Masculinity: Part 3 - Emotional Acceptance & Regulation For Men
Understanding the Essence of Masculinity & How to Cultivate It
This is the third part of an ongoing series. Start here if you haven’t already:
In Part 2 of this series we discussed some of the steps to begin deliberately cultivating the attractive qualities of masculinity. Here in Part 3 we will continue this theme.
Compliments & Praise
You may well be thinking “what on Earth to compliments and praise have to do with leadership and masculinity”? That’s a fair question as most resources pertaining to leadership and masculinity don’t mention the topic! Let me explain…
In one of my first jobs I was undertaking a routine performance appraisal with my boss. One of the review topics was about giving and receiving feedback, and I was somewhat taken aback when my boss asked me about giving praise to colleagues about the work they were doing. I realised then that I was operating from the flawed assumption that because I was the most junior member of the team, my opinion had little to no value in relation to the accomplishments and behaviour of my much more experienced colleagues. In my mind, praise was something that superiors gave to deserving subordinates, and I thought to presume to praise a superior would come across as precociousness or arrogance.
To some extent, I was correct. In my first twenty years, most of the praise I had received or observed was doled out by adults to children. It was only through this early workplace experience that I realised that giving sincere praise (where praise is due) is actually a trait of leadership. Whether it be admiration of the conduct or achievements of a peer or a role model, or the recognition and encouragement of someone at an earlier stage of their journey than you, what matters is the sincerity behind the compliment, and the demonstration of confidence by voicing your opinion.
If you are to be the leader of your own life, you assume the responsibility to praise the people in your world when they deserve it. Whether it be friends, colleagues, or people you do business with (e.g. shop assistants, service staff, etc), take the time to acknowledge them when they achieve something of note or demonstrate exemplary conduct or values that you admire.
Keep your praise short and succinct. Let the person know what you appreciated without fawning. Consider the difference between the following exaggerated examples:
I liked the way you handled that situation. Respect!
And
You handled that situation so well! It was amazing! And the way you did < something > , and < something else > was so impressive! I wish I could you be like you.
The first example is the confident acknowledgement of a peer. The second is fawning, and heavily implies a sense of subservience or perceived inferiority. If you’re the leader of your life, you should treat the people in your life as peers, not superiors.
The ability to both pay and receive praise and compliments is an essential part of emotional maturity, which is intrinsically tied to the concept of healthy masculinity. Giving praise as we’ve just discussed is a quality of leadership, and demonstrates that you recognise your opinion and words have value. It also balances the need to occasionally give criticism or assert your boundaries. A man who only criticises and asserts boundaries without offering praise appears selfish and disagreeable. A man who balances the two appears reasonable and likeable, without compromising on strength.
Receiving praise or compliments can feel uncomfortable if you’re not accustomed to it. Excessive humility or self deprecation in response to praise is disempowering, and in some cases disrespectful of the person offering it. Learn to accept sincere praise with grace. Instead of dismissing or down-playing a compliment, consider responding with “thank you”, or “I’m pleased you feel that way”. Do not automatically respond with a return compliment, or refuse to accept it. If someone shows their respect by offering a genuine compliment or praise, accept it with grace and carry on.
Acknowledge Your Emotions
Many men go through life permanently suppressing and ignoring their emotions. Now, just for a moment, I invite you to get comfortable, take a few full, deep breaths and contemplate how you are feeling. Slowly and deliberately sweep your attention throughout your body, from your toes to the top of your head. Notice where you’re carrying tension. Pay particular attention to your back, neck, shoulders and jaw. If this is the first time you’ve attempted this exercise, repeat it once or twice so that you really notice the physical feelings in your body. It might help to deliberately tense and relax each muscle group as your attention focuses on them.
Think about the tension you noticed. What caused it? The tension and aches in your body are the physical symptoms, but now consider the underlying causes of these symptoms and the emotions that accompany them. Do you detect feelings of anger, regret, frustration, worry, fear, grief, sadness or despair behind the physical feelings? Don’t worry if you feel nothing, and rejoice if the only feelings you detect are positive emotions! We’ll look at those more in a moment.
Consider the events you believe have contributed to the emotions and physical tension you’ve just identified. To what extent might you have been able to reduce either the severity or the duration of these feelings if:
You could have been more assertive to stop someone from treating you poorly?
You could have spoken up to ask for what you wanted?
You could have maintained a stronger sense of purpose so that you were less susceptible to emotional destabilisation when something went wrong in just one part of your life?
You could have released some of the burden of stress, worry, grief, or sorrow by confiding in someone whom you trust to listen without judgement?
You could have better controlled your own impulsive behaviour?
You could have avoided comparing yourself with other people whose lives seemed more perfect?
Hold onto those thoughts for later. They will serve as motivation for the changes you will soon embrace.
Take a few more slow, deep breaths. Everything that has happened in the past is behind you. Nothing you do now can change the past, so acknowledge how it made you feel and let it go.
Advanced Skills - Discuss Your Emotion With Another Man
Once you have learned to recognise the emotions you’re feeling, your next challenge is to have a serious conversation with another man during which you discuss your experience feeling that emotion. For men who have grown up with the mistaken idea that men are not permitted to feel emotion, this can be an exceptionally difficult concept, but it is absolutely worth the effort.
If you need some help to find the words, try something along the lines of:
Do you mind if I get something off my chest? I’ve been having a really hard time with <something> lately. <something> happened and it made me feel <emotion>. Has that ever happened to you? What’s your strategy for dealing with it?
You’ll often find that a conversation like this opens the door to a much deeper level of trust within a friendship, and reveals just how common your own suffering is to many other men.
Don’t Think About Pink Elephants
It’s easy to say “let it go”, but it’s a bit like saying “Don’t think about pink elephants”. It immediately focuses your attention on the one thing you’re trying to let go! This is where the hack of gratitude comes into play.
Recognise how you feel right now. Acknowledge the negative emotions that don’t serve your purpose. It is time to defuse them.
Shift your attention to the good things in your life. If you’re going through a particularly tough time, think about good experiences you’ve enjoyed in the past, or the opportunities that you know are coming your way in the future. Maybe you are grateful to have known love even if it didn’t last, or to enjoy good health, or have a devoted friend. Perhaps you’re simply grateful to have a roof over your head and something to eat. It doesn’t actually matter what you’re grateful for, the key to this exercise is to focus on the feeling of gratitude.
Take a few more slow, deep breaths while focusing on your gratitude.
Now re-evaluate how you’re feeling overall. Gratitude has the ability to short circuit negative emotions. It doesn’t magically solve your underlying problems, but hopefully it has lifted at least some of the weight of negative feelings you had a few moments ago. By practising this at least once a day, you will find that negative emotions have much less hold over your state of mind.
This Too Shall Pass
Fate tries to break everyone at some point in their life, and more than once for some people. Debilitating illness or injuries, losing someone we love, financial losses and hardships, natural disasters, social upheaval and shattered dreams can come at any time to test our resolve. Gratitude may not be enough to overcome the weight of the emotions we feel at these times, however remembering the transience of the experiences of life can help.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: "And this, too, shall pass away." How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! - Abraham Lincoln
Fully appreciating the transience of emotions and experiences can be a powerful aid to help ground yourself and continue leading your life through times of distraction. The Wheel of Fortune appears throughout history as a symbol of the ephemeral nature of life’s experiences. You may recognise it from the Tarot deck, although it also appears in religious manuscripts and ancient mythology. The Wheel usually depicts four men bound to the rim of a giant wheel. One is crushed beneath it, one is perched triumphantly atop the wheel, and the other two are ascending and descending respectively. As the wheel turns, the men will cycle through these positions, each taking their turns of enjoying triumph, suffering defeat, and the journeys in between again and again throughout their lives. Mielot’s illustration also features a blindfolded angel presiding over the wheel, symbolising the impartial nature of fortune, and that it is just as likely to favour a pauper as it is to dethrone a prince.
If you follow a group of men over the course of a few months, you can observe the Wheel of Fortune turning for each of them. Remember that men tend to be conditioned to conceal emotion, so this phenomenon is not always apparent from their outward appearance. Nevertheless, if they trust you to share their feelings about their current circumstance each month you will quickly discover the cycles of fortune. The speed of the cycles varies from time to time and man to man, as does the magnitude of fortune (or misfortune).
Understanding and maintaining an awareness of the cycles affecting both yourself and your inner circle of friends brings valuable perspective, and can help even out the emotional turbulence of life’s journey. It may seem counterintuitive, but in my experience I’ve observed that men at their lowest ebb (enduring traumatic relationship events, financial stress, or medical crises) actually enjoy relief from their suffering hearing about the recent triumphs of their friends - especially when they know that those triumphs have followed their friends’ own periods of suffering or misfortune. Similarly, although the men celebrating their triumphs may slightly temper their enthusiasm out of deference to friends who are suffering, they tend to savour the moment a little more knowing that it too will pass.
The lesson from this is clear: understanding that however much you are suffering or celebrating in this moment, the experience is only fleeting in the overall journey of life. In this knowledge lies power, as we can apply it to maintain hope and perseverance in times of suffering, and also to maintain commitment to our purpose and forward momentum in life no matter how we are feeling.
Summary of Lessons of Part 3
To wrap up today’s lesson, here is a summary of how what we’ve learned contributes to the attractive qualities of masculinity:
Mastering the art of giving and receiving compliments and praise contributes to the degree of confidence others perceive in us, and helps establish and elevate our status among our social hierarchies.
Understanding, acknowledging and releasing emotions helps us avoid exhibiting the unattractive traits of the wounded masculine.
Giving voice to our emotions helps us to differentiate between vulnerability and weakness. It also helps deepen our bonds with other men, providing a strong source of emotional grounding.
Recognising the transience of life’s experience helps cultivate our stoicism and tenacity to endure adversity without wavering from our purpose or values.
Preview of Part 4
In Parts 1-3 we have discussed the archetypes of masculinity and femininity, and explored strategies for cultivating the attractive qualities of masculinity. In part 4 we will venture into the realm of the Dark Masculine to unlock the primal power that society teaches us to repress.