Self-Leadership for Men with Connor Beaton

all right guys welcome back to the man talk show Connor Beaton here today we're going to talk a little bit about self- leadership and the 10 things that you as a man can stop doing immediately that will help you to be more attractive more confident and in my terms more self-led now I love this concept of self- leadership it's something that I've been talking about with the men that I've worked with for a decade it's something that I've been advocating for because for me in my journey the reason why my life went astray was because I lacked self- leadership I didn't have a good sense of internal Direction I didn't have good impulse control I couldn't say no to myself I didn't know when to say yes and just in general I lacked the skills and the tools to actually lead myself towards the things that I wanted in life the relationships that I wanted the type of sex that I wanted the type of connection and closeness and business and lifestyle that I wanted I lacked the discipline and so these are 10 things that I had to learn personally that I have seen in so many of the men that I've worked with over the years uh that men have had to stop doing in order to develop more confidence in order to become more attractive even if you're in a relationship with somebody stopping these things will make you more attractive uh and they will also lead to you having a much deeper level of uh autonomy and inner Authority Authority and Leadership so let's start with the obvious okay success habits are boring they really are I saw an interview with Jamie Diamond uh like a day or two ago and Jimmy diamond is the CEO of JP Morgan uh whether you like big Banks or not is irrelevant he still is an incredibly successful human being who is incredibly smart and he talked about his morning routine of getting up at 4:30 every single morning and reading through all of this material like going through the New York Times And The Wall Street Journal and Forbes and like all this kind of stuff and it was it was systematized so he would wake up at 4:30 in the morning and he would have this very rigorous uh system and and process that he would follow that allowed him to disseminate a good amount of information and so for me this was a reminder that there are Clues to success there are Clues to you having a deeper level of self- leadership so the first thing that I think is just without question that we all need to work on is to stop making excuses for not being in good shape for not working out regularly you know I remember when my son was born he's three now and when he was born I was running my company I had just got a book deal to write my first book which is now here men's work if you haven't grabbed a copy uh drop into the caption in the comment section below and grab one um it's phenomenal book and guys have loved it but my son was born I got a book deal I'm running my company I'm having to write my book I took two months off uh from everything I had sort of like built things up so I could take two months off to just be with him but all of a sudden I got this book deal and I was like oh I have to start writing this book I have a deadline um and I'm raising a son you know I'm raising a child for the first time and that is a whole new thing but I worked out five six days a week and this is during the pandemic right where you couldn't go into a gym so I bought kettle bells not a lot of them I bought like four or five kettle bells and I just worked out from home and I had an assault bike um those were my methods of of working out but I had every excuse in the book not to work out you know like I was sleep deprived uh oras I said at the time sleep depraved because I couldn't get it right cuz I was so exhausted you know I'm getting five hours of sleep interrupted every single night I'm trying to write this book I'm making sure that my business and my company is working well you know I'm in the middle of a pandemic I have every reason not to work out but I still did it now does that make me special no I'm not special okay inside of me there's a 500 lb fat guy that just wants to sit around and play Call of Duty and smoke weed and eat potato chips and popcorn and eat shitty food and just do nothing with his life okay I've had to battle that version of me for a very very long time and sometimes in my life he's won out more and but most of the time I win out out it's it's like a battle of attrition but it's something that I see so many men making excuses for not being in shape and it's not okay right when you start to uh muster up the determination and the drive to say I am no longer going to make excuses for not working out I'm no longer going to make excuses for not being in exceptional shape right I'm 40 and I am in the best shape of my life that I have ever been right now and it's taken a good amount of dedication but I can tell you that my wife loves it I can tell you that I feel much more confident in my body and I can tell you that I feel much more autonomous I have a deeper sense of authority within myself because that's how I start my day almost every single day without question it's just something that I do so that's number one stop making excuses for not being in good shape and for not working out it will save your life in many many ways number two is stop giving women free attention on social media I see you guys I get the comments right I created a video making a joke about dudes watching Pole vating or women's volleyball uh on here and the comment section was like hilarious I think it was on my desexualizing uh my brain video and the comment section was hilarious because so many of you guys and this isn't to like shame you it's just to say say like stop doing that BS right but so many of you guys find ways of wasting your time giving women free attention on social media through Instagram through YouTube through you know whatever it is Tik Tok Facebook you name it through dating apps through Tinder and what ends up happening is that you get caught in these thirst traps in these low value interactions where the women that you're giving attention to they get your desire so they actually get something from you right even if you're just messaging them on Instagram or whatever they get your desire and for a lot of women that's what they're wanting right they like being desired I had a sex therapist on the show recently she was talking about how for a woman the act of being desired actually receiving desire is the orgasm yeah right so we have to keep in mind that when you're caught in this trap of sort of dishing out your attention non-stop for free to women on social media or even just dishing out that attention through porn and you know through uh endless hours getting caught in thirst traps on different social media platform you are giving that desire away and you're likely not really getting anything in return right you're not getting attention you're not getting connection you're not getting relationship you're not getting sexual interaction and so I think this is one of those things that again I had to work really hard because all I had a you know women that I was texting constantly and sexting with I had women that I was flirting with on Instagram and like all of that kind of stuff I had to really clean house and so the one thing that I would recommend if this is you and you're the guy that's like out there and you know hours and hours and hours every single day or every single week is spent getting caught in the thirst traps texting women that you have you know no real shot withd or interest in but there's like some you know it helps you like pass the time when you're bored or lonely do the cleanse that you know you should do delete them off the social media platforms tell them that you're no longer going to be messaging with them delete their number out of your phone and actually clear out shop remember just like we store stuff in our head like if you've ever tried to go to bed at night and you have like the task list stuck in your head and you can't go to sleep until you get out of bed and you just like write down the three things that you need to like pay my freaking taxes and you know do this stupid thing email that person tomorrow and you can't sleep until you write those things down that's mental clutter well we now live in an age where you have digital clutter right and that digital clutter is is keeping up room and energy and bandwidth in your brain and so as you get rid of these women that you would normally be giving attention to for free free on social media and through dating apps and whatnot you are going to clear up space for likely a woman that you really want to have a connection or a relationship or a sexual Exploration with right or at the very least you are clearing out uh energy and bandwidth that you can put towards your mission and your purpose and your orientation towards discipline right so it just reduces another thing that that honestly for a lot of guys is the trap that that causes them to feel like I'm not leading myself effectively because I'm giving away free time free energy to all of these women or to these thirst traps that I'm not really getting anything in return from and it makes me feel like crap I hear that from a lot of you guys specifically when it comes to porn or dating apps where you know you're constantly chasing after women it's not leading anywhere so that's number two number three is stop comparing yourself to other men okay it's a very interesting thing because I think women talk a lot about how they compare themselves to other women and they compare their looks and what they're wearing to other women and what I've noticed that with guys there is usually some type of status comparison Financial or success oriented comparison like oh you know he I think he's making that much money or he's wearing that watch or driving that car and like I'm not even close to being there yet or I really want to be there and I'm just not and so there's a comparison on that front I've also noticed that for some men there's this interesting comparison that happens where you can compare another man's pain or trauma or uh challenges or obstacles to your own as a means of not having to deal with your own this is one of the things that I've I've noticed like when a guy really starts to tune into What's blocking him and why he's sabotaging I've noticed that a lot of guys move into the space of like well it's not as bad as Frank and what happened to him when he was a kid or it's not as bad as what he went through with his divorce and I've noticed that for a lot of you guys you end up negating your own pain your own challenges your own obstacles your own blocks because you're comparing them to another man's and you're saying well it's not as bad as his and so I just you know I shouldn't worry about it but what this ends up doing is a couple things number one it makes you appear on the outside especially to a woman that you're with or dating if she knows the challenges that you're dealing with and you're trying to offset those things or diminish them or devalue them and say ah they're not as bad as this other guys what she really hears you saying is I don't matter as much as somebody else and that is going to create a very uh weak appearance externally especially to another guy or to a woman and it's not what we think it is right cuz for a lot of guys are like oh if I just diminish this and I don't deal with this it'll bolster my sense of confidence and my B my my sense of attractiveness because it'll show I can just like I can run through any wall I can deal with anything um but what it really does is in a long term maybe in the short term you'll feel a little bit better by not having to deal with what's right in front of you um or by comparing yourself to another man and where where he's at maybe it'll give you like some pseudo uh hit of uh of shamummd [Music] that you want to take but eventually it wears off right eventually it diminishes your confidence it diminishes your level of attractiveness it increases your insecurities and you don't feel like you are ability to honestly and earnestly lead yourself through the hard parts of life because here's the truth about your pain and the that you have been avoiding in your life a part of you is meant and can only be developed when you enter in to that Heart Locker that is inside of you a part of you can only be developed part of your confidence a part of your capability a part of who you are as a mature man can only be developed when you make the decision to turn towards the pain that you've been carrying the pain from the divorce or losing a child or losing a parent when you were like 10 or witnessing your parents divorce or experiencing abuse as a kid or whatever it is a part of you gets developed in when you go down that path and so usually what I say to men when they come to me and they say oh I don't feel like I have purpose or meaning in life I say make your pain your purpose for a period of time and in doing that in making your pain your purpose for a period of time what we will learn unequivocally and undeniably are some incredibly important tools and skills that you need in order to know internally that you can navigate through hardship so it's actually a different type of resiliency it's not the resiliency that says I can smash through any wall regardless of what it is that shows up without stopping it's the type of resiliency that shows up and says I can sit with this incredibly deep pain and understand it in a way where I learn how to carry it more effectively so that it is not sabotaging my aims my goals my relationship because the truth that we all know somewhere inside of us is that the pain that you are carrying that is undal with is the energy and the material that is sabotaging the things that you want in your life right the unhealed undal with trauma or abuse or abandonment or neglect in your childhood that's the stuff that is getting in the way and up your relationship there's just no way around it it is just the truth and if you think otherwise I'm I'm sorry it's just a it's just an unequivocal truth that I have seen in life time and time again with tens of thousands of people that I've worked with over the years and talked to and connected to it is the pain that they have not dealt with that is showing up and sabotaging their career their finances their health their Fitness their sex life their marriages so it's the thing that you have to deal with and comparing your pain comparing your place in life to somebody else's is a means of trying to circumvent what you know you need to do and face and confront next is wasting time on social media on TV on video games and and actually letting go of those things for a period of time I'm not saying forever I'm not saying don't play video games I'm not saying don't watch TV there's some guys that are out there that are so rigid that are like you're a beta if you watch TV or you know you're a if you play video games it's like no like it's okay for you to watch a TV show once in a while it's okay for you to get enjoyment from I mean I love racing you know I've played around with this idea of building building a race simulator uh in my house to actually like Drive uh F1 cars or rally cars I just love racing uh and I've actually been looking for a track around uh where I live to go and race cars uh in real life but anyway stop wasting so much time on these things that you're not actually getting anything from you know go into your phone right now look at how much time you're spending on social media add it all up add up the time that you're spending on your computer on your phone that you're watching Youtube and you're on Reddit and you're on Instagram and and really add it all up and look at that and say okay if I deleted one of these platforms if I actually just cut back on one of these platforms if I deleted Reddit off my phone which honestly was one of the best things that I did because I was a reddit reddit guy I loved Reddit I loved going into the subreddits and like reading through the forums and seeing what you guys were saying in there and there's some funny comments in there man there's some like really funny stuff but if you can get off those platforms and you can have the discipline to implement some structure and some rules and some order around those things right like for me there's no social media before a certain time of day I will not go on social media in the morning I will not go on social media after a certain time of night um unless there's like some emergency or something like that I mean you know unless my team is like hey so there's something that you need to see uh but for the most part I have very specific rules around it I've deleted most social media off my phone there's no Facebook there's no Reddit on my phone I mean not who uses Facebook that much anymore anyway but there's no Facebook there's no Reddit on my phone and I got rid of those things and then for Instagram I basically only use it to dm with people that I want to interact with um so really start to build some rules and regulations around your social media use your TV use and your video game use I remember I spent an entire summer with some buddies I called it the summer of Diablo where we basically sat in our house there was three of us playing di I think it was Diablo 2 or Diablo I uh and I was in my bedroom I had this big iMac and one of my buddies was out in the living room and he was on the TV and my other buddy was in his bedroom and we probably played that game for like four or five hours at least every single day one summer uh when I was in university was it fun absolutely was it a waste of time pretty much right I was never going to monetize that I wasn't interested in that it wasn't something that I genuinely wanted to build a scale at uh it was just fun and you you know there's a time and place for that but if you're really trying to build something in your life and you are trying to uh develop yourself into someone that you really respect playing video games for eight hours a day unless you are developing a career out of that and monetizing that and you have you know you're building something out of that it's probably not the best use of your time for a certain period of your life next is at some some point in your life at some point in every man's life he needs to learn to stop pursuing shortterm gratification and pleasure now this is a hard one because this is really about impulse control right the the impulse control to text the woman to open up the porn website to have the drink to smoke the weed to whatever your thing is right to have the late night popcorn so many of us and this is something that I think ties into that young man's syndrome you know every every man goes through this phase where he's like 15 16 years old to like I don't know 27 28 where this just like wild tenacious no holds bar no rules uh aspect of us start is like really comes out and that part of us wants short-term pleasure wants short-term gratification wants to get the intention from the woman right right now wants to smoke the the weed right now wants to sit around and just do whatever the hell he wants and part of maturing and part of developing a really internal sense of control and Leadership is being able to reign in those impulses when they start to rise up so that is a big one next and this is a hard one but you need to kill your lottery mindset um I haven't heard many people talk about this but it's something that I've known noticed I noticed it in myself when I was younger and I didn't really like know what direction I wanted to go I didn't have a lot going for me but what I found was that I would put a disproportionate amount of attention and energy towards fantasizing about some Lottery outcome right that like literally sometimes I would think about like winning the lottery because I was so poor and so broke other times I would fantasize about like hitting it big with this business and like making all this money and you know dating this like famous woman or something like that and I would get caught in this fantasizing and and uh and dreaming about this sort of Lottery life situation and it would keep me from actually taking action on the things that were right in front of me and this is something that I see with so many men who are procrastinators who are not where they want to be in life who aren't really too sure where they want to be in life and don't seem to have a very deep internal sense of locus of control it's not an internal thing and so what what happens for a lot of men is that start to externalize and that they hope and they start to dream that something in their external life will shift so radically that they will be given an internal sense of peace and control and autonomy and Leadership rather than developing those skills and and disciplines to lead yourself right to say no to the things to say yes to the things that you know you need to do to go and do the hard things to send the email when you are procrastinating and don't want to to take that kind of action so killing off that lottery mindset and and not only to mention the internal leadership piece but like it's not attractive to women right women are and I'm going to use the dword women are relatively disgusted by men who are stuck in the Lottery mindset because it's so kind of uh childish and fantasy based and so any mature woman who's grounded and reasonable and is looking for a man who is reliable and takes responsibility she's going to hear him talking about all this fantasy based stuff and maybe she'll get caught into it at first because maybe you're carismatic and you're very good at painting the picture of the lottery you know of like well when my business takes off and it's going to look like this or when my you know career reaches this point it's going to be so I'm not going to be driving this car and build that house I'm not saying don't have dreams I'm not saying don't have a vision for yourself I'm saying delineate and create the distinction between where you start to go into escapism when you start to go into that Lottery mindset because you all have it I almost guarantee it I could talk to every single one of you and I bet almost every single one of you have that Lottery mindset where you've created some picturesque utopian version in your mind of like when everything just checks the box and tingting every everything comes up dollar signs in my life everything will be okay uh so we have to let go of that Lottery mindset and move back to our vision move back to the direction that we're heading in and I found that what one thing that really helped me was every time I caught myself in that Lottery mindset I would come back and say what do I need to do right now what action can I take right now what decision can I make right now that I am clearly avoiding and that was super helpful to ground me back in to the action that I could take in the present moment the next thing is to stop believing that you are broken or that there is something fundamentally wrong with you I got caught in this for a very long time I really fundamentally believed that I was broken and unfortunately what that did was a number of of things number one if you are a man who fundamentally believes that he is broken you are going to attract a woman who either agrees with you or believes that about herself I'm going to say that again if you are a man who fundamentally believes that he is broken you are going to attract a woman who either agrees with you and thinks that she can save you or sees you as that that broken version that she's always pitying you or she believes that about herself as well and and so it's never a recipe for a great reciprocal long-term relationship as number one but number two there's no such thing as a Broken Man there are men who have experienced things that are terrible that are harmful that are abusive that are traumatic and those things have caused some type of internal fracturing within you where there's a part of you that doesn't know how to deal with the pain or the frustration of why you keep making certain decisions and actions it doesn't mean that you're broken it likely means that you experienc something that nobody has taught you how to deal with how to Traverse how to carry how to heal how to move through and that is fundamentally different than being undeniably or irrevocably broken right and I get it I get you know if you're watching this and you're like I feel that way and I understand what you're saying I get being in that place because I was there for a very long time and it wasn't until a mentor of mine came along and said you know sometimes we just need somebody to believe in us more than we believe in ourselves in order to start to move forward and he was that person for me and if I can be that person for you then then then here it is right like I believe in you and your ability to move through and face and confront the things that you are dealing with in your life even though I might not know you and even though you might not know me I fundamentally believe in you because I have worked with so many men who have shown up on my doorstep at my men's weekends in my men's groups who have written me emails and you know dm'd me online and said I just feel broken like I just fundamentally feel broken I don't know how to move forward and every single time the tragedy of those men is that it's not that they're broken it's that they experienced something or went through something in their life that that made it feel like it broke them and that's a tragedy because most of the time that's a sign that those men just didn't have anybody in their lives to help them learn how to Traverse that pain and that heaviness and that's why I said earlier on sometimes you have to make your pain your purpose in life for a period of time because sometimes that is the way out of this belief of this story that you're broken because that's all that it is it is a story I remember working with a man and I'll move on to the next one after I tell this quick story I remember working with a man who had experienced abuse as a child and the abuse was really bad and I'm not going to go into details about what he experienced out of respect for him because it's just not necessary but he had come to believe that he was fundamentally broken and he came to believe that he was broken because he thought as a child that those things happened to him because there must have been something wrong with him there must have been something wrong with him that those things happened to him and over time he started to realize that the things that happened to him largely had nothing to do with him and that those were decisions that somebody else had made an adult in his life had made and that he was the casualty and the actual victim of somebody else's action and this goes back to comparing yourself to other people some of you have actually experienced being a victim and you're so you're so hellbent on not admitting to being a victim in life because that's like the weakest thing a man can do well sometimes the fastest way to regain your power and potency as a man is to say yeah I was a victim and I'm not anymore right sometimes the running away from the truth of what happened keep keeps you in that victim place and so and and part of that is thinking that you're broken right continuing to think oh I'm so effed up I'm so broken there's something so fundamentally wrong with me is continuing to be the victim Without Really owning that something happened to you that you were a victim of whether it was a car crash or a health incident or an abuse or a trauma or whatever it is sometimes in life things happen to us that are so much bigger than we can carry or comprehend or understand and we actually need support in order to get through those things which brings me to my next Point thinking that you have to do it alone this is one thing that you as a man absolutely have to stop doing immediately you do not have to do any of your life alone you don't have to be successful alone you don't have to move through your pain alone you don't have to go through the divorce alone or the breakup alone you don't have to go through the loss or the death of a parent alone or the loss of a child alone you don't have to go through any of those things alone there are plenty of men that are out there that want to be in your corner and by your side to support you and it is up to you to open yourself to the understanding that you will undeniably be a more attractive man you will be a more confident man you will be a more capable competent man and you will be a more autonomous Man by having other men in your life who share those same values who are holding you to the version of yourself that you are wanting to be if you can surround yourself with men like that in your life you will absolutely go farther faster than you could ever have imagined and the last piece I was going to add I mean I added in pretending like you're uh like you don't have trauma or to deal with in your past that kind of went hand inand with uh with what I was talking about before um but the last piece really is thinking that peace or happiness is on the other side of some Monumental achievement and I see guys doing this all the time where they've taken their peace and their sense of happiness and they have future paced it they have put it somewhere in the future on the other side of making the million dollars getting the woman buying the car building the house whatever it is and one of the skills that I reinforce that every man needs to learn is what I call PMA PMA present moment appreciation present moment appreciation you have to practice PMA you have to practice present moment appreciation every single day you will have a healthier mindset you will feel better about your life people will want to be around you more you will be happier more in the moment able to enjoy whatever it is that's happening and not waiting for some future perfect utopian thing to come along and even when it does you're not practiced in the ability to be present to the appreciation of the moment this is the Trap that so many men fall into they take their happiness they take their Joy they take their peace and they put it on the other side of something in the future that even when they attain it because they haven't practiced and developed the skill of appreciating something in the moment in their life all of a sudden they achieve the goal they win the award they get the promotion they build the business they hit the million dollar they do whatever and they can't feel the joy in it and they don't feel happy or it's like it's there and gone and it's this fleeting thing so these are 10 Things I wish every man could stop doing and even if you just took one of these things because I know it can be overwhelming to hear these 10 things and be like oh my God I have so much work to do blah and all of a sudden that inner judge and critic starts to spin spin up I I want you to take the one thing that stood out about this that you know if you executed on it for the next 30 days it would it would like without question start to make changes and gains in your life even if it's just a 1% increase in happiness or groundedness uh or you know a one 1% decrease in your level of sabotage and self-loathing take the one thing and execute on that so if you're watching this on YouTube you so don't forget to subscribe by the way but comment below and let me know which one really stood out to you which one you're going to commit to and don't forget to man It Forward share this video with somebody that you know could use it or would enjoy it and until next week Connor Beaton signing off be well [Music]

all right guys welcome back to the man talk show Connor Beaton here today we&#39;re going to talk a little bit about self- leadership and the 10 things that you as a man can stop doing immediately that will help you to be more attractive more confident and in my terms more self-led now I love this concept of self- leadership it&#39;s something that I&#39;ve been talking about with the men that I&#39;ve worked with for a decade it&#39;s something that I&#39;ve been advocating for because for me in my journey the reason why my life went astray was because I lacked self- leadership I didn&#39;t have a good sense of internal Direction I didn&#39;t have good impulse control I couldn&#39;t say no to myself I didn&#39;t know when to say yes and just in general I lacked the skills and the tools to actually lead myself towards the things that I wanted in life the relationships that I wanted the type of sex that I wanted the type of connection and closeness and business and lifestyle that I wanted I lacked the discipline and so these are 10 things that I had to learn personally that I have seen in so many of the men that I&#39;ve worked with over the years uh that men have had to stop doing in order to develop more confidence in order to become more attractive even if you&#39;re in a relationship with somebody stopping these things will make you more attractive uh and they will also lead to you having a much deeper level of uh autonomy and inner Authority Authority and Leadership so let&#39;s start with the obvious okay success habits are boring they really are I saw an interview with Jamie Diamond uh like a day or two ago and Jimmy diamond is the CEO of JP Morgan uh whether you like big Banks or not is irrelevant he still is an incredibly successful human being who is incredibly smart and he talked about his morning routine of getting up at 4:30 every single morning and reading through all of this material like going through the New York Times And The Wall Street Journal and Forbes and like all this kind of stuff and it was it was systematized so he would wake up at 4:30 in the morning and he would have this very rigorous uh system and and process that he would follow that allowed him to disseminate a good amount of information and so for me this was a reminder that there are Clues to success there are Clues to you having a deeper level of self- leadership so the first thing that I think is just without question that we all need to work on is to stop making excuses for not being in good shape for not working out regularly you know I remember when my son was born he&#39;s three now and when he was born I was running my company I had just got a book deal to write my first book which is now here men&#39;s work if you haven&#39;t grabbed a copy uh drop into the caption in the comment section below and grab one um it&#39;s phenomenal book and guys have loved it but my son was born I got a book deal I&#39;m running my company I&#39;m having to write my book I took two months off uh from everything I had sort of like built things up so I could take two months off to just be with him but all of a sudden I got this book deal and I was like oh I have to start writing this book I have a deadline um and I&#39;m raising a son you know I&#39;m raising a child for the first time and that is a whole new thing but I worked out five six days a week and this is during the pandemic right where you couldn&#39;t go into a gym so I bought kettle bells not a lot of them I bought like four or five kettle bells and I just worked out from home and I had an assault bike um those were my methods of of working out but I had every excuse in the book not to work out you know like I was sleep deprived uh oras I said at the time sleep depraved because I couldn&#39;t get it right cuz I was so exhausted you know I&#39;m getting five hours of sleep interrupted every single night I&#39;m trying to write this book I&#39;m making sure that my business and my company is working well you know I&#39;m in the middle of a pandemic I have every reason not to work out but I still did it now does that make me special no I&#39;m not special okay inside of me there&#39;s a 500 lb fat guy that just wants to sit around and play Call of Duty and smoke weed and eat potato chips and popcorn and eat shitty food and just do nothing with his life okay I&#39;ve had to battle that version of me for a very very long time and sometimes in my life he&#39;s won out more and but most of the time I win out out it&#39;s it&#39;s like a battle of attrition but it&#39;s something that I see so many men making excuses for not being in shape and it&#39;s not okay right when you start to uh muster up the determination and the drive to say I am no longer going to make excuses for not working out I&#39;m no longer going to make excuses for not being in exceptional shape right I&#39;m 40 and I am in the best shape of my life that I have ever been right now and it&#39;s taken a good amount of dedication but I can tell you that my wife loves it I can tell you that I feel much more confident in my body and I can tell you that I feel much more autonomous I have a deeper sense of authority within myself because that&#39;s how I start my day almost every single day without question it&#39;s just something that I do so that&#39;s number one stop making excuses for not being in good shape and for not working out it will save your life in many many ways number two is stop giving women free attention on social media I see you guys I get the comments right I created a video making a joke about dudes watching Pole vating or women&#39;s volleyball uh on here and the comment section was like hilarious I think it was on my desexualizing uh my brain video and the comment section was hilarious because so many of you guys and this isn&#39;t to like shame you it&#39;s just to say say like stop doing that BS right but so many of you guys find ways of wasting your time giving women free attention on social media through Instagram through YouTube through you know whatever it is Tik Tok Facebook you name it through dating apps through Tinder and what ends up happening is that you get caught in these thirst traps in these low value interactions where the women that you&#39;re giving attention to they get your desire so they actually get something from you right even if you&#39;re just messaging them on Instagram or whatever they get your desire and for a lot of women that&#39;s what they&#39;re wanting right they like being desired I had a sex therapist on the show recently she was talking about how for a woman the act of being desired actually receiving desire is the orgasm yeah right so we have to keep in mind that when you&#39;re caught in this trap of sort of dishing out your attention non-stop for free to women on social media or even just dishing out that attention through porn and you know through uh endless hours getting caught in thirst traps on different social media platform you are giving that desire away and you&#39;re likely not really getting anything in return right you&#39;re not getting attention you&#39;re not getting connection you&#39;re not getting relationship you&#39;re not getting sexual interaction and so I think this is one of those things that again I had to work really hard because all I had a you know women that I was texting constantly and sexting with I had women that I was flirting with on Instagram and like all of that kind of stuff I had to really clean house and so the one thing that I would recommend if this is you and you&#39;re the guy that&#39;s like out there and you know hours and hours and hours every single day or every single week is spent getting caught in the thirst traps texting women that you have you know no real shot withd or interest in but there&#39;s like some you know it helps you like pass the time when you&#39;re bored or lonely do the cleanse that you know you should do delete them off the social media platforms tell them that you&#39;re no longer going to be messaging with them delete their number out of your phone and actually clear out shop remember just like we store stuff in our head like if you&#39;ve ever tried to go to bed at night and you have like the task list stuck in your head and you can&#39;t go to sleep until you get out of bed and you just like write down the three things that you need to like pay my freaking taxes and you know do this stupid thing email that person tomorrow and you can&#39;t sleep until you write those things down that&#39;s mental clutter well we now live in an age where you have digital clutter right and that digital clutter is is keeping up room and energy and bandwidth in your brain and so as you get rid of these women that you would normally be giving attention to for free free on social media and through dating apps and whatnot you are going to clear up space for likely a woman that you really want to have a connection or a relationship or a sexual Exploration with right or at the very least you are clearing out uh energy and bandwidth that you can put towards your mission and your purpose and your orientation towards discipline right so it just reduces another thing that that honestly for a lot of guys is the trap that that causes them to feel like I&#39;m not leading myself effectively because I&#39;m giving away free time free energy to all of these women or to these thirst traps that I&#39;m not really getting anything in return from and it makes me feel like crap I hear that from a lot of you guys specifically when it comes to porn or dating apps where you know you&#39;re constantly chasing after women it&#39;s not leading anywhere so that&#39;s number two number three is stop comparing yourself to other men okay it&#39;s a very interesting thing because I think women talk a lot about how they compare themselves to other women and they compare their looks and what they&#39;re wearing to other women and what I&#39;ve noticed that with guys there is usually some type of status comparison Financial or success oriented comparison like oh you know he I think he&#39;s making that much money or he&#39;s wearing that watch or driving that car and like I&#39;m not even close to being there yet or I really want to be there and I&#39;m just not and so there&#39;s a comparison on that front I&#39;ve also noticed that for some men there&#39;s this interesting comparison that happens where you can compare another man&#39;s pain or trauma or uh challenges or obstacles to your own as a means of not having to deal with your own this is one of the things that I&#39;ve I&#39;ve noticed like when a guy really starts to tune into What&#39;s blocking him and why he&#39;s sabotaging I&#39;ve noticed that a lot of guys move into the space of like well it&#39;s not as bad as Frank and what happened to him when he was a kid or it&#39;s not as bad as what he went through with his divorce and I&#39;ve noticed that for a lot of you guys you end up negating your own pain your own challenges your own obstacles your own blocks because you&#39;re comparing them to another man&#39;s and you&#39;re saying well it&#39;s not as bad as his and so I just you know I shouldn&#39;t worry about it but what this ends up doing is a couple things number one it makes you appear on the outside especially to a woman that you&#39;re with or dating if she knows the challenges that you&#39;re dealing with and you&#39;re trying to offset those things or diminish them or devalue them and say ah they&#39;re not as bad as this other guys what she really hears you saying is I don&#39;t matter as much as somebody else and that is going to create a very uh weak appearance externally especially to another guy or to a woman and it&#39;s not what we think it is right cuz for a lot of guys are like oh if I just diminish this and I don&#39;t deal with this it&#39;ll bolster my sense of confidence and my B my my sense of attractiveness because it&#39;ll show I can just like I can run through any wall I can deal with anything um but what it really does is in a long term maybe in the short term you&#39;ll feel a little bit better by not having to deal with what&#39;s right in front of you um or by comparing yourself to another man and where where he&#39;s at maybe it&#39;ll give you like some pseudo uh hit of uh of shamummd [Music] that you want to take but eventually it wears off right eventually it diminishes your confidence it diminishes your level of attractiveness it increases your insecurities and you don&#39;t feel like you are ability to honestly and earnestly lead yourself through the hard parts of life because here&#39;s the truth about your pain and the that you have been avoiding in your life a part of you is meant and can only be developed when you enter in to that Heart Locker that is inside of you a part of you can only be developed part of your confidence a part of your capability a part of who you are as a mature man can only be developed when you make the decision to turn towards the pain that you&#39;ve been carrying the pain from the divorce or losing a child or losing a parent when you were like 10 or witnessing your parents divorce or experiencing abuse as a kid or whatever it is a part of you gets developed in when you go down that path and so usually what I say to men when they come to me and they say oh I don&#39;t feel like I have purpose or meaning in life I say make your pain your purpose for a period of time and in doing that in making your pain your purpose for a period of time what we will learn unequivocally and undeniably are some incredibly important tools and skills that you need in order to know internally that you can navigate through hardship so it&#39;s actually a different type of resiliency it&#39;s not the resiliency that says I can smash through any wall regardless of what it is that shows up without stopping it&#39;s the type of resiliency that shows up and says I can sit with this incredibly deep pain and understand it in a way where I learn how to carry it more effectively so that it is not sabotaging my aims my goals my relationship because the truth that we all know somewhere inside of us is that the pain that you are carrying that is undal with is the energy and the material that is sabotaging the things that you want in your life right the unhealed undal with trauma or abuse or abandonment or neglect in your childhood that&#39;s the stuff that is getting in the way and up your relationship there&#39;s just no way around it it is just the truth and if you think otherwise I&#39;m I&#39;m sorry it&#39;s just a it&#39;s just an unequivocal truth that I have seen in life time and time again with tens of thousands of people that I&#39;ve worked with over the years and talked to and connected to it is the pain that they have not dealt with that is showing up and sabotaging their career their finances their health their Fitness their sex life their marriages so it&#39;s the thing that you have to deal with and comparing your pain comparing your place in life to somebody else&#39;s is a means of trying to circumvent what you know you need to do and face and confront next is wasting time on social media on TV on video games and and actually letting go of those things for a period of time I&#39;m not saying forever I&#39;m not saying don&#39;t play video games I&#39;m not saying don&#39;t watch TV there&#39;s some guys that are out there that are so rigid that are like you&#39;re a beta if you watch TV or you know you&#39;re a if you play video games it&#39;s like no like it&#39;s okay for you to watch a TV show once in a while it&#39;s okay for you to get enjoyment from I mean I love racing you know I&#39;ve played around with this idea of building building a race simulator uh in my house to actually like Drive uh F1 cars or rally cars I just love racing uh and I&#39;ve actually been looking for a track around uh where I live to go and race cars uh in real life but anyway stop wasting so much time on these things that you&#39;re not actually getting anything from you know go into your phone right now look at how much time you&#39;re spending on social media add it all up add up the time that you&#39;re spending on your computer on your phone that you&#39;re watching Youtube and you&#39;re on Reddit and you&#39;re on Instagram and and really add it all up and look at that and say okay if I deleted one of these platforms if I actually just cut back on one of these platforms if I deleted Reddit off my phone which honestly was one of the best things that I did because I was a reddit reddit guy I loved Reddit I loved going into the subreddits and like reading through the forums and seeing what you guys were saying in there and there&#39;s some funny comments in there man there&#39;s some like really funny stuff but if you can get off those platforms and you can have the discipline to implement some structure and some rules and some order around those things right like for me there&#39;s no social media before a certain time of day I will not go on social media in the morning I will not go on social media after a certain time of night um unless there&#39;s like some emergency or something like that I mean you know unless my team is like hey so there&#39;s something that you need to see uh but for the most part I have very specific rules around it I&#39;ve deleted most social media off my phone there&#39;s no Facebook there&#39;s no Reddit on my phone I mean not who uses Facebook that much anymore anyway but there&#39;s no Facebook there&#39;s no Reddit on my phone and I got rid of those things and then for Instagram I basically only use it to dm with people that I want to interact with um so really start to build some rules and regulations around your social media use your TV use and your video game use I remember I spent an entire summer with some buddies I called it the summer of Diablo where we basically sat in our house there was three of us playing di I think it was Diablo 2 or Diablo I uh and I was in my bedroom I had this big iMac and one of my buddies was out in the living room and he was on the TV and my other buddy was in his bedroom and we probably played that game for like four or five hours at least every single day one summer uh when I was in university was it fun absolutely was it a waste of time pretty much right I was never going to monetize that I wasn&#39;t interested in that it wasn&#39;t something that I genuinely wanted to build a scale at uh it was just fun and you you know there&#39;s a time and place for that but if you&#39;re really trying to build something in your life and you are trying to uh develop yourself into someone that you really respect playing video games for eight hours a day unless you are developing a career out of that and monetizing that and you have you know you&#39;re building something out of that it&#39;s probably not the best use of your time for a certain period of your life next is at some some point in your life at some point in every man&#39;s life he needs to learn to stop pursuing shortterm gratification and pleasure now this is a hard one because this is really about impulse control right the the impulse control to text the woman to open up the porn website to have the drink to smoke the weed to whatever your thing is right to have the late night popcorn so many of us and this is something that I think ties into that young man&#39;s syndrome you know every every man goes through this phase where he&#39;s like 15 16 years old to like I don&#39;t know 27 28 where this just like wild tenacious no holds bar no rules uh aspect of us start is like really comes out and that part of us wants short-term pleasure wants short-term gratification wants to get the intention from the woman right right now wants to smoke the the weed right now wants to sit around and just do whatever the hell he wants and part of maturing and part of developing a really internal sense of control and Leadership is being able to reign in those impulses when they start to rise up so that is a big one next and this is a hard one but you need to kill your lottery mindset um I haven&#39;t heard many people talk about this but it&#39;s something that I&#39;ve known noticed I noticed it in myself when I was younger and I didn&#39;t really like know what direction I wanted to go I didn&#39;t have a lot going for me but what I found was that I would put a disproportionate amount of attention and energy towards fantasizing about some Lottery outcome right that like literally sometimes I would think about like winning the lottery because I was so poor and so broke other times I would fantasize about like hitting it big with this business and like making all this money and you know dating this like famous woman or something like that and I would get caught in this fantasizing and and uh and dreaming about this sort of Lottery life situation and it would keep me from actually taking action on the things that were right in front of me and this is something that I see with so many men who are procrastinators who are not where they want to be in life who aren&#39;t really too sure where they want to be in life and don&#39;t seem to have a very deep internal sense of locus of control it&#39;s not an internal thing and so what what happens for a lot of men is that start to externalize and that they hope and they start to dream that something in their external life will shift so radically that they will be given an internal sense of peace and control and autonomy and Leadership rather than developing those skills and and disciplines to lead yourself right to say no to the things to say yes to the things that you know you need to do to go and do the hard things to send the email when you are procrastinating and don&#39;t want to to take that kind of action so killing off that lottery mindset and and not only to mention the internal leadership piece but like it&#39;s not attractive to women right women are and I&#39;m going to use the dword women are relatively disgusted by men who are stuck in the Lottery mindset because it&#39;s so kind of uh childish and fantasy based and so any mature woman who&#39;s grounded and reasonable and is looking for a man who is reliable and takes responsibility she&#39;s going to hear him talking about all this fantasy based stuff and maybe she&#39;ll get caught into it at first because maybe you&#39;re carismatic and you&#39;re very good at painting the picture of the lottery you know of like well when my business takes off and it&#39;s going to look like this or when my you know career reaches this point it&#39;s going to be so I&#39;m not going to be driving this car and build that house I&#39;m not saying don&#39;t have dreams I&#39;m not saying don&#39;t have a vision for yourself I&#39;m saying delineate and create the distinction between where you start to go into escapism when you start to go into that Lottery mindset because you all have it I almost guarantee it I could talk to every single one of you and I bet almost every single one of you have that Lottery mindset where you&#39;ve created some picturesque utopian version in your mind of like when everything just checks the box and tingting every everything comes up dollar signs in my life everything will be okay uh so we have to let go of that Lottery mindset and move back to our vision move back to the direction that we&#39;re heading in and I found that what one thing that really helped me was every time I caught myself in that Lottery mindset I would come back and say what do I need to do right now what action can I take right now what decision can I make right now that I am clearly avoiding and that was super helpful to ground me back in to the action that I could take in the present moment the next thing is to stop believing that you are broken or that there is something fundamentally wrong with you I got caught in this for a very long time I really fundamentally believed that I was broken and unfortunately what that did was a number of of things number one if you are a man who fundamentally believes that he is broken you are going to attract a woman who either agrees with you or believes that about herself I&#39;m going to say that again if you are a man who fundamentally believes that he is broken you are going to attract a woman who either agrees with you and thinks that she can save you or sees you as that that broken version that she&#39;s always pitying you or she believes that about herself as well and and so it&#39;s never a recipe for a great reciprocal long-term relationship as number one but number two there&#39;s no such thing as a Broken Man there are men who have experienced things that are terrible that are harmful that are abusive that are traumatic and those things have caused some type of internal fracturing within you where there&#39;s a part of you that doesn&#39;t know how to deal with the pain or the frustration of why you keep making certain decisions and actions it doesn&#39;t mean that you&#39;re broken it likely means that you experienc something that nobody has taught you how to deal with how to Traverse how to carry how to heal how to move through and that is fundamentally different than being undeniably or irrevocably broken right and I get it I get you know if you&#39;re watching this and you&#39;re like I feel that way and I understand what you&#39;re saying I get being in that place because I was there for a very long time and it wasn&#39;t until a mentor of mine came along and said you know sometimes we just need somebody to believe in us more than we believe in ourselves in order to start to move forward and he was that person for me and if I can be that person for you then then then here it is right like I believe in you and your ability to move through and face and confront the things that you are dealing with in your life even though I might not know you and even though you might not know me I fundamentally believe in you because I have worked with so many men who have shown up on my doorstep at my men&#39;s weekends in my men&#39;s groups who have written me emails and you know dm&#39;d me online and said I just feel broken like I just fundamentally feel broken I don&#39;t know how to move forward and every single time the tragedy of those men is that it&#39;s not that they&#39;re broken it&#39;s that they experienced something or went through something in their life that that made it feel like it broke them and that&#39;s a tragedy because most of the time that&#39;s a sign that those men just didn&#39;t have anybody in their lives to help them learn how to Traverse that pain and that heaviness and that&#39;s why I said earlier on sometimes you have to make your pain your purpose in life for a period of time because sometimes that is the way out of this belief of this story that you&#39;re broken because that&#39;s all that it is it is a story I remember working with a man and I&#39;ll move on to the next one after I tell this quick story I remember working with a man who had experienced abuse as a child and the abuse was really bad and I&#39;m not going to go into details about what he experienced out of respect for him because it&#39;s just not necessary but he had come to believe that he was fundamentally broken and he came to believe that he was broken because he thought as a child that those things happened to him because there must have been something wrong with him there must have been something wrong with him that those things happened to him and over time he started to realize that the things that happened to him largely had nothing to do with him and that those were decisions that somebody else had made an adult in his life had made and that he was the casualty and the actual victim of somebody else&#39;s action and this goes back to comparing yourself to other people some of you have actually experienced being a victim and you&#39;re so you&#39;re so hellbent on not admitting to being a victim in life because that&#39;s like the weakest thing a man can do well sometimes the fastest way to regain your power and potency as a man is to say yeah I was a victim and I&#39;m not anymore right sometimes the running away from the truth of what happened keep keeps you in that victim place and so and and part of that is thinking that you&#39;re broken right continuing to think oh I&#39;m so effed up I&#39;m so broken there&#39;s something so fundamentally wrong with me is continuing to be the victim Without Really owning that something happened to you that you were a victim of whether it was a car crash or a health incident or an abuse or a trauma or whatever it is sometimes in life things happen to us that are so much bigger than we can carry or comprehend or understand and we actually need support in order to get through those things which brings me to my next Point thinking that you have to do it alone this is one thing that you as a man absolutely have to stop doing immediately you do not have to do any of your life alone you don&#39;t have to be successful alone you don&#39;t have to move through your pain alone you don&#39;t have to go through the divorce alone or the breakup alone you don&#39;t have to go through the loss or the death of a parent alone or the loss of a child alone you don&#39;t have to go through any of those things alone there are plenty of men that are out there that want to be in your corner and by your side to support you and it is up to you to open yourself to the understanding that you will undeniably be a more attractive man you will be a more confident man you will be a more capable competent man and you will be a more autonomous Man by having other men in your life who share those same values who are holding you to the version of yourself that you are wanting to be if you can surround yourself with men like that in your life you will absolutely go farther faster than you could ever have imagined and the last piece I was going to add I mean I added in pretending like you&#39;re uh like you don&#39;t have trauma or to deal with in your past that kind of went hand inand with uh with what I was talking about before um but the last piece really is thinking that peace or happiness is on the other side of some Monumental achievement and I see guys doing this all the time where they&#39;ve taken their peace and their sense of happiness and they have future paced it they have put it somewhere in the future on the other side of making the million dollars getting the woman buying the car building the house whatever it is and one of the skills that I reinforce that every man needs to learn is what I call PMA PMA present moment appreciation present moment appreciation you have to practice PMA you have to practice present moment appreciation every single day you will have a healthier mindset you will feel better about your life people will want to be around you more you will be happier more in the moment able to enjoy whatever it is that&#39;s happening and not waiting for some future perfect utopian thing to come along and even when it does you&#39;re not practiced in the ability to be present to the appreciation of the moment this is the Trap that so many men fall into they take their happiness they take their Joy they take their peace and they put it on the other side of something in the future that even when they attain it because they haven&#39;t practiced and developed the skill of appreciating something in the moment in their life all of a sudden they achieve the goal they win the award they get the promotion they build the business they hit the million dollar they do whatever and they can&#39;t feel the joy in it and they don&#39;t feel happy or it&#39;s like it&#39;s there and gone and it&#39;s this fleeting thing so these are 10 Things I wish every man could stop doing and even if you just took one of these things because I know it can be overwhelming to hear these 10 things and be like oh my God I have so much work to do blah and all of a sudden that inner judge and critic starts to spin spin up I I want you to take the one thing that stood out about this that you know if you executed on it for the next 30 days it would it would like without question start to make changes and gains in your life even if it&#39;s just a 1% increase in happiness or groundedness uh or you know a one 1% decrease in your level of sabotage and self-loathing take the one thing and execute on that so if you&#39;re watching this on YouTube you so don&#39;t forget to subscribe by the way but comment below and let me know which one really stood out to you which one you&#39;re going to commit to and don&#39;t forget to man It Forward share this video with somebody that you know could use it or would enjoy it and until next week Connor Beaton signing off be well [Music]

Transcript for:Self-Leadership for Men with Connor Beaton

Transcript for:
Self-Leadership for Men with Connor Beaton