In my recent TEDx talk, What 10,000 Years of Progress Cost Men, I reflect on my forty-year journey on developing my Masculine Emotional Intelligence. As I mentioned in the talk, I started with a few challenges that I healed and learned from.
Losing at everything made me resolute: I was determined to be successful in communicating, emotional interactions, and relationships. I first tried all the affirmations we receive as men, such as, “suck it up.” We know how well they worked.
With nothing to lose, I started putting myself out there. My failure rate was higher than my success rate. Tenacity proved useful, though; I slowly learned how to communicate. Once out of college I dove into every alternative health and psychological process I could find. Living in Boulder, CO, at the time, discovering leaders in these fields to study with was easy.
In a matter of few years, my life did a 180; I was actually successful in my relationships and happy. My relationships with women were real relationships. I could be with people. I wasn’t thinking about what to say—I was just interacting.
Once I began to see gains, I wanted more. I upped my experimenting, studying, and emotional risking. Being blessed with some incredible teachers early on to guide me, I started to feel normal. The next several decades were about how to take what I learned to create professional success. My biggest challenge was dealing with my employees in my business in Scottsdale, AZ. They taught me how to stand up for myself.
I was on a slow learning curve. Other than my initial teachers, I had no guidance. I was on my own as a man learning to be a man. Life became my non-empathetic teacher.
A New Model for Everyone
This new model of Masculine Emotional Intelligence is about men teaching each other what we never had taught to us. In a safe place such as one of our free groups, men – through the deep interaction – get to model, experience, test, and challenge this new model. Over time, collectively we help each other to fill the emotional gap between where we are as men, to get where we want to be.
To the extent we assist each other, women get to relax. For too long we were trained to rely on women to teach and mentor us. They taught us a lot as our mothers, teachers, possibly therapists, and partners. Buy they can’t teach us how to experience and express emotions as a man.
The evolution of our culture gotten us into this predicament. We as men need to get ourselves out of it. We can’t fix it with the tools the current model gives us, though; we need to go back to the tribe and its brotherhood to build our own Masculine Emotional Intelligence.
Ten years, more than 200 men through our Sandpoint Men’s Group, along with three years of trainings throughout North America, has shown us that this simple model works. When men connect as men, with other men, on a regular basis in a deep way—we transform our lives.
What’s Next
We need your help in sharing this new model. This TEDx video can be the introduction. I’m open to speaking, writing or being interviewed about how as men we can succeed emotionally.
We are now ready to take what we learned and shared it with a larger audience. After thousands of hours of refinement in live groups, we have a system that will give men what they want. Our live Two Day weekends are a blast, but they are limited in the number of men we can help.
To appeal to more men at a lower price point, we developed our Emotional Superman course. To hone the delivery of it, we are offering the pilot at a reduced cost. We need men to help us refine what we know works in live groups so more men can benefit. To jumpstart interest, we created a giveaway where the winner gets two admissions to the course.
For the man who doesn’t have a group or wants to start a group, this course could be the ticket. It certainly will shorten your Masculine Emotional Intelligence learning curve. You don’t need to work as hard or long as I did.
Your Help
We need your feedback. How does the course fulfill the mission laid out in the TEDx talk? Is it something you would take or recommend to a friend who is suffering from what I speak about in the talk?
Thank you for all your support over the years. It’s what launched me into doing the TEDx talk.
Owen
P.S. Here’s part of an email a friend sent me about the talk that brought tears to my eyes:Larry was very impressed. But here is a very big thing. We actually talked and he opened up… maybe just a little… but it is a start, after we watched it. This is huge. You made an impression on him, no small feat, and he actually heard what you were saying. I am sending it to Andy [her ex-husband] now and anyone I can think of.