Ed Watters: To overcome, you must educate.
Educate not only yourself, but educate anyone seeking to learn.
We are all Dead America, we can all learn something.
To learn, we must challenge what we already understand.
The way we do that is through conversation.
Sometimes we have conversations with others, however, some of the best
conversations happen with ourselves.
Reach out and challenge yourself; let's dive in and learn something new right now.
Today, we are speaking with Jason Lange.
He is a men's embodiment coach and he's all about evolutionary men.
Jason, could you please introduce yourself?
Let people know just a little more about you, please.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
First off, thanks for having me here, Ed.
Excited to be here.
And so, yeah, I'm a, uh, men's work guide, coach, and facilitator.
I've been working with men for about fifteen years now.
Started my journey, um, my journey started with me getting into men's work.
And so, um, learning really firsthand the power of embodiment work in men's
groups in terms of shifting a lot of the challenges I was having in my life and
fell so in love with the work, now it's kind of what I guide other men through.
Um, and something I'm just grateful for every day.
And in fact, I think it's just becoming more and more important
with each and every passing day with the state of the world.
Ed Watters: I can't agree more, Jason.
Men are hurting out there.
We are lost, confused, you know, because the world is changing rapidly.
And what we define ourself as, it's changing.
So there's already confusion from the traditional lifestyle.
Now we've got so many more lifestyles in the mix, and it's very hard for
many men to accept and understand the evolution into what the modern world is.
What should a man be in your opinion, Jason?
Jason Lange: Yeah, it's such a great question and is really at the heart
of so much of the work I do in that.
A lot of the pain as you speak about that men are under these days is,
we don't know what we're supposed to be or what we're supposed to do.
You know, the rules of the game in a lot of ways have changed.
And men generally, in my opinion, want to do well for themselves, for their
community, for their world, but they don't, these days, really know how.
And, you know, the paradigm used to be, in a sense, if you were a man, in
a kind of more traditional sense, just providing, showing up, doing your work,
taking care of your friends and family,
that was enough.
That's not really enough anymore.
And what we've seen, what I've seen firsthand in the men I work with is a
lot of us came into this world and, um, you know, over the last fifty, sixty
years, there's maybe kind of three predominant, what I say, archetypes
for the masculine, for men that were, were, um, kind of demonstrated for us.
And I'll just go through them quick and then it'll become pretty clear
what the problem with them is.
And the first is kind of the, what we joke is the traditional kind of macho
jerk, the my way or the highway, the man who just goes for what he wants, takes
what he wants, and often doesn't really think about much more than himself, right?
So he's just, uh, conquering in a sense.
And the thing about those men is they often do tend to get a certain type of
success and achievement and kind of, but it's usually in more of a taking
sense and they can often adversely impact those people around them, the
environment, all kinds of things.
And so many generations of men in the last, you know, um, decades grew
up seeing the damages of that kind of man, a man who just doesn't care
and causes harm to those around him.
And as a result, you know, particularly I would say in the fifties and
sixties and onward, we started to see a response to that of what we kind
of now call the nice guy, us nice guys, I consider myself a nice guy.
We're very heart centered, we really care about safety for those around us, we go
out of our way to not be creeps or not to be too sexually aggressive, and we
really are kind of polite, in a sense.
We want those around us to feel well taken care of.
The problem with a lot of nice guys is they do that at their own expense.
So they don't set healthy boundaries,
they don't really go for what they want, and they often end up feeling
very frustrated and left behind in some of their primary relationships.
Then the third one I'll just mention here, Ed, which is kind of sprinkled all around
is what I call the traditional stoic.
You know, I, I kind of tend to point to, um, the kind of greatest generation
of grandfathers in particular, guys you could, you know, know for twenty,
thirty, forty years, and maybe never even know they were in war or had some
extremely challenging life events.
They just kind of grunt their way through life, keep to themselves, show up and
do their responsibilities, but really keep their inner world locked down.
In all three of those strategies, uh, of being, for men, have kind
of fallen apart in the sense they're just not working anymore.
And you know, the, the, uh, suicide rates, loneliness rates, physical, um, ailments
for men, like, it's just all skyrocketing.
Men are literally hurting as you're saying.
And so what we're being asked to do and kind of the, maybe the central premise
of the work I do is, it's not about
toxic masculinity or any of the stuff we often hear about now that, Oh, you
know, men are just inherently bad.
It's about, we got to take the best of what was and bring
it into the future as well.
And what that really points to in the work I do, Ed, is I kind of, again,
bring it to three different points here.
First, you know, modern men, modern integrated men, we need to be embodied.
So we actually need to be connected to our direct bodily
experience from moment to moment.
This includes the physical sensations in our body and as I
would say, our emotions as well.
Because emotions start as physical sensations in the body.
And so many of us men have actually been trained out of our bodies by our culture.
We have been taught from a very young age, stop crying, toughen
up, don't move in school.
We get all of these messages, and it's from culture, it's from
other men, sometimes it's from our teachers, that whatever's
happening in your body, ignore it.
A real man is tough and he just moves forward no matter what.
That tends to cause some pretty big problems later on.
So first off is us men just learning to get out of our heads and actually
including our whole bodily experience.
So being grounded, being present, and really just being here.
Something that sounds maybe pretty simple, particularly in our age of technology,
where everything is trying to pull our attention away from right here and
now, it's, it's a big, big challenge.
Then second, is from that place, once we're grounded and embodied, that's
when we allow ourselves to open.
To actually become open to the moment, open to our emotions, and attuned
to ourselves and those around us.
So this is a pretty big paradigm shift for a lot of men where I say the
most powerful men I know these days, they are also the most sensitive men.
And I don't mean sensitive in that they get hurt just from
someone calling them a name.
I mean sensitive in that they're deeply attuned, particularly
to those around them.
They're deeply attuned to their emotional responses.
They aren't prey to their emotions, right?
It's not like, Oh, this emotion happened to me, now I'm just exploding in rage.
They're actually able to notice, and see, and be with, Wow, I'm
feeling really angry right now.
That is such an evolutionary leap for most men to actually be able to name
what their inner experience is in the moment rather than just reacting from it.
So there's this openness that, um, is deeply connected to that, that
bedrock of groundedness, in presence.
And then the third thing I'll just add here in terms of what I kind of say as an
evolutionary man is, we, we learn to take power of our awareness, to control, where
is my attention going in any given moment?
And to learn that, uh, our awareness is actually one of our superpowers.
So in any given moment, can I take my awareness, literally the focus of my
attention, and put it on what is most important for me, for my family, for
my work, for the planet, whatever that means in that particularly moment.
Another way to think about this is, we are able to orient towards depth.
What is the most important thing for me to be paying attention to right now?
And when we have all three of those things, so a deep grounded presence,
an open and sensitive heart, and an expanded and focused awareness, those
two terms might seem contradictory, but they're actually quite, um,
they work quite well together, we, we become something very different.
We become a man that is in touch with our power, our sexuality, what we
want, our capacity to set boundaries.
But we're also deeply attuned to the people around us, noticing
the impact we're having on our environment, on our relationships.
And we're orienting towards, what's most important for those around me?
So it's a tall order in a lot of ways, because I think a big part of where
society is letting men down right now is we're not getting any training for how
to be in this world in cultivating a deep presence, learning to be present with our
emotions, even learning to work our minds.
These are actual skills and capacities we have to practice and train at, and
nobody is teaching us guys this stuff.
Ed Watters: Yeah, I can't agree more.
You know, I think the simple man is a thing of the past.
We live in a technological age and therefore we have to keep up with
that to be relevant in this world.
And with the changes in our technology, the brute force, the
manual labor is getting less and less.
So there's, there's this thing, our testosterone, it sometimes
puts that grr to us, you know?
But we go to the workplace and we work that out a lot of the time.
And now with the advent of technologies, a lot of the times men work just
like this, and there's no room for that grr time to get it out.
We, we need to incorporate social activities that allow us to be around men.
You say men groups are necessary, and I really do agree with that a lot.
Dealing with men in this atmosphere, what are some of the struggles that
we are facing as men transitioning?
Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely.
Uh, we mentioned one in particular is loneliness and isolation.
So I think men in particular are, are very susceptible to, um, falling
into very isolating life patterns.
You know, this is obviously different across cultures and in individuals.
But in general, a lot of women are better at just maintaining
relationships, just literally just having connections in their lives.
A lot of us men, again, partly, you know, some of it biological, but a
lot of it cultural, um, fall prey to what I call the myth of the lone wolf.
This idea that, Oh, a real man is someone who's tough, that doesn't
need anyone, doesn't rely on anyone.
So we kind of have that context along with, like you spoke
about, a lot of shifting cultural and technological changes.
Where a lot of the places us men used to go to get community have kind of
fallen apart, social groups, men's clubs, certain types of work and
activities, um, church groups for some people, there's a huge range of things.
But a lot of that stuff is falling apart and there's this shift, right?
Uh, at least here in the West, to kind of work from home, more entrepreneurial
stuff where many men I work with, right, um, they can spend days or weeks
without interacting with a person.
You can click and order everything off Amazon.
And there's all this energy now kind of working against us from actually
connecting with other human beings.
And again, I think it's, it's men that are particularly vulnerable
to this because we have this thing of, I got to do it all myself.
So many men internalize this belief that I got to figure it out all myself.
That's what a tough man does, you know, here in the States where I live, right?
Um, we are just inundated with the image in particular of like the, the, the lone
cowboy, the rugged individual, just, who pulls himself up by his bootstraps.
And the truth is, uh, that doesn't work anymore, right?
Many of the men that go that route end up addicted to alcohol or weed, or have
autoimmune disorders, they die earlier.
Like there is just a crazy amount of stats.
We are meant to live in, meant to live relationally, and in community,
and in the natural world, right?
The lone wolf is actually the wolf that was kicked out of the pack and they
do not survive as long as the wolves in a pack, it has real consequences.
So for one, most men are chronically malnourished in connection is what I find.
And if they do have connection in their life, Ed, a lot of men out of
the gate, we default to connecting via what I call triangulation.
So it's me and you and we build connection by having our attention
on a third thing, a sports game, an activity, there's something that
we're putting our attention on.
You know, another way I put this is men like to talk about things, right?
We'll get together and we'll just talk about things, or politics, or whatever,
but rarely are men trained to turn their attention towards each other.
Hey, I'm gonna ask you what's going on in your life.
You're gonna ask me what's going on in my life.
And our attention is actually going to be on each other, which is where the deepest
connection is often built and where I see time and time again with men I work with,
they're, it's like they are in the desert malnourished and they get into a space
where people are actually present and something inside them comes back alive.
Some type of connection starts to blossom and vitality comes back to their lives.
So for one, they're just, there's not enough connection for so many guys.
Number two, like I said, is just these changing expectations
for what men should be.
You know, in a sense, um, uh, the probably most concrete form of this
is all these, some of these ideas we've talked about, we, we kind of
consolidate in what we call the man box.
Which is this idea that, uh, and they've done research, right?
It's really interesting, they did, they polled, um, men and women
across the board, so this was both sides, and it's just simple
question, what marks the transition between a girl and a woman, right?
What makes a girl turn into a woman?
And most people, both men and women included, noted biological features.
So she starts menstruating, she has her cycle, her body changes,
then she's a woman, right?
Same question asked about boys and men, totally different answers.
It's not based on biology, it's based on how the man is showing
up in his culture or society.
Expectations of behavior and integrity, meaning a boy could be fully mature in
his body, but not be considered a man,
right?
Oh, he's still, he hasn't, he's failure to launch, right?
He's stuck at home.
And part of what drives that are these, what we call the man box.
Which is, right, the set of expectations that create a box of behavior for us men.
That if we're checking the contents of that box, We're a man.
If we're not checking the contents of that box, we're less than a man.
We're something else, there's all kinds of slurs and words for that, that people use.
But some of the defining characteristics of that, like we said, are be tough,
don't show emotion, don't be weak, push yourself, these are some of the messages
we get from a very young age as men.
Which again, then leads to this incredible problem of, as human beings.
We men have emotions and feelings, but from a young age, we are not taught
what they are, or how to relate to them, or how to healthily express them.
So what happens instead is we have these uncomfortable sensations
in our bodies, sometimes we can't even label what they are.
And what men, I think in particular, do, Ed, is they turn to things outside of
them to try to get rid of that feeling.
So, booze, weed, porn, masturbation, food, working really hard, earning
money, there's so many different ways us men will try to eject from our
experience so we don't have to feel it.
And the trouble is feelings don't go away.
You can numb them out, you can try to push them away, you can
run away from them, but they stay.
And there's, you know, again, more and more research here that shows, you can
even run a thought experience here.
He came across a person, a young boy or something, right?
And he's just scared or bawling in tears or something.
And you come up to him and you go, Stop crying.
What you'll see that boy do,
he'll hold his breath, he'll stop breathing and his body
will actually tense up.
So, the way we stop emotion is we tense up our body to hold it.
We hold the feeling inside and maybe we eventually dissociate from it.
But long and short of this is every time we don't feel the, feel a
feeling or allow emotional content to properly be experienced, it gets
stored in our body as held tension.
And the research seems to point to our fascia, which is what
connects our muscle to our bone.
But this has a huge energetic cost, right?
Because even if I just told you right now, right?
Tense all the muscles in your arms, you guys can, you can do this, right?
Just stand in here and you tighten your biceps.
And if I was like, Now hold that for twenty minutes.
At first, it's like, Oh, that's easy.
But as the time goes by you're like, Wow, this actually takes a lot of energy.
And that's energy you do not have available for you
in the rest of your life.
So many men these days I work with, they have so much buried, buried
feeling and emotional content that's held in their body as tension.
And then they walk around depressed, exhausted, anxious, and not sure
what's, why this is happening to them.
And so training men to learn to get in touch with their bodies, their hearts,
their feelings, and then what to do with their emotions to make it a constructive,
healthy thing is a huge edge and very underserved thing in our world right now.
And you know, when we're young, Ed, I like to joke, you know, it's like we kind
of come with a certain, uh, amount of
juice in our battery.
It's like, you know, we can just push ourselves, we can go
out drinking, we can, whatever.
And we just bounce back.
And then, you know, you start to hit your, your forties and fifties
and it's like, Oh wait, this doesn't just recharge automatically anymore.
I got to be really mindful with what I'm doing with my life force.
And a lot of these held emotions really start to kind of have an impact on
us, I would say, in that middle age.
Where we'll start to have extreme amounts of autoimmune disorders, depression,
physical ailments that, you know, they can't all be traced back to emotional
content, but it has a massive impact.
So something I've seen in the live work I do, with men in particular, is guiding
a man into, you know, sometimes something they've been holding, literally an
emotional experience they've been holding from their childhood even, for decades.
And they finally allow that to move through them, it's like a different
human being shows up on the other side.
Their face softens, their eyes open brighter, there's
more energy, more presence.
And, and just tell you like, Wow, I'm here because I was spending all of this energy
to hold that at bay for all these years.
And that just has such a huge consequence on us men.
So isolation and, you know, another way to put this, maybe, emotional
constipation that a lot of us men kind of get stuck with, two of
the huge challenges right now.
Ed Watters: I like that.
And it is so important to recognize that.
Bottling things up is what we do best and that deep work, that dark shadow work,
you call it, I believe, it is what we have to do to really break free from it all.
And love ourselves even though we hate who we used to be, that's, that's quality.
And when we put quality into us, we get quality out.
It's easy to hide, it's easy to run, and it's easy to blame.
I know that a lot of people get stuck in this blame game because that's what
they've been taught to do, really.
And, you know,
it's about putting ourselves around people that really make the difference.
What type of role models should a male be looking for?
Jason Lange: Yeah, this is huge and it's one of the big reasons why I really am a
proponent of this idea of men's groups.
Because another challenge we have as men is, many of us don't get to
spend time around other healthy men.
So we're like, Hey, I know what I'm being shown in the world is not a healthy,
uh, is not healthy, but I don't have any role models of what else there should be.
And this is something that, you know, Robert Bly, who wrote, um, Iron John,
he was one of the first to kind of talk about another one of the many
kind of shifts for men was, you know, once the industrial revolution came,
before that, boys at some point would kind of go off to be with the men.
Dad would have a trade or work and, you know, around seven or eight,
you would start to spend time
with dad, or your uncles, or the men in your life.
And you would be taught kind of the way a man should be in a sense, what it means
to serve your community, your family.
And once the industrial revolution hit, all the dads went away to factories.
And so boys were left at home.
And then we got shoved into school systems, which though it's changing,
teachers have predominantly been women.
So a lot of boys have spent a lot of time being raised by women and
don't necessarily have access to that, that kind of older role model
energy where we get transmitted so much, so much happens in that.
And I got pretty lucky, part of my personal journey is I got lucky.
I got into a men's group when I was in my twenties and that exposed me to
older, more mature men I never would have met in a different container.
And this was a visceral thing for me as I'm sitting in the room with some
of these men and seeing how they're sharing, how they're standing, how they're
breathing, how they deal with emotions.
And, you know, it sounds a little cheesy, but I remember one of my
first mentors, I saw him speaking and interacting with some people.
And I just had this sense in my body of, Wow.
That's what I want to be when I grow up.
It's not so much what he's doing, but it's his presence, which has come
from a certain type of practice and work he had put in and on himself.
So getting around other men who, as I say, are deeper than us
doesn't mean they know everything.
It just means in, you know, sometimes it's in career, sometimes it's in
transformation, sometimes it's in sports.
These men have gone a little further on their path than us
and can transmit something to us and that is a really rare thing.
You know, it's something I'm so grateful for having become
a father in the last years.
Have, you know, tried to navigate a pandemic and all this crazy stuff.
And I was in men's groups with some guys in their fifties, sixties, and
seventies who, you know, I would be on the verge of a freak out.
Oh my God, this is happening with my kid.
And they're like, Hey.
Yeah, totally.
I get it, I remember that.
Here's what worked for me, here's what I discovered.
My whole nervous system just would relax like, Oh, okay.
I got some people looking out for me who have some advice for me, who can guide me.
It doesn't mean they have all the answers, but their wisdom was transmitted to me.
So getting around other healthy men is one of the most powerful
things we can do as guys.
Get around other men who can call us forward when there's something in our
life we need to be held accountable for, and frankly, just support us when
we can't hold it together anymore.
And so many men I know are just bracing, holding on for dear life and
have nowhere to go where they can, sometimes literally, but oftentimes
figuratively, be held by others.
Hey, man, it's okay.
I've got you right now, you don't have to hold it in.
That to me is one of the most powerful shifts I've seen for men.
So getting in a group, getting around other healthy men changes lives.
I've just seen it time and time again.
Ed Watters: Yeah, yeah.
I think it's, it's one of the most important things.
You need that context to be.
And the only way you can get context of a man is to be around a true man and that,
that sometimes is very difficult to find.
Another big thing I remember is being able to reach out and ask.
Hey, can you help me with this?
Do you have any advice?
It was one of the hardest things for me to do.
Do you have any advice for young men?
How do you reach out to a possible role model and ask for
that help that you might need?
Jason Lange: Yeah, that, um, I just want to really highlight what
you said because this is sometimes the hardest thing for men to do.
What I've seen in the work I do with men.
I mean, I'll tell you, Ed, some, you know, I'm a coach as well so I work
with guys one on one or in programs.
And so sometimes I will have the, I've had the experience many times,
men are actually paying me for coaching, guidance, support, right?
So they're paying me for it and like a week will go by
and I won't hear from them.
And so I'll reach out and be like, Hey, what's going on?
I'm just wondering how you're doing.
And they'll eventually reveal to me, Oh my God, I had the
worst couple of days in my life.
It was so hard, I barely survived it.
And I'm like, I'm literally here for you.
You're, you're actually paying me to be here for you and you still, right,
had this challenge to reach out.
Cause they're like, Oh, I felt so much shame.
I was embarrassed or whatever.
And I'm like, No, that, like, what I tell my guys is the moment you
want to withdraw is often the most important moment to reach out to say,
Hey, I'm really struggling today.
I'm just, I'm in it.
I, I, I'm stuck, I'm mad or I'm pissed, or I'm sad, or I feel totally trapped.
And it's that reaching out and finding connection that often
starts to release some of the energy to allow us to heal and move.
Or frankly, might not change a single thing about the actual mechanics of
whatever challenge we're having in life.
But connection often resources ourselves, resources us so we have the energy to
keep, keep at that problem, so to speak.
So it's not like talking to me necessarily fixes everything all the time, but it just
makes a man feel like okay I'm not alone.
I feel energized, I feel resourced so I can go back and,
and get at this thing again.
But it's a real challenge.
So if you're, you know, thinking about it, it, whether it's, you know,
someone on social media, or someone who wrote a book, or someone in your
immediate community, reach out to them.
Just say, Hey, you know, I'm looking for a little guidance.
Would you have some time, some time to just sit down and chat?
Um, they, you know, there is actually a fair amount of research that shows, in a
pretty profound way, um, men, it's not, you know, the ideal obviously is you
have like a very present, attuned, caring caregiver, father energy, who can come in
and is regularly engaged with your life.
Many of us don't have that for various reasons.
But what they, what they've shown is even a single intervention by an older, caring,
wise man, so this could be a sports coach, this could be an uncle, this could be
someone in your community, a teacher, whatever, somebody who just drops in
with you and says, Hey, you know what?
I know you can do it.
I believe in you, let's figure this out.
One time even can completely alter the trajectory of a boy and man's life.
So these don't have to even be like, you know, best friend relationships forever.
But sometimes just getting a little mentorship from someone in your workplace,
or someone in your church, or someone in your friends and family community,
it's like, Hey, I'm struggling with this thing.
Have you ever dealt with that?
And you ask them, people are often, love to share about their
wins, or advice, or self story.
So you just, you got to reach out.
And if it's a little too uncomfortable, you know, you can find a container,
something like a men's group, or a retreat, or a program to come into
where that's really woven in as well.
Ed Watters: Yeah, that's good advice.
You know, another thing is quality.
I think the quality of your mentors matter, because we touched
on it earlier, what, what you are around is what you become.
And you really want to think about that when you are attaching yourself.
If, if the guy's out there partying and doing immature things, is that
the right mentor that you want?
You know, I remember it was fun, it was great, it was energetic, it was
thrilling to be around that energy.
But now that I'm older and I'm a little wiser, I look back on those connections
that I chose when I was younger because I wanted that vibrant feeling in my life.
This is not necessarily the right person to reach out to.
And I really think that we need to work harder on being available to
individuals when they reach out.
And don't slough a young man off if they reach out to you
because it's so important.
They saw something there, answer that call.
What type of person should we be going into a relationship like that?
Because a lot of people they're withdrawn and they don't want to be bothered by it.
But really, I, I feel that it's your duty if a young man reaches out to
you, you need to answer that call.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
One of my, you know, favorite inquiries for this is, uh, to slow down.
And even just inside yourself connect to, yeah, that inner
teenager there, that inner young boy.
And remember, where were you struggling?
Where were you in pain?
What do you wish you could have asked an older, mature man?
And what do you wish you could have gotten back from him?
And you'll probably get a pretty clear read, right?
Like, Oh man, I really needed somebody to X, Y, or Z.
That can be one of your great gifts in life then is to go out and give that.
To find other men who you can express that thing you needed at that age
and say, Hey, here, here I am.
I want to, I want to bring this.
And just, you know, in general, I think one of the greatest things we can
do as men is show up with curiosity, not shame people, just, right?
It's not making them wrong for, you know, if a young boy who's stuck, we don't
want to shame them, we just get curious.
What's going on in your life?
And, um, I kind of summarize, you know, in the work I do, Ed, I call
it the father energy we all need.
And I kind of mentioned it earlier, actually, that I, to me, the ultimate
kind of fatherly masculine energy that anyone can give, doesn't just have to be
a man, but it's this particular texture of, oh, let's figure it out together.
Meaning if a challenge hits you and you feel like you failed, or don't
know how to do something, or are stuck, it's the loving presence of
someone else who acknowledges that.
And then sits with you and says, Okay, well, what can we do different next time?
What do you need to work on in yourself or in your career?
And that just stays with you in that and helps you run the experiments.
Another way to put this is, helps you learn to fail better.
So if something happens in life and it doesn't work out the way
you want, you figure it out.
And to me, that is real resilience.
It's not that you always get what you want,
it's that you're able to respond to the moment and try again.
Ride through it.
Men tend to love, you know, sports movies, stuff like Rocky.
What makes Rocky great?
It's not that he wins every time.
It's no matter how hard he gets hit, he gets back up.
He tries again.
We find that very inspiring as men.
And that's a really unique texture of love, men in
particular, can offer to others.
Of, wow, yeah, you're really hurting with this.
You feel really stuck with this, or wow, you, you face planted on that, right?
Well, let's talk about it.
Let's figure it out.
What could we try different?
And having someone in your, in your corner, so to speak, like that as
a man, wow, does it change things.
It, it creates a completely different type of resilience that allows
us to go out and be bold and run experiments and fail in a sense.
But we learn so much every time that if we just commit to that as a
lifestyle and we have someone guiding us from a place of depth, it is
incredible how much we can transform.
But so many of us guys just did not have that growing up.
So for me, I didn't have that kind of presence.
So I learned to just get really close to the chest, play it really
safe because I was so afraid of fucking up my life, making a mistake.
And I didn't feel like I had any net underneath me.
So you know, I was just kind of locked in myself.
As I've gotten into men's work and gotten supported,
I'm able to take much bigger risks in my life.
Which sometimes work, sometimes don't, but I'm always glad I took the chance.
And that's a real place of liberation for so many of us guys.
So if you want to mentor a man, you know, it's really, really shore him up.
Get curious.
What do they want?
What's in the way?
And then you just hash it out with him and you stay connected and present.
And you can completely change somebody's life.
Ed Watters: And that's what we need to do most is change
the status quo in our world.
Too much hate, we need to turn it to love.
And it's okay to love as a man, you know, not just a woman, but
your community, your fellow man.
It's big.
And I, I really think we as people out here working towards
that, that's much needed.
That, that is mentoring men to come aboard and do this.
We, we have to do this together, it's big.
Do you have anything that you want to add to our conversation today that
you feel that's vital that men hear?
Jason Lange: You know, I'll just add, I really love what you just shared there.
And I think there's a unique, you know, like I said, kind of texture and quality
to love through the masculine in a sense.
And it's one I think a lot of us men and boys are craving.
And what it is, is someone who looks at us and says, I see the best in you.
That's what I want from you.
I see the best in you so I expect the best from you.
And I'm going to be an advocate and be on your team and fight for the best from you.
So if I fuck up in my life, or I treat someone badly, or I cheat in a
relationship, or I do something bad, we actually often are longing for other
men to stop us, look us in the eye and say, Hey man, that, that's not cool.
That doesn't fly.
I know, I know, I know who you are and I know there's more in you than that.
So let's clean this up or let's do better.
And that texture of love of, I'm not going to take anything but the best from you.
Because I see it in you.
I'm holding that vision for you, is so affirming for us guys.
And we'll, we'll, we'll move mountains when someone believes in us in that sense.
And doesn't just let us get away, so to speak, with bad behavior.
And I think that's something the world is desperately missing right
now is, you know, it's not calling out so much, but it's calling forward
the best in another person, right?
The best in another man.
And that is something I do not think enough men are doing.
Where I think it's our responsibility as men to call forward the other
men in the world we don't see showing up in the most healthy ways.
And again, it's not about tearing them down or shaming them,
but it's about pulling out the best of them saying, Hey man,
I know you got more in there.
Let's figure this out, how could we do this different?
How can we clean up this mess?
And, you know, it can be a little controversial to say these days,
Ed, but I'm definitely of the camp that what the world needs right now
is not less men in the masculine.
It's actually, we need way more.
Healthy men holding the masculine, showing up in the world.
Women in the feminine, they can't do it all on their own, they're
fucking trying, but they can't.
We need to step up as men and take responsibility for
ourselves and for each other.
And that is, you know, one of my teachers, uh, last thing I'll share here, pointed
out, it is one of the most challenging things about stepping into what I kind of
call men's work and this path of growth, which is about taking full responsibility
for who we are in our lives.
So this is very different from traditional kind of victim energy
of, Oh, my parents duh, duh, duh, I'm stuck, I'm a victim, it's not my fault.
It's more, wow.
What happened had an impact on me, right?
How I was raised, my socioeconomic status, so many different things, right?
This stuff happened to me and it had an impact.
The thing is the moment we become aware of what happened, we become
responsible for shifting it.
And that is a painful thing not a lot of men want to do and it even extends beyond.
We don't even, it's not even about just taking responsibility for
ourselves, but for the whole mess all men up until this point have created.
You say, Hey, I didn't create this mess.
But I'm gonna take responsibility for cleaning it up in myself,
in my relationships, in my lineage, in my community, and
as much as I can in the world.
And not all men are up for that.
It is, you know, it is something to bite off and chew, but
it is incredibly empowering.
Empowering and liberating.
I have seen for, so many guys to say, You know what?
All this stuff that happened to me, you know, we could see this stuff often
in the lineage, my dad was raised a certain way, his dad was raised a certain
way, his dad was raised a certain way.
And when we're willing to step in and say, You know what?
The buck stops here.
I'm not willing to pass that on, whether I have kids or not.
I'm going to change this karma in my generation and say, You know what?
I am allowed to feel, I am allowed to love, I don't have to do it all alone.
Power and sensitivity can go hand in hand, it's not either or like
so many of us men are taught.
And the world needs so much more of that.
Ed Watters: I can't agree more.
You know, we're hurt.
And we need love and maturity and understanding to bring it back together.
Acceptance is the first step of admitting that we have a problem.
Houston, we have a problem and it's huge.
And I think that the glue to fix this broken, whatever it
is, is us being here today.
And I think it's very important that people can reach out and
find people like you, Jason.
How can people find you?
Jason Lange: Absolutely, thanks for asking.
You can keep up with me and all of my work at evolutionary.men.
So it's not dot com, it's dot men.
And on there I've got a podcast of my own, I've got some blogs, I've got
retreats, programs, and a contact form.
So even if you just have a question as a guy and you're like, Hey,
I don't know where to start.
Just reach out.
You know, you don't even have to work with me.
I can point you to all kinds of resources because I'm so fervent.
Like, you know, part of my mission is, I do believe, every
man should be in a men's group.
And I thought, I think if we get there as a society and as a culture,
things will get so much better, that we don't have to do it alone as men.
And it doesn't mean you have to have forty best friends.
And when I say men's group, I'm just talking a couple of guys in your
life that you go deep and get real.
Get real with about what's going on and where you want to go.
So you can find, uh, reach out to me, you can find about all
my stuff at evolutionary.men.
Ed Watters: Very powerful, Jason.
What you're doing is worth much respect and I want to
say thank you for doing that.
And thank you for sharing it here with us today on the Dead America Podcast.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Thanks so much for having me, Ed, and creating a space like
this to get the word out.
And it's really transformational.
So, appreciating you.
Ed Watters: Thank you for joining us today.
If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way,
please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another
great episode of the Dead America Podcast.
I'm Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you are.