So What's a Man to "Do?"

One of my esteemed readers of this blog for men and boys, Ron Pevny, Director of the Center for Conscious Eldering, shared a comment on the last post entitled Man-cession, the post before this one which attempted to provide a bigger picture within which a range of choices for men and the work they do for a living seemingly exist. Ron said:

 

"You well state that the first step is for people to be clear on what they truly desire and the kind of life they want.  However, for so many that clarity is far from being enough, and without any sense of how to translate passion into reality, it can be a dead end and a real source of demoralization."

Righto Ron! From clarity to couch potato only gets the remote buttons worn smooth. Clarity of itself is no magic formula for everything changing overnight, though frankly, I have seen that happen. What often goes unseen is the process that occurred in gaining and sustaining clarity and then what took place as a result.

I'd like to take a closer look at what happens or can happen with an individual man regardless of unemployment figures and always shifting economic times. For ultimately, I believe, it is not the conditions that dictate what a man does and gets out of life but his response to conditions. And further, I would hold that the state of a man's life is more a reflection of life long habits of thought and attitude than the winds of fate. Unfortunately, a lot of those thinking patterns are often under the radar of our moment by moment awareness. They literally run our life on auto pilot--if we let them.

First of all, I don't have any global statistics on how many men or people in general actually take the first action step of getting complete clarity about what they most want out of life and what it would look like once they've manifested or achieved it. Many men I've worked with are often frustrated or demoralized by having more clarity about what they don't want than what they do. That frustration might in part be reflected in the Gallup Poll cited in the previous post, wherein 7 out of 10 people are not doing what they love or has meaning for them. 

Some men are too afraid of what they may learn about their unmet needs and desires to even take the Passion Test because of conscious or unconscious doubts about these needs and desires ever being met or fulfilled. I think that chronic negative or limiting thoughts about what is possible, what we deserve or are worthy or capable of produce the fear that can contribute to demoralization and a dead end. Many men have already given themselves over to these habitual and I would even call "parasitic" thoughts. These guys are, in Thoreau's famous words, "leading lives of quiet desperation." Most of us have been there at one time or another.

So, I just want to honor the men who have so far stepped through enough of that blanket of fear and fog and found ways to gain clarity. It's a huge and courageous action step in itself and few actually take the time to go inside themselves, listen to their higher selves or that still small voice to find their calling or deeper sense of purpose which automatically follows when you find and follow your passions.

What happens after I take a man through the Passion Test process that gives him deep insight into the top five things he most wants in his life?

We look at how the things he says would be ideal for him are showing up now to get a baseline to work from and we create what we call "passion markers." Not necessarily goals but rather milestones of where he "would have" already had to travel to have arrived at living his passions at a 10 on a scale of 0-10.  

 

Quick example. Say one of your passions is to become one of the world's greatest musical performers. What would have needed to happen to convince you that you are? Well, would playing Carnegie Hall be a convincing marker? Most would say, "You bet!" Becoming a known expert in anything would necessitate some concrete things to have happened along the way. What were they? Write them down. Did I say write them down? Write them down. This part of the process literally begins to rewire one's brain into a more willing mindset conducive to taking advantage of opportunities when they do arise as well as actively creating them, beginning at whatever the beginning is for that person. 

 

Next step?  Pick up an instrument that excites and inspires you or whatever material thing may be needed to begin constructing a new part of life.  Then hire a good teacher or coach to help you get clarity and hold you accountable for taking incremental action. Create an action plan fully founded on your top passions and carry it out. Monitor your self-sabotaging thoughts that often arise when you stretch yourself into a new relationship, career, project or pursuit. Realize that those thoughts are not the ones that will move you forward. They will deny and deflate your dreams and ultimately create a dead end where you may have begun to make real progress. And from my own experience I can tell you, these "devil" thoughts seem to often speak loudest when you are getting closest to fulfilling a big dream.

If I am working with a man who immediately voices objections to realizing his dreams or old story about how so and so or this and that are keeping him from his ideal life, we stop right there before going any further in the clarity into action process. I ask if that thought about what is possible is true and then use another powerful process to follow that thought right down into it's rabbit hole, flush it out and prove it's just an old story from the past and no predictor of the future.

 

One of the major pitfalls for men and everyone when it comes to turning dreams into concrete reality is getting caught up in the HOW. Before one gets clear about the WHAT they want, they are already asking the question, How will I do this? How is that going happen? How can I make it happen? In my experience, that question usually becomes a non-starter and dead end as it too often comes from fear and contraction. 

For one, when I get clear about what I want, I don't often initially know how it's going to happen. It's like asking for some kind of guarantee before you take the first step. There simply is no insurance for that. And further, God only knows how it will all come to pass. Much of the good stuff that comes into my life seems like a miracle that I could not possibly have orchestrated all on my own. So, I have fully resigned as General Manager of the Universe. Anyway, even if that kind of control were possible, I'd find it very burdensome and demoralizing. 

As most of us know, getting from clarity to manifestation is often a windy road with speed bumps. Once you get rid of old baggage thoughts and get a handle on your fears channeling that e-motional energy into the creative mold (passion markers) you've formed in your mind as a result of gaining clarity, your very life energy has a productive place it naturally wants to go. And gradually you begin to discover  how to use and repeat the process to more consciously create what you want in life again and again and again, from the inside out.

Randy Crutcher delivers his Man-to-Man coaching sessions to men all over the world ready to step into their greatness and get one hell of a kick out of life by creating their own heaven on earth. Call for a free 15 minute consultation to see if you're ready for clarity and beyond.  209 923-0502