you do with this life you were awarded by the infinite forces which created the stars?

What shall be your myth?

Stay powerful, never give up,

Chris Wallace
© May, 2019 all rights reserved
Advisor to Men

“A man who can harness his power in service of himself and those around him finds meaning. This is what sets him free.” CKWALLACE, advisor to men

DISTANCE = SEX

Young fella in a group is getting married in the spring. Posts his intentions and asks for advice. I give him the quick version to which he and others respond gratefully. I’m struck by how important these things are to couples, to men, to children.

I told him this:

“She’s marrying you for your power and will then spend the next twenty years wondering if she chose correctly. Don’t disappoint her, stay powerful. Women can’t abide weak men, not easily.

Oh, and she’s not your mother. Don’t expect unconditional love. If you are powerful and kind, chances are she’ll be loyal—sexually and in spirit.

If not, if she senses you are weak, expect her to rub salt in the wounds of your weakness and/or, hold you in silent contempt.

She’ll stop fucking you then too. Women are pragmatic souls. Men are the poets and romantics.

Good luck. Let me know if you need help.”

But what else could I have told him? To be sure: plenty.

Because, if he’s like most men, he will knock that woman up and become a father. We often think women become our partners because of some endearing quality of ours which makes us irresistible. She dovetails with my life because she can’t live without me. Ahem. No. Not quite.

Perhaps it is more she is interested in a man as a partner, because two people fighting for existence against the chaos of life is better than one? True.

And, just as a man marries what he can tolerate, so does a woman but with key differences. He tolerates her and expects her to stay more or less the same, especially sexually. She, on the other hand, see his potential, her vision for the future more acute in same-aged couples.

At sixteen, most gals know already what kind of man they want as a husband, what kind of house they’d like to live in, and how many children they would like to have. That last one is key. Guys, not much vision at all at sixteen.

Women mostly marry to have children. That has not changed, though there are plenty of exceptions. I know couples who decided not to have children and live a rewarding life of fulfillment derived otherwise though activities, community, work and friends.

But most of us will become fathers. I could write a book about facets men should consider and one day I will. But for a young guy getting married now, the beginning of this post is the short version.

And sex. That’s the subject most guys can’t see clearly. They go from getting it regularly at the start of a marriage to much less over time.

We are told this is normal. I think that’s bullshit. I think it’s just that we don’t understand our women as well as we could.

Women are sexual human beings first. Not mothers. Not friends. Not workers. Not wives. And, forgive me if I mention: not firstly, “soulmates,” though in time they can become indispensable intimates. There’s danger in that too.

It was her body, her sexual power, her surrender to you which gained your devotion. Why should that change?

Truth is, sexual intimacy wanes with better communication. It is distance which creates want.

The more familiar you and your missus are with each other, the more comfortable, the less sex.

Comfort kills lust. That’s the facts.

It does so because there is no danger to it. There’s little unknown. When we first start sleeping with someone, we never really know what their reaction is to seeing us naked, to exploring each other’s bodies, to living out our sexual sides. There is this huge risk in trust disrobing in front of someone.

You take that away and you may only have obligation, not the stuff of exciting sexual distance. This is why I seize upon power in a relationship, not as a way to manipulate or dominate. No. Not at all.

It’s just that women need a man’s power to live out the part of her which needs to surrender to an entity greater than herself. It grounds her by permitting loss of control in her otherwise and usually conscientious existence.

The rest of her life she can have her shit together. But with her man, she must lose it. For, it’s only by providing an outlet for her darker side that she can flourish as the goodly wife.

Men would do well to remember this. We all have a shadow side we need to integrate. Sexual intimacy with a partner can be thought of an integration of each other’s shadow lives. At least, temporarily.

It’s an acceptance of shame and abandonment and control and agency and many more, all in the name of intimacy.

Distance is what creates polarity in a couple. Not a life of no secrets and shared emotions. As her man, you must remain dangerous lest she lose faith in your ability to protect her, but also to thrill her.

You put lust first, love will take care of itself.

Stay powerful, never give up.
Wally

© CKWallace, 2019, all rights reserved

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ON MEN AND WOMEN

Something to think about is this: women choose men for power (in whatever form that might be) and they come by it honestly. (I ignore red-pill hypergamy as whining).

It’s how nature made them, and for good reasons. She needs a powerful man who can eschew his tribe or peer group and come start a new one with her. Mostly, she does the choosing. Right or wrong, that’s how it is.

Men, on the other hand, are attracted to women for looks (+ a certain hip to waist ratio) and stay with them for loyalty. LOYALTY

POWER+LOOKS/LOYALTY

Her looks fade but this matters little to a man with a loyal woman. Because in time, she becomes his standard. When he thinks woman, it is she he sees in his mind’s eye. Naked to him means her.

A man with a loyal woman by his side has the wind at his back… even, the wind beneath his wings. To feel her wind at his back…  he best stay out in front of her. You better believe it.

And, a man cannot easily abide disloyalty, among his friends, family and those he works with. To tolerate disloyalty in his own home, in his castle, is an attempt to overthrow the King.

This happens usually because the King is weak. If allowed to continue, his hold on his realm is in doubt. He will be deposed eventually, for the kingdom requires a powerful leader who can bring order, fertility and blessings to the land and its people.

Men are adaptable. we can learn to love just about anyone.

If happiness is a decision, for the most part then, so is love.

ADVANTAGE MALE

What a man loses in the mating game in his early years, he gains back ten-fold as he ages. TEN-FOLD.

She has maybe, MAYBE, 20 good years of fertility (also her best years for attracting a mate). Between the ages of 15 and 35 or so before her childbearing risks go up. That’s generally it.

Men often just begin to amass personal power and get started by the time they are 35. COME ON.

I know a man who is over 60, still does 50 push-ups, with two children under ten. RARE A WOMAN CAN DO THAT. And, if she did it would be in the newspapers.

It’s not the same.

Women are far more precious. More precious BY FAR.

If only for their shorter fertility period. Scarcity is a measure of value.

And, they should be acknowledged for this. Help them. Show them compassion.

You can start over, it’s rare she can.

This light shining briefly in a woman’s life makes the pressure on her ENORMOUS. For most women, she has an EXISTENTIAL PACT with the universe: to choose the right partner.

Get this: she thinks with both hemispheres; and runs information through her emotional centers first. She has greater empathy (and will abuse it if pushed).

— She often has greater verbal ability (why she can talk circles around you) and can read emotions on a man’s face more readily (pay a man to read emotions on people’s faces he can do as well but she is “always on”).

— Her enteric intuitions are finely honed, likely because she has a uterus and menstruates. She knows people and sees and feels things you cannot even fathom. It can be spooky (in a wonderful way).

She is pragmatic and resolved. She doesn’t have time to fuck around in her quest to bring life into the world. Though, she will and usually invests in a promising mate, her gamble is way higher than yours.

She has the Caregiver Archetype in her, a spiritual instinct to look after people.

Nature has endowed her with this, part of which is to BRING LIFE into the world.

There is a cost to her gifts: on occasion she may become depleted. In this case, she may turn to her powerful man and lean on him for a time to recharge her subdued spirit.

Can you be such a powerful man?

COMPLEMENTARY

She can spot her man’s weakness a mile away. From way OVER THERE! When she does, she might tell you.

I call that kind of rare gal a UNICORN.

Don’t expect to be so lucky. She may just as easily think you don’t care.

More likely, she will RUB SALT in the wounds of your weakness… or hold you in silent contempt. Remember, abuse of empathy is her birthright. Either way, she stops fucking you. She has to… because you are failing her.

Often/sometimes, her powers lead her to overthink. The feminine holds her in its chaotic grip. That’s where you step in and bring her back from the brink of her insanity with your masculinity. That’s your job (one of them).

So, you must step up and lead your partner. It’s the yin and yang of men and women. She is wonderful chaos, you are powerful order.  Men lead; women command. This is nature’s magnetism. Lead or be bossed.

You must be her powerful man, so she may rely on you to temper her gifts just as you rely on her for her breadth and depth. Men and women have banded together since the beginning to take advantage of each other’s strengths and shore up each other’s weaknesses. It’s a symbiosis, dual nature creating life. If you are the sun, the stars, the fire and the light, she is the deep of space, the vastness of the oceans, the power of the wind.

Her primary male influence is her father, often the only person she knows who could stand up to an all-powerful mother. Your archetype of influence is your mom, who enticed you with promises of unconditional love.

It could be that’s why men are romantics. While you can become a powerful man to match and go beyond her father’s male energy, she can never love you unconditionally the way you might have wished your mother would.

That’s an unrealistic expectation all men must abandon. In this case, the boy must die so the man can live.

Like the fable Iron John, the boy’s quest is to leave his mother’s castle and find his own way in the world. The key to his freedom lies under her pillow. He must steal the key and make his escape, in the middle of the night if needed.

If you have a woman, be her powerful man. Don’t let that woman down; don’t put her in that position; don’t make her question herself under the chaos of her overthinking. That would be cruel.

Most of all, make yourselves powerful gentleman. If women are nearby, she will come and find you. It’s nature’s way.

Stay powerful, never give up,

© 2019 Christopher K Wallace
Advisor to Men

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I never gave much thought to mornings the first half of my life, the demands of life dictated my start to the day. If I had to get to work, I tended to leave just enough time to make it, or even be a few minutes late. If I had to be somewhere to do something for my business, then that’s what determined how and even why I got up. For many years, I got up because others depended on me, where others could not do their work until I showed up. That’s a pretty good motivator: 20 people waiting for you.

Over time, I’ve thought to impose some order on this part of how I live. This is more true now that I am no longer and afternoon and evening worker as I was for most of my adult life, and often have to get up in the mornings to go out to appointments.

My children often wake me in the morning. Or, missus will have an alarm go off an hour earlier than it was supposed to. This is almost always a leftover from last week sometime when she needed up, but then, forgot to reset her alarm.

We marry what we can tolerate. I remind myself of this at 5 am and go back to sleep.

Whichever way I wake up at other times, its usually not by alarm. In fact, I rarely use one. From decades of calculating my sleep needs, necessary tactics I used to combat insomnia in my early life, I manage sleep with a priority that works for me.

The first thing I do upon waking is grab my woman’s ass. I think touching her lets her know I’m happy to wake up beside her. Touch is the best way to show she’s appreciated. If she’s already out of bed, I stretch, grateful I got to be one of the lucky ones alive after the dark of night. This is the first thought in my head, and over the years I’ve trained myself to say this silently to myself: “I get to get up today.”

Then, I take the pillows and place them on top of our other ones. I straighten the comforter and sheet and voila! the bed is mostly made before I’m even out of it, needing only slight adjustments afterwards as I roll out and stand up.

I have a carpet under my bed which extend around its periphery. This is where I keep my slippers. But first, I flood light into my eyes suddenly when I whip open the curtain next to my side of the bed. While looking outside at whatever scene is there, I recite the same prayer I’ve said for over 30 years:

“This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

It’s from Psalms, 118:24. My rabbi friend says to source something this way is to offer redemption to the world, something his Talmudic teachers taught him. Lately, when I say this silent prayer, I think of this wider frame and accord myself a little redemption, quietly stealing a little personal forgiveness before moving through my day.  Who doesn’t want redemption? Now it’s psalm 118:24 and I redeem myself.

I hang the curtain so it remains open, do the same to the matching window a few feet to the left, dress in morning clothes (housecoat if jumping in the shower, leisurely stuff if I’m working at home) and head downstairs. I stretch high when I do this because I usually wake up a little sore.

I currently head to the kitchen window and drink two big glasses of cold filtered well-water while looking out at my bird feeder. Banter with the missus and kids ensues, especially now that I have imposed order on their morning. No toys at the table, eggs, toast with peanut butter, fruit and goat milk before they get their gummy vitamins as reward.

As I gaze out the windows above the sink, I like to take a moment to notice nature, to let my eyes take in the expanse of scrub brush and trails out back of my house. And the various chickadees, juncos, jays, cardinals, woodpeckers and other feathered visitors who dive in from the cedars to feed on oiled sunflower seeds. I often think of my mother when I do this. Fleetingly, it sets my spirit a little.

Currently, six red squirrels live above in the cedars beside my utility shed out back. My first summer here I never saw them, though we heard them scold us loudly the odd time, first thinking it was tree frog. We have lots of those, and in spring and summer their chorus will fill the evening with such song you must remain silent, unable to compete. This also sets my spirit as I remember what it’s like here in summer.

The bird-feeders I put up last year drew the squirrels out of their trees. I read recently reds can occupy a tree and set stores in its every nook and cranny, then pass the storehouse of food on to the next generation, often for up to 30 years. They don’t hibernate in winter like the Northern Gray squirrels, a solitary black individual I’ve seen only once or twice scampering in from the edge of the woods. Just this week I saw the black version of the Norther Gray, said to happen in Canada’s cold, hurriedly checking below the feeders unmolested. Sure enough, out of nowhere, a red came dashing at him and the chase was on, the black squirrel making it for the safety of the woods a hundred feet away. Those reds don’t like sharing and keep interlopers at bay.

When I was a boy, my two older brothers were Irish Twins and did everything together. In fact, they are the same age right now for another few days, the 3 and 13th of March being their birthdays. Ma had ten pregnancies in twelve years but lost the one before me. This meant a longer gap separated me from the two of them. I felt it deeply when they went to high school and left me still in primary. I felt cast adrift, abandoned.

Ma gave me a set of binoculars as encouragement. This was a rare treat in our family, to be so honoured with such an adult piece of equipment, and a  guidebook to boot. It was all so… professional. I’ve been fascinated by birds ever since. I’m not dogmatic about it, I don’t have a list of birds I have to see. Not anymore. I tried that and it lessened my enjoyment. If I saw an Evening Grosbeak way back and then forgot about it, finding one again is like finding it for the first time. A list would be a way of reminding me how stupid I was to have forgotten. So, no list,  I just like them. The white throated sparrow song is probably my favourite evening song in summer. Often at dusk one will perch at the very top of a nearby tree and let loose its song. It sets my spirit.

My original binoculars are long gone, but ma gave me her pair a few years before she died at age 86. Now her Bausch and Lomb’s are in the cupboard over the fridge, for me to use anytime. I used them an evening a few days ago when a bright red cardinal and his buff coloured mate were seen picking up leftover seeds off the snow beneath the feeders, right where the chickadees and woodpeckers would have scattered them earlier today.

It’s rare to see a mated pair in the backyard this time of year, and usually only one of the pair makes it to the feeder at a time. I like the way the female and male cooperate for survival, something I think provides lessons for humans. The male is bright red and attracts all the attention. If a Sparrow Hawk attacks, chances are he’ll get it first. The female is buff coloured with red accents, beautiful in her own way, easily camouflaged against the forest. And when she is sitting on the nest, it is he who is out hunting and returning with food, spelling her later in the day so she can come to the feeder alone and take her fill. It’s a model for much of life between the sexes.

Both were there, both on the ground, and as it was dusk, I needed the glasses to see their colour because everything looks black and white at twilight. Early March and here before me a mated pair of colourful cardinals. These moments set my spirit.

I still have the book ma gave me, though I have no idea how I managed to keep a copy of Peterson’s How to Know the Birds after all these years. My father’s handwriting is still there where he printed my name in full block letters on the inside front cover in pen almost 50 years ago. In this context, watching the morning birds gives me perspective, a sense of time, of lifespan. The book’s edition was out in 1957, the year of my birth.

My missus loves a coffee in the morning. Never a dedicated coffee drinker most of my life, preferring Red Rose tea like ma, at times I would drink coffee for ten years then leave it alone for another ten. Now, my gal has converted me. Studies which show drinking a couple of cups per day is likely to prolong life by a few years encourages me too. I need every edge I can get. I used to have a wonderful filtered coffee and carafe setup, now we percolate.

I get the beans from Ottawa Roasters, a middle eastern store down on Kilborn Ave, not far off Bank Street. It’s right behind St. Thomas D’Aquin, the French Roman Catholic church I used to attend and where I also served as an altar boy. It’s a little weird to see places like that all these years later, after I’d lived elsewhere until just under three years ago. I moved back to be near my father after ma passed away.

Flashes of remembrances hit me each time I pick up coffee at Roasters: walking through that parking lot; helping with the bottle drive for charity and filling that little garage behind the church with our take; the fence between the church and adjacent school now gone, but remembering attending my first day of school there and being dropped off just over there, in that spot, to face the kids in the yard.

It’s funny how those memories are there though we never think of them. In 1986, I began attending college in Cornwall and enrolled my son in daycare. That first day, I dropped him off and watched as he tentatively approached the yard where the other kids were playing, and it brought back a flood of memories that grabbed me by the throat. Suddenly, I was six and walking into L’Ecole Primaire St Thomas D’Aquin, an English kid at a French school, alone.

You can get Brazilian or Columbian dark in whole beans for 9 bucks a pound at Roasters. And Marie, the server with decades behind her counter, smiles easily. They roast everything, nuts too. I dare you to find better just slightly salted roasted cashews anywhere. Visiting places like this in my old neighbourhood remind me I am from somewhere. That’s an important thing to me. It’s another thing which sets my spirit.

With my coffee in hand, a dash of goat milk to neutralize its bitterness, I head into my office. There, another ritual ensues. You see, I read or recite the poem Invictus every morning. In fact, I recently added the Goal Tracker app on my phone to see how long a streak I can go on. This morning routine is one of them and I check it off once I’m done.

I tried to recite Invictus while doing deep knee bends or walking like a bear on all fours across my carpet so that I may stretch and absorb its tenactiy into my very bones. Mostly I just read it and then do something physical. I want to be sure my will and my body are in sync. I often think of the context in which Henley wrote his famous work: contemplating having his leg cut off, when he’d already lost one earlier. Fucker was a steely-eyed embodiment of masculinity in the situation and his words were his affirmation, a determination to live. It is men’s stuff this poetry, and it sets my spirit.

Now, I take my phone and review my goals. I used to carry all of these in a DayTimer binder but the digital world is messing with my system. I’m in a state of flux, ready to adopt or abandon a tactic at a moment’s notice.

I’m not the kind of guy who can just leave my life to chance and hope things work out. Distractibility is the curse of my curousity. I must schedule my time and my activities. If I don’t, I can be led astray. I’m also not perfect at it.

What I look for each day are two things: Resistance and Zone.

If I can identify my resistance and assess its merit in a situation, usually I find I can overcome it on the spot. Sometimes, I experience reluctance for good reason, of course, stepping out into traffic is not the goal of suppressing resistance. But, feeling resistance signals me to examine and assess, learning to become aware of bodily cues and subsequent thoughts which may be preventing me from living my best.  By focusing on this one narrow aspect of my daily existence, I experience more regular wins. And each time I win here, my spirit strengthens and makes me just that much more powerful going forward.

Men tend to build systems.  Mine helps me get here, to this place: when I enjoy a confluence of my passions and strengths–what I like to do with what I tend to be good at–and add in an intense focus while engaging in something of increasing complexity, I get so absorbed I feel alive at a level I don’t get anywhere else. This is when I experience my zone, and the more I get into it, the more I want.

I have not been able to narrow my thinking to the extent I can live in a zone all day long. I’m much too distracted for that. However, I do hit it regularly. In those moments, I’m on point, and I feel strongest. Not power in the sense of power over anyone else. No. It’s a self-mastery power, like I’m really steering the ship. It’s the purest form of agency I know.

At these moments, time flies by imperceptibly, like I can stop time. At other times, an hour feels like minutes, or an afternoon feel like my entire life because I’m so engrossed in whatever is before me. Stopping time like this is what sets my spirit.

I’m not always successful but this is what I strive for.

I believe the ancestral epigenetic effects on my methyl groups influencing my DNA combined with my databank of emotional states recorded in my body since I came into existence are what constitute my soul.  It is this which I attempt to nourish each day. It is to these greater forces I submit my will and drive my actions.

Stay powerful: never give up

Christopher K Wallace
© 2019, all rights reserved

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Men’s mastermind

Know any shit-disturbers? Not mild stuff. Not the kind of stuff men are normally involved in, though that’s probably part of it. No, I mean those people who, no matter the situation or state of affairs governing their lives, always find the storm.

And if they can’t find the storm, they create one. They find something, a small thing or a big thing, and zero in on its possibility and push, prod and call out until things blow up.

It could be with people, with systems, hierarchies, but it’s usually with people. They are often closet conspiracy-theorists, sometimes openly suspicious of… everything.

And too often they have a history of addiction. Not always, certainly, then again not everyone is religious or atheist. Shit-disturbing is not foreign to women by any means either. Hell no.

When humans don’t have an answer for something, we often make one up. It’s the nature of the beast. This serves our evolutionary need to come up with something… anything. Our eyes see out after all, so we look for answers in the environment. This works… until it doesn’t.

If a kid is left to cry it out in the crib as a baby, it may cry for hours until it finally falls asleep with exhaustion. The baby wakes up the next day and has survived. Crying (fear) worked for it in this instance. Those elevated hormones came through.

This easy to understand example plays out in countless forms for many of us, all the way into adulthood as we grapple with sickness, tragedy, war.

How many of us are programmed to seek fear in our lives? I know I was. I am. I met fear at an entirely diffrerent level than those around me. Still do. I am drawn towards the shit storms, strangely attracted to them. Where others move away, I advance, sometimes dangerously.

I have to watch this carefully. So I do.

When I first solved the riddle of addiction, these words you see in the graphic lept off the page at me. I’d read Mate’s book about addiction, Hungry Ghost, but he doesn;t menton this. Ghost is a good book and makes excellent observations, especially around trauma as a precursor to addiction.

It was when I read another of his books, When the Body Says No (2012), that I saw this quote. I’d written my understanding of addiction to that point in my first book, Drinker’s Riddle. The idea of paradoxically seeking fear figures prominently in that work, because I had realized its force over me after 40 years of using drugs and alcohol.

I knew I used drugs and alcohol to hijack my sympathetic system to fill an internal need.

Seemed to me Mate had the same answers but didn’t make the connection. In Ghost, he thought addiction was about trauma. I’ve heard him say, “every addict has trauma but not every person with trauma becomes an addict.” Lots of truth to this and more right than wrong. But to me, that makes it a weaker contention, an incomplete theory.

I searched for the Hans Selye quote as he mentions it, meticulously reading two of Selye’s books. That’s when I realized he’d written so many I’d be at it forever, and still might miss the damn quote. I was trying to source it so I could credit it properly.

So, I wrote Mate congratulating him for his work, expressing my gratitude for the light he shines on addiction. I asked him about the quote. Nothing.

Then, I contacted the Selye folks, those who continue his legacy in stress management. They were really helpful, loved my theory. The quote? Nothing, they had no idea how Mate came up with it.

Finally,  I told Mate by email it was an important quote and Selye’s people can’t find it. He wrote back admitting he’d put it together from what he’d read of Selye’s writing–someone whose work forms the basis of his understanding about stress (and now mine).

I thought that was pretty decent of him. I didn’t know anything about how you’re supposed to assign source credit for stuff you write about so it was a good lesson. And it was a lesson in responsibility too. Rather than bullshit me, he straight up told me it was his impression.

And it’s understandable. Even if Selye didn’t say these words directly, to not quote him would have been borrowing or leaning too heavily on his work without a mention. I learned something about that distinction from this quote.

More importanly,  it’s enough for all of us to understand we can be programmed from our early years to seek stress. We may not like to admit it, but shit happens, and at some point fear may have been seared upon our soul. Branded this way at a physiological level, we may go searching for it.

There’s a price to pay for this, in relationships, health, longevity, happiness. And what of spirit? Spirit is handcuffed by this tangled mess of methyl groups acting epigenetically on DNA coupled with your databank of emotional experiences operating beneath the surface of awareness. The soul.

Yoga helps, so does heart rate variability training, as does committing to understanding the signals coming from your body in various circumstances so you can address underlying stress and breathe differently, taking control, and then thinking better. If your baseline stress level is “always on”, you can learn ways to shut it off. Or lessen it’s strength.

The pay off is less restlessness, more meaning, less boredom and a longer life. You may even feel more happiness.

That’s worth fighting for.

Stay powerful: never give up

Christopher K Wallace
© 2019, all rights reserved

REAL MEN — LIVE TRUE AND FREE

CHOOSING LOVE

Had a preference for blue-eyed blondes most of my life. All 8-10s I guess you’d say. Divorced the last one after almost 25 years, just shy of it. Knew I could not stand up at the quarter century and say it had been great. In fact, though we had some fun times and raised a fine boy (we’re tight), it was often a nightmare. My fault as much as hers.

Maybe it had to do with the girl who lived behind us in Halifax. I remember reading how our first sexual experiences are lasting. I was about 5 when she invited me into the woods and found a sunny spot for just the two of us. I guess she had to be about 10, or maybe 12, but I’m not sure. There, she pulled her pants down and lay down in the daisies and had me sprinkle petals on her naked vagina. She was a blue-eyed blond. In my mind’s eye, I can still see her laying there touching herself.

Then a gal chose me, because from what I can tell, that’s how it works. She is much younger. Soon she was highlighting her hair to look more blonde, and her eyes are green. I remember that saying as a kid, “never trust a woman with green eyes,” so.. yeah. Great ass, though. I became an ass man. Just happened. Motivation I guess.

After a few years, she stopped dieing her hair. Then she wanted my child. I told her I’d get her a dog. She looked a little hurt. I told her if she did well with the dog, I’d let her have my baby. Because, well, who wouldn’t want my kid, right?

So for her birthday, middle of buttfuck nowhere Alberta in a Febuary snowstorm, I get her this dog. The woman wants 1500 for this little black bitch, Bichon Frise. She’s the runt and goes straight for my gal. Apparently, it’s a Cuban breed sub-type and I’d learned Cuban Salsa after my divorce. Even spent a few weeks in La Habana learning from a top teacher. I give her 750.

That dog, first time I threw a toy it brought it back to my feet. Missus had Ceasar Milan on all day and night. She became a dog-whisperer herself. We move to Toronto. She starts a dog walking and training business. She is really good at it. I know I’m fucked, but I’m amazed.

I take her to see Caesar Milan at the Molson Theater or some place like that downtown. There’s 3K women screaming and me checking my emails. Dog gets sick. Missus gets pregnant. Loses one in the middle of the night. I actually feel for her and I don’t fuck it up. I’m decent. She buries the miscarried fetus in a bean plant in my kitchen the next morning.

Before long, she’s pregnant again. She knew right away this one was good. How could I deny her? A few months after that, a perfect baby girl. Women have told me I needed a daughter to better understand them. I’d scoff. But, they were right. My little girl has taught me plenty about love.

Two years later, a boy arrives. He spends the first few months at Sick Kids. The dog, Maggie May (obviously, she let me name her) is really sick. These fucking vets are expensive and assholes about it when I ask them to put her down.

My gal asks me to take care of it while she’s at Ronald McDonald House, near the boy in Toronto, a hundred clicks from my place in Cobourg. So, I do it myself and bury her in the garden. It’s unpleasant.

My father had five sons. No one named a boy after him. I name the boy Howard, after my dad. He’s over the moon. Grandpa Howie and Baby Howie, now Little Howie.

It’s been 13 years I’m with this light brunette with the green eyes. My daughter is blue-eyed blond like I was as a kid. The boy is spitting image of his mom. He’s mama’s boy, in fact, but, he’s a boy.

I’m their hero. How often do we get to be someone’s hero? I’m her hero too, missus that is. She says, “you might be an old man, but you’re my old man.” I never heard sweeter words. Ever.

She won’t marry me. Maybe I needed that. Says, “if we never get married, we never get divorced.” I can’t argue with her. And, she’s taught me a lot. I want to do well for her, for the kids. One thing I learned is a man can learn to love anyone. He’s adaptable.

So it follows: If happiness is a decision, then so is love.

And everyone wants to feel like someone’s chosen.

Stay Powerful, never give up.
cw

©ckwallace, 2019, all rights reserved.

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NO FLOWERS FOR YOU

Around days like Valentine’s Day, I often hear men say the dumbest things. My favourite is this one:

“My wife doesn’t like cut flowers.”

Oh really?

What the fuck brother. Did you go ask her you dumbass?

Because that’s the wrong god-damned thing to do if you expect to keep getting laid long into the future.

If she doesn’t like cut fucking flowers: TOO FUCKING BAD

You’re giving them to her because that’s what YOU want to do.

And if you know she doens’t like cut flowers because she told you after you asked her, you need to be bitch-slapped like the pussy you are.

Or talked to earnestly, fatherly-like, and have things explained in the simplest of terms. Ok, that’s the tact I’m taking here.

It’s like my first girlfriend Sylvia taught me when I was 15 years old, something I shall never, ever forget: She said, “sometimes when a girl says no, she really means yes.”

Like what the fuck are you supposed to do with that information? How the fuck is that going to help you govern yourself accordinly, so that you somehow meet her demands and satisfy her needs?

Well, the thing is, the advice is GOLD.

Because it tells you do never mind what she wants and to go ahead and love her. LEAD that woman into your arms and bed. She’s begging for this from you. AND, she expects you to know this already.

Don’t be a jerk. Be the best version of yourself. Be kind, be fair, be there, be an immovable presence for good in her life. But you need to sweep that girl off her feet, DO IT.

What else is there? “Oh, hey, babe, I was wondering, would it be ok if I, you know, sort of, swept you off your feet? Just for a minute. I’ll put you right back down. I promise not to drop you!”

Is that going to be your pathetic approach?

Because I can tell you, you may keep a gal living in your home but you will soon be a sexless and frustrated piece of furniture she has to dust off like the rest of it.

Remember, familiartiy breeds contempt. Promixity breeds comfort and boredom.

DISTANCE CREATES SEX.

So don’t become predictable. When a woman tells a man she doesn’t like cut flowers, that’s a test. Send that wench a dozen dozen the very next day! To her work if you can! So all the other wenches will gather around her and want to touch her so some of her magic rubs off on them.

Doesn’t happen that way?

HA! Fool. Soon to be a sexless fool wed to Mrs Thumb and her four daughters…

I spend yesterday delivering flowers and I can tell you, the gals rush her in worship of her love and your devotion.

AND everyone of them, from the 18-year-old clerk in a warehouse to the 70-year-old school secretary practically swoons at the very idea one of them is being adulated so.

It’s the sisterhood you see. They fucking cry for each other.

Men lead; women command. Never forget it. Didn’t get her flowers yesterday? Do it today. Tell her she deserves a special day just for her–that’s how amazing she is.

Your comments? Ideas? Impressions?

Stay powerful: never give up.
cw

ps, I came home with this stuff for her and the kids. Sure enough, it’s all over her wall this morning. She’s making sure her gal pals know she’s loved and appreciated.

I’m happy to oblige her. Left her weak. Trust me.

CHRIS WALLACE
©Feb, 2019 all rights reserved

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EVOLUTION & CHANGE: more push and pull from life

Cognitive dissonance: holding two confliciting beliefs. It’s akin, or like a cousin to, guilt. It’s uncomfortable. Most people take the path of least resistance and adopt the easiest route to re-establish comfort. However, doing that often means compromising self-concept, which as you might know, is destiny.

Ex: A guy sees himself as an honest man. Yet, catches himself bullshitting while talking to some people. He senses it in his belly then or later, and doesn’t like how he feels.

So here, he can either rationalize it–and tell himself something like, “Everyone bullshits a little bit,” or a version thereof.

However, if he does this, it means a shift in his self-concept, a watering down of his values and belief in himself, and a polluting of the ideal of how he believes others see him.

He’s now nothing special: a “bullshitter” like everyone else.

This is a weakening of his self. It’s a weakening of his manhood, and that lessening of his power will translate into every area of his existence. Soon, he can expect to use this same lazy template to rationalize other aspect of life: his body, his relationships, his work, his very spirit.

The more difficult challenge for him is to take the interoception he reads from his body and realize this was a call to action.

This is what men do. They lean into things, even when those things are uncomfortable, painful, and involve short-term loss. A man with an intact sense of himself knows if you give him an ax and point him towards a forest, he can build a life.

A man who knows he is a man, remains dangerous. He guards against anything which would dull the sharpness of his edges, carefully honing himself like an ax, or a sword, or a mind.

He may choose to never bullshit again. He may choose to retract (a beautiful word and technique available to anyone) his words with those people, and re-establish his worth in his own eyes, and perhaps in theirs. He may choose to be more careful in the future and stay precisely on the side of truth.

The same is true of any change. Life progresses and we must adapt to it, or die. Each day you are caught between your old self and the possibility of a new you. The old self is comfortable, you know him well.

The new you is uncertain, less known, and perhaps a little scary. Part of it is because your self concept has two aspects: How you see yourself measured up against how you believe others see you. What a balance you must negotiate.

The motivation stall is wrapped in two things: one is your old self/new self dichotomy being played out as per above. But another factor could be perfectionism. That’s a common facet in men, and indeed, of procrastinators everywhere.

We can become afraid to act and make a mistake and, be judged, so do nothing. The risk is judged too high, best to immobilize myself, frozen here, I take zero chance. Now, I am plagued with “what ifs” and “if onlys” and “coulda, shoulda, woulda” self-flagellations. These add to my inertia.

So, the answer is to watch for the above. Sometimes, just starting at something is enough to entrain the rest of you… so you become fully involved in a task. Starting is everything.

Worth repeating: Starting is everything. Do one rep, commit to 5 minutes, get moving, but start at something, anything.

Soon your natural inclination to live takes over. All humans seek to stop time, to cheat the forward movement of their lives, to stop the linear progression they know ends in death.

And the only way to stop time is to get so deeply engrossed in doing something of complexity and which demands from us a progression of competence. This flow state stops it all, and is the natural boundary of spirit and body. It’s where passion and strengths and focus meet. It’s our personal heaven while alive, available to anyone one of us.

This all is made easier if you are getting time in to take care of your spirit needs. Planned and merited reward is a key part of taking care of yourself. Do not allow the demands of those around you to snuff out your spirit. Do not ask, but take it, impose your spirit on life. You are no good to anyone with a weakened spirit, so do the thing which allow yours to soar high.

It’s good to plan “I will do this and then I’m going to do that” and have the “that” as something which rewards you. Play is spiritual, especially play in nature, outdoors, where you evolved. Planned play is a key way to take care of you, your spirit. Do not let this lapse in your life.

All of us as human being have a core worry that other people will discover we are imperfect, and not good enough, and that this discovery will mean we are not worthy of love. It’s a story we tell ourselves, derived from nature’s needs.

Understanding this, we can seize our power as men and write our own narrative. It’s our story to write.

What story are you writing about you?

Stay powerful,
cw