Modern men are not okay.
Men are lonelier and more lost than they've ever been.
80% of suicides are from men.
And if they aren't killing themselves in one moment, a lot more men are killing themselves slowly with addictions.
Why?
Let's talk about the demon that lives inside of every man.
I had an uncle once and his name was Bob.
When I was a kid he would tell stories and do the voices of the different characters.
He was a warm and lovely person.
I remember playing Tekken with him on the PlayStation 1 when I was 6 years old.
As the years went on, something happened.
The demon in him woke up.
It wrapped it's hands around his heart and his throat. And it didn't let go.
The demon silenced him.
He stopped doing the funny voices. He stopped smiling. He started drinking heavily.
One day a few of us in the family went over to tidy his house for him.
We found him asleep in a pile of empty cans of Strongbow cider.
Uncle Bob's liver began to fail him as the alcohol poisoned his body.
He turned a different color and his belly became bloated.
He never said a word to anyone about the demon inside him.
He was silent. He took his silence to the grave. The demon won.
At the funeral I see the men passing around bags of cocaine and MDMA.
That's when it started to make sense.
The demon was in all of these men — and it's created out of all the pain in life that never got processed.
But this is how the men in my family deal with it. Silence. Stuff it down. Take substances when the silence becomes too much.
This way of dealing with the demon is a part of what I call the "old masculine" and lots of people over the years started noticing the harm this was causing.
A lot of women became more expressive in how men have hurt them. Many men listened.
I was one of them.
The problem was — I over-corrected.
I became Mr Nice Guy pushing down my masculine energy.
I became a soft caring and compassionate man who puts other people's feelings before his own.
I had no confidence. I let women walk all over me.
The women that I wanted never seemed to want me but would often date men who would treat them like shit. I felt miserable.
I wasn't harmful to anyone. But I was harmful to myself.
This is the result of what I call "feminized masculine." and it can be just as harmful.
So if both models of masculinity don't work, what do you do as a man?
Over the past few years, I've dived deep into psychology philosophy men's work and personal development.
I've also worked with a couple hundred men alongside healing my issues.
And it's with this experience that I can speak about a third way that I strive to follow, and maybe you will too.
I call it The Way Of The Courageous Man.
The Courageous Manifesto
Why courage? Because without courage, a man is not a man at all.
He remains what I call "the passive boy" never growing up and taking his place in the world — letting his life rot away into an empty shell of an existence.
These are the 5 principles of The Courageous Manifesto.
Principle 1: Presence
Do you want to know the biggest cure for bacteria?
Sunlight.
It's the same with your inner demons.
They can't survive when exposed to the light of your awareness.
A passive boy avoids any confrontation with his demons and emotional wounds.
A courageous man faces his demons head-on.
He heals them, tames them and even makes friends with them when it's necessary.
In so doing, he develops self-mastery and a calm mind.
A man's superpower.
Principle 2: Power
A passive boy is needy, limp, weak and unable to assert himself.
A courageous man is a powerful man. He knows his boundaries and is able to enforce them.
He builds his body since strength is one of the pillars of masculinity.
He knows how to handle his anger or rage without unleashing it onto the world in a destructive way.
A courageous man is a man people respect, and nobody screws with.
Principle 3: Polarity
Masculine energy attracts feminine women.
But the passive boy lacks masculine energy — turning women off and draining his life energy and motivation.
The courageous man is different.
His masculine core is well-developed. He's polarised himself. He's decisive, honest and driven while valuing the feminine's fluidity, creativity and playfulness — both in himself and others.
He becomes a highly attractive man who draws others toward him, igniting passion and depth in his relationships.
Principle 4: Provision
The good life is reserved for those who give value and serve others.
The truly selfish suffer.
The passive boy takes.
The courageous man provides.
The courageous man is a source of emotional, physical, and financial safety to himself and those he loves.
But this doesn't mean being a self-sacrificing martyr.
He creates abundance in a way that serves both himself and others.
He develops his skills, seeks opportunities and strives to become useful in a way that allows wealth and prosperity to flow to him so that he can support those he loves easily.
Principle 5: Purpose
Addiction is the greatest enemy of purpose.
Pleasure-seeking is the shadow purpose of the passive boy.
Everything the passive boy does is all in the service of pleasure and pleasure alone. This is why he suffers.
The courageous man has higher standards for himself.
He chooses purpose over pleasure every day of the week.
He has a concrete vision for his life and the man he seeks to become.
Everything in his life is intentionally chosen to serve that purpose.
He knows his values and principles — and is a man of his word.
He takes radical responsibility and ownership.
A courageous man knows his mission and becomes the leader of his life.
Your call to courage
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
To embody all of these principles, you need a brotherhood of other men committed to the same journey.
But creating this in your life is next to impossible these days.
That's why in October I'm launching the Courageous Man Community.
- weekly live calls with other like-minded men
- monthly workshops on relationships, inner work, personal growth.
- a new 30-day challenge every month (reading, meditation, exercise)
- full access to all courses that get released (currently: healing the father wound, overcoming social anxiety … soon = a course on being a great lover by men’s sexuality coach Andrew Mioch).
- a space to fully be yourself and develop as a man.
Click this link to get on the waiting list and claim a 50% lifetime discount reserved for the first 20 members (3 spaces remaining).
The community opens it’s doors on the 14th of October.
See you in there.
Oliver