Masculinity, Mindset & the Messy Magic of Men w/ Christopher Daniels Part 1

What if the hardest work a man can do isn’t lifting weights—but laying down his walls? In this mini series of Radical Joy, James and longtime friend Christopher Daniels dive deep into the tender, tangled terrain of men’s mental health, vulnerability, and the radical strength found in being seen.

🧡 Brothers, breakthroughs, and the bravery of being bare-hearted
💥 Shame scripts swapped for self-compassion
🧙 Weakness re-written as wisdom and worth
🌱 Neural pathways, wheat fields, and planting new patterns
⚡ Friendship, faith, and the funky “shelving unit” of connection
🔑 Support without smothering—asking is its own superpower
🔥 Affirmations that feel funny at first (but fuel real fire)
💬 “I statements” that shift storms into steady seas
🌊 Emotional physics: heavy hearts, lighter loads
🌟 Radical joy rising from raw, real conversations

This two part conversation is an honest, heart-heavy, hope-filled conversation about how men can move from isolation into integration, from silence into sovereignty. 

The path to radical joy isn’t paved with perfection—it’s built by brave, messy, moment-by-moment connection.

If this episode moved you, share it with someone who needs to hear that they’re not alone.

Check out the mankind project 

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Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and breathe!  
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Got something on your mind? James never runs out of things to say, so tell us what you want to discuss!   

Remember there is no shame in joy or for asking for what you need.  

Leave a review, send us a screenshot, and we’ll mail you a sticker! See you next FRIDAY for another dose of Radical Joy.  

James is not a therapist, but you’re not alone. If you're in crisis, call 988 for professional help.  

For non-emergencies, Psychology Today can connect you with support and therapists who fit your needs.  

This podcast and CLW Studios content are not therapy or a substitute for it. Guest opinions are their own.  

We're here for insight and encouragement but always seek professional support when needed.  

This episode was Produced and edited by Kerri J of CLW Studios

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, friends, So happy to have you here with us today.
A radical joy. If you've been here before, welcome back.
If this is your first time with us, we're glad
you're here. Each week, we're here with you talking about
things that weigh on our minds and hearts, hoping if
you're dealing with something similar, we can adjust our perspectives
as you listen. Hey, if you're struggling with something that
needs immediate attention, please know that help is available. Just

(00:24):
on nine eight eight nationwide in the US to reach
the Mental Health and Suicide Crisis Hotline. All of us
here at COLW Studios believe that mental health is a
vital part of our well being. The more people we
meet and the more places we go, the more we
realize how important it is to make people aware of
the fact that there is no shame in enjoying the

(00:46):
parts of our lives that are incredible. It's time for
some radical joy, and this week, the three fingers pointing
back at us are for our guest, Christopher Daniels. A
Michigan boy from Midwest Chris moved out to Seattle in
his early twenties and still calls it home twenty years later.
He has worked in sales for seventeen years, where he
found a love of psychology and a deep care for

(01:08):
his clients. Nearly a decade ago, a friend suggested he
attend the New Warrior training adventure through an organization called
The Mankind Project. Since then, Chris has walked the path
of helping men be better men. Today, you'll find him
often coaching people through tough spots in their lives. Chris
specifically aims toward elevating communication and emotional intelligence.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Welcome friend, Well, good morning, Thank you very much for
having me.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Oh man, is it a pleasure to have you. Chris
and I made friends long ago on a boat on
a wide sea. I met him and his family while
we were halfway across the world enjoying the most incredible time.
And it's just one of those things where when people match,
they just do. It was a click, and it's lasted

(01:58):
for gosh, what.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Fifty fifteen, sixteen years. I was just thinking about that
as you were saying that, I'm like, gosh, I don't
remember how long it's been, but it's been a minute
and a half.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
Right, And that's one of the best parts looking back
at my days on cruise ships, I collected so many
incredible people. Some come, some go, and some stay, and
I'm really happy to know that Chris was one of
those who stayed. We have the most incredible conversations because
he knows the kind of value that I place on
so many of my friendships, especially those that choose to

(02:31):
stay and influence my life in the best ways. Chris
especially tends to lean and focus on something that I
like to work on in myself. He works with men
who continue to try to be more intelligent, more aware,
more tuned in to the kind of people they want
to be, both now and aspirationally. And that's part of

(02:53):
the reason why I was really excited for you to
accept the invitation to come here in Radical Joy. I
think there's a lot of things that we can talk
about as far as moving all of us a little
closer together, figuring out what is a problem that needs
to be addressed immediately, and what's one of those things
where everyone just sort of maybe needs to assess the
situation perhaps a little more closely and clearly.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
Love it. Yeah, thank you. I you know, I was
thinking last night about, you know, some of the things
that would be interesting to talk about you and I
have had a long history of jumping on a phone
call and talking for two to four hours about anything
and everything, and I kind of ultimately settled on the

(03:40):
we'll see where the conversation goes. I mean, you know me,
after all these years, I'll sit and talk in definitely,
especially about things I'm passionate about, like helping people, helping
men specifically, you know, to the point that you mentioned earlier,
I kind of ambled into my work with the Mankind Project,
which I'd like to be very clear. I'm not going

(04:01):
to speak for them in an official capacity. I don't
think they'd have much of a problem with me doing
it after all these years, but I can only represent
my experiences personally and not necessarily speaking directly for the organization.
But I've had so much joy over the last almost

(04:21):
decade of sitting in circle with men and helping them
find the pieces of themselves that they oftentimes haven't had
a chance to talk about before you On the New
Warrior Training Adventure of the NWTA, as we often call
it for Shorthand, there is something truly magical that happens,

(04:44):
and it's only a forty eight hour period of time.
Men show up on a Friday afternoon and leave on
Sunday afternoon, And if you asked any man who attends it,
they'd swear they were there for a week because it's
so intense and the connection that most men make with
the other attendees, maybe even with the staff men to

(05:05):
a lesser degree, is so impactful that it feels like
it was a lot more time. But I love how
it proves that it's not necessarily how long we've known someone.
It's about the depth of the connection that we're able
to foster with another person. And in only forty eight hours,

(05:27):
a lot of men will walk out of there with
new lifelong friends, new lifelong connections. And I think that
part of that stems from the meat and potatoes of it.
The heart of it, you know, comes on Saturday afternoon,
where men are offered twenty minutes of focal time to

(05:49):
dig deep and find something that maybe they've never said
to another human being before, maybe something they've never said
out loud, even to themselves, and truly start to get
help on the journey that they're on with something that's
deep and that's difficult. And some people would call that,

(06:11):
you know, a shell breaking event. We call it that
a chance to kind of crack the shell and finally
like get through and take a peek at what's in there.
And you know, dare I say, take a peek at
the man that I could be in the future if
I walk down that path and deal with that thing.
And so for many men, they come out of that
experience changed, and some will look at that as an

(06:36):
opportunity to seize the day and start a new journey
becoming the man that they didn't know they could be,
becoming a better man. And some, I'm sorry to say,
go back to sleep because it's too much. It's too
too big of an ass, too heavy of a lift.
And some of those men, you know, we never see again.

(06:58):
They choose not to walk that path. But for those
who do, I've just seen dozens and dozens and dozens
of men over the years completely shift to their trajectory
and step into the next leg of their journey with
the spring and their step. Make no make no mistake.
It's tough work. But I think that almost anything in

(07:18):
a therapeutic modality.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
Is growth is not easy. That is not something that respectfully,
kindly cowards take on readily. It takes a lot to
go after that kind of evolution in one's life, especially
after so much of what you do there, I would

(07:43):
assume flies in the face of what they've been taught
since they were kneehigh to Atiseman. So much of this
is very much strength equals stoic and quiet and isolation
more like an island than it is about the question
of being alone where you are a natural phenomenon and

(08:03):
not necessarily a human being with an intense need and
desire for connection. That's not what men do. And to
break down all of those walls in a forty eight
hour period, especially leaving them basically emotionally naked in a
room full of better than strangers, not all the way friends,

(08:29):
that's got to be an intense situation. Kudos to the
ones who continue moving forward and through it, and my
heart goes out to the ones who, like you said,
may have found it just too heavy a lift. Ooh
that breaks my heart and I can understand how they
would feel that way.

Speaker 2 (08:47):
Yeah, I don't see it often, but I can tell
you this. You know, in business, we use a term
called a conversion rate, and based on the business, that
can mean any number of things. You know, I work

(09:07):
in sales, so if I go into talk with a
client and make a pitch, and you know, offer a
quote of some kind. Conversion rates would be converting the
lead to a quote, converting the quote to a sale.
In the Mankind Project, I've always talked about the conversion rate.

(09:31):
As you know, we would have upwards of either thirty
two or forty. Nowadays it's usually thirty two. There's a
specific number of men that they hit, which isn't isn't
necessary to talk about. It's just a logistical thing. But
like most most of the time nowadays, a full NWTA
will be thirty two men. And if you think about

(09:52):
thirty two men in the Pacific Northwest, we're talking Washington State,
Oregon State, maybe Idaho, maybe a touch of North Caro
Carolina or not North Carolina, North California. Pardon me, North Carolina.
Wait a minute, That geography doesn't math. But you know,
for the most part, the vast majority of the men

(10:14):
for our area are coming from Washington State and Oregon State.
So we have thirty two men that'll go into an NWTA.
We do five of those a year, and I bet
you we are lucky to get half of those men
that go into the next step of the journey, which

(10:34):
is called a primary integration training. We lovingly call it
a pit and that's that's actually my area of expertise.
I became a pit leader. I have a pit coming
up here in September. And the primary integration training is
structured that it's meant to take men who have come

(10:55):
out of this this shellbreaking event, this initiation to being
a man. And I'll talk more about that later if
you'd like to. Initiation is a big word. I mean,
as it relates to the energy that it can have
behind it and how people define it. It's also a
big word by letters, but taking men from the shell

(11:18):
breaking important event and saying, Okay, I just learned something
really deep, big important, maybe even earth shattering about myself.
What do I do with that? Because the NWTA is
not structure to teach you what to do with that.

(11:40):
It's kind of like crack the shell, make sure you're okay,
and then send you on your way. And then it's hey,
don't make big life decisions, don't quit your job, don't
get divorced, don't you know, don't make don't make big
decisions for the next couple of months, because we just
put you in an altered space where you learn something
big and deep, and now you're going to go back

(12:02):
out into the world where the mess that you left
behind when you came here is still there, still waiting.
So don't go home and say, honey, I can't do
this anymore. Like please don't do that. Yeah. And so
the primary Integration Training was meant to do a couple
of things. One is to kind of more lovingly care

(12:22):
for men coming out of the NWTA and kind kind
of give them a place to talk about the experience
that they just had and then help them find a
way forward. And we hope that the way forward would
be sitting in circle. And so the Mankind Project offers
connection to groups all across the world. I'm sure you

(12:42):
could even find them in the Netherlands. We call them
by groups, which is short for integration groups. It's all
in service to getting men to go sit and circle
with other men so they can continue to work on themselves,
so they can take that piece that they learned and
fold that into figuring out how to deal with that
on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. And so that

(13:07):
component of it, that Primary Integration training I found to
be really, really impactful, and so I started down a
journey of saying I want to lead that, I want
to figure out how to help men with that, because
while the NWTA was astounding for what it does for
most men, it was actually more impactful for me when

(13:27):
I went to my primary integration training and so I
just fell down that rabbit hole, loved you know, the
intention of it and how it operated, and that's where
I found myself spending a lot of my time inside
this organization and helping men.

Speaker 1 (13:42):
Nice Yet, whenever you said that, it makes a lot
of sense to have that next step in the process
because you have had a breakthrough with all of these
people in this circle who started as strangers, and now
you shared this incredible moment, this this life altering experience,
and now you're sitting there with this incredible weapon or tool,

(14:06):
however you choose to wield it, and very little instruction
on what comes next, which is why you guys are
there to lead into the pit. It's great, great, wonderful.
Now you know what you're working with. How do we
use that constructively? How do we bring you closer and
get rid of the things that you don't necessarily need,

(14:27):
that aren't serving and put more focus and energy towards
the things that really are continuing to cultivate the kind
of person you want to be. Love.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
It is that pretty close one, and I think that
I think that another big element to it is that
with extremely rare exception, and I say rare that I've
only encountered to human beings in the last twenty years
that believe they have this ability. With extremely rare exception,

(15:03):
most people will not learn something about themselves, pivot immediately,
and then never contend with that problem again. Functionally human beings.
While we are in many ways like an organic computer,
our brain is like an organic computer, we are not.
You can't go into a file folder and say, oh,

(15:28):
I don't want the contents in there anymore and highlight,
you know, select, highlight, delete, and then write in some
new stuff and then just never contend with that issue
ever again. Like that's again, with extremely rare exception, you're
talking about the point zero zero zero one percent of
the population. Most of us are going to learn something

(15:50):
important about a wound, a piece of trauma, an old
tired tape in our head, an old message that we've
been telling ourselves for years and years and years in
many cases, you know, those of us who are you know,
over forty right, so long in the tooth that you know,

(16:14):
the older we get, the more opportunity there is to accrue,
you know, tough messages and wounds and trauma, big tea
in little tea, And it takes a while to unpack that,
to understand it, and then to figure out a path forward.
And so because of that understanding, to the point that

(16:35):
you're illustrating is that it's it's got to be a journey,
which is why I've become so passionate about trying to
help people understand that pretty much all of us need
to be on a journey. I have a judgment. I
have a belief that all of us need to be
on a journey of self improvement because I've yet to
meet a perfect person, so exactly.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Nobody's come out the womb, you know, fully baked. I
agree wholeheartedly, right. And the thing that always we keep
preaching about the here and in conversations, in real life
and all these other kind of things, connection is so important. Wow,
And that is not something the male of the species

(17:22):
really gets a lot of encouragement to do. And when
they do, it feels as though it has this unusual, artificial,
almost tribal connection. And I'm not talking about like actual
like social communities that come together to make something work,
but like Lord of the Flies kind of tribal community situation. Yeah,

(17:45):
and it takes on a very different color and meaning
because for whatever reason, there is a fear of being
considered or seen as less masculine, or to go straight
to the heart of it, feminine or any no number
of other things that are perfectly natural and human. They
just want to be pure male, and in doing so

(18:09):
cut themselves off from a lot of very valuable and
nuanced experiences and emotions, one of which being connection.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
And when you bring a group of men into a
place and insist upon safety and connection and strength through
quiet and just being present and listening, there has to
be some sort of emotional physics that takes place, some
sort of like quickening that would give these folks keys

(18:46):
to unlock all of these shackles that have held them
for so long it seems so heavy. To put those
kinds of things down must be an enormous relief. And
for the life of me, I cannot understand, though I
know it happens, how someone would be more willing to
pick up those burdens again instead of leaving them where
they are in order to connect more not only with

(19:09):
the friends and brothers they're making in this circle, but
also think of the value that would be to the
relationships in your life outside the program.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
Yeah. I first of all, I love the Highlander reference.
I'm gonna yeah, give you, give you mad mad points
for that. Secondly, I think I'm gonna channel Brene Brown
when I when I say this next piece, And gosh,

(19:39):
I just love her working. You know. For those for
those of your listeners who have never heard of Brene
Brown or have heard her name but don't really know
about her stuff, she is a wonderfully intelligent, credentialed speaker, researcher,

(20:00):
predominantly on the topic of shame and various other things.
She has two Ted Talks, two Netflix Specialist might just
be one. You can find her. She has a podcast.
She's been on Simon Sinok's podcast a few times. I
can't encourage I can't encourage you or anyone enough to

(20:21):
just go find her stuff. She's she's absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
So anyone, sorry, anybody out there. B R E N
E b R o w N. Brene Brown, please continue.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Sorry channeling Brene Brown with this, with this statement that
the chief feminine shame trigger is always be perfect, the
chief masculine shame trigger is never be weak. So what

(20:56):
let's let's break those down just a touch? Yes, please,
you know, I'll I'll ask you, since I don't have
anyone else to you to ask for this guy, it's fine. Yeah,
since you're since I'm staring at you. You know, when
you think about the totality of your life, you think
about you know, the if you think about the times

(21:19):
have you have you really encountered a lot of circumstances
where you were really concerned about something being weak in
that tearing down who you are as a person of
who you are as a man. You may be one
of those guys that truly does need perfection, because I've
met guys that do. But does it trigger a sense
of shame in you that you mess something up and
you're like, all right, well I'm gonna pivot move on.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Oh, absolutely right, I'm dealing with it right now. Sure,
trying to learn Dutch is the most god awful thing
I've done in a minute, Right, I mess it up
on the regular, on the regular, and everyone is doing
their dead level best to help me, and there is
an enormous amount of shame in that for me because
I am just not picking it up. I haven't had
to learn a new language in a while. I've been

(22:03):
working on several others for years, and so whenever you know,
rubber meets road, it's a very different situation for this.
I've only been studying it for a few months, and
it is it is it A shame is the word
that I use when I write in my journal. I'm
ashamed that I can't do anymore with it. And then
there's another part of me that looks at what I
just wrote and knows that I need to give myself

(22:25):
more grace because this is not basic math. This is
learning a new communication method with different grammar rules and
different ways of pronunciation. Their vowels are all kind of crazy, right,
And it does. And it's silly just to think that
because everyone here speaks English, yes, and I still want
to be a part of his community and learn the

(22:48):
Dutch language. Okay, well you're gonna need to be. And
then someone will come in and try to meet me
feel better, and that only drives the nail in deeper.
Don't give me that. Don't pity me, And it's not pity.
What it is is genuine concern that I am taking
it so hard and trying to cushion that blow as
best they can because I am being so hard on

(23:09):
myself about it.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
I love that you brought that up because it it
keys into the next piece of what I was going
to say. So well, and that what you're describing, I judge,
actually sounds more like the chief masculine shame trigger, which
is never be weak, because you know, if I don't

(23:32):
do something well, you know how how is that perceived?
Is that I'm you know, not good enough. I wasn't
strong enough. You know, I wasn't smart enough to be
able to do this thing. And so and again, like
I'm speaking in broad generalities that certainly don't apply to everyone,

(23:52):
just to you know, just to call to that. But
with most men, they did deal massively with a concern
about never being weak, and especially in front of especially
in front of other men. And so to the point
that you were making earlier about connection, it can be

(24:14):
hard for men to find connection with others, especially if
there isn't a feeling of safety and trust that they
could be weak and that they're not going to be
torn to shreds by the other men around them, that
they can actually let down their walls and they can,
you know, have some semblance of vulnerability. And so I

(24:36):
to believe, I believe, and I have a judgment that
the reason that men struggle with, you know, being in
groups of other men, with being around other men, having
relationships with other men, is not feeling a sense of
trust that they can just be themselves. You know something
that over a decade and a half, you and I
have cultivated where I don't think a second about telling

(24:58):
you anything because I don't believe that you're ever going
to tear my head off and start belittling me and
shaming me for being weak, or for being stupid, or
for being anything else, or you're gonna hold space in
a great compassionate way. And I think that a lot
of men tend to tend to lack that social connection

(25:22):
and also a fear of I don't know if I
can trust this guy. I don't know how to build
trust with this guy. And it's getting worse here in
you know. This is August twenty twenty five, are recording
this Over the last couple of decades, as the prominence
of the prominence of the Internet has risen, we've become

(25:48):
far more separated as a species, isolated, and we have
to be purposeful with actually going out and you know,
getting connected with other people. And so, if you know,
you're a man that has this latent, nascent belief that
other men are dangerous, you know, uh, physically, psychologically, emotionally,

(26:12):
what's going to lead you to just connect with someone?
And also, dare I say that, you know, the removal
of third spaces where guys would go to church, would
go to bowling league, who would you know, gather at
the you know, gather in Mike's garage to two doors
down and help him work on his car. Like that.
Stuff is just so less common, especially in American culture.

(26:34):
I won't speak, you know, other for other places, but
men are having a hard time connecting with other men.
Not to say that it wasn't difficult before, but I
believe that it has become more difficult.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
I agree there is an illusion of connection because we
are always shown pictures, images, video clips, jokes, thoughts from
so many people from all over that we either have
known since we were tiny or just sort of passing.

(27:06):
But for whatever reason, we decided to connect. And now
you know more about their lives than you do the
people to whom you are related. The connection that we
have now, I hesitate to call it artificial. I want
to call it heightened and curated, because it's always there.
This is where I've been, this is the vacation, this
is the dinner, this is my gym routine, all of

(27:30):
these kind of things that show me. So I have
the knowledge, but I don't know. There's a level of
connection there that is missing because it wasn't told to
me specifically. It was told to whoever is there to
watch or listen, and they are gleaning the information instead
of taking it in as nourishment.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah, it's lacking that person to person communication, you know,
like the with the eyes of texting. And I see
this in the younger generations where so much of their
so much of their communication is through texting or short

(28:13):
videos like on Snapchat or some other such platform. And
to your point, like it's just so heavily curated. And
here again I'm gonna channel Berne Brown talking about how
you know when someone gets on social media and broadcast
is the term she uses and I love this, but

(28:34):
broadcasts and just says, you know, my life is just
awful right now. And here's nine paragraphs on why that is.
That's a curated to and I love the term that
you've used. It is a curated form where you know
that person went through and wrote and rewrote and edited

(28:54):
and maybe added a picture and and dumped everything they
were feeling so that they could get likes and comments
and some sort of you know, community connection. But the
problem is it's not it's not real connection. It is.
It is curated. I don't want to call it fake
because that seems like too strong of a word, but
it definitely is not real connection. And Simon Sinek talks

(29:19):
about this in a really beautiful way where he said
it's sitting across from someone and saying I've had a
really hard day and this is and this is what happened,
and having that person hold space and respond that's connection.
And it's become challenging. And I'm hoping that we're starting

(29:40):
to see a change in that in our society, think
that we're starting to figure out that, you know, through
our male loneliness epidemic that we're waiting through I think that,
you know, women largely are starting to suffer pretty heavily
because of that as well. And I think that we're
starting starting to see people go, I need to do

(30:01):
something different. I got to sort this out. And I
think it's gonna take us, unfortunately, a long time to
figure it out. I think, you know, people at the forefront,
like yourself, spreading some radical joy. I think that there's
tools out there that are going to help people sort
of figure it out. But you know, aside from the
people leading the charge, it's going to take our society

(30:24):
quite some time, maybe a couple of decades, to really
pull this around. And I'm I'm sad to say that
out loud because it sounds defeat us. It sounds like,
you know, the antithesis of radical joy. But I say
that in believing that as a species, we have surmounted
every obstacle that we've come across up until now, and

(30:45):
I believe we'll get past this as well. I just
think it's going to get pretty dark and ugly for
a lot of people on the path to agree well.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
And I don't think acknowledging the problem in order to
find our way into solving it, or at least moving
through it is what I would call negative or dark.
I think we need a very big dose of realism
to look at something and call it what it is
not in a judging tone, which is to say, Okay,

(31:16):
this is where we are, and we are very far
from one another, and in order to connect the way
that we're talking about, we have to be in the
same room. We have to be on the same page
at least. And it's not a negative thought, it's just
it's it is being very candid about what we're facing
and knowing that we have a lot of work, all

(31:38):
of us to move forward through this. The history has
shown that we have set the bar pretty low, and
so there are going to be those out there who
don't want to take it at that height. Great, and

(31:59):
they're going to be others that are just dying to
make a connection, that are willing to make a connection
at any point that whenever someone goes just a bit
above ground level, they're going to be highly favored and valued.
And the thing is, we all have to work together
to get that bar up off the ground, and everyone
needs to, you know, with the rising tide, all boats

(32:21):
et cetera, et cetera, that's the thing. I think a
lot of us are getting on a thing like, well,
I shouldn't have to change. It's like we should all
have to change. We all need to continue. Like you
were talking earlier, the journey all we're on it, and
you can't just walk. You've got to build. You've got
to grow because it's not flat. You got popoles and

(32:41):
you've got huge hills, and you can't do that if
you stay the same size, the same strength. You have
to continue building in order to keep walking this journey.
And I think a lot of people are expecting this
to be some sort of like cake walk walk in
the park situation where it's more like a hike, and
I don't think a lot of people are really seeing

(33:03):
it as such. They expect the whole world to come
to them. It's like, no, no, no, we all have
to walk. We're all on different paths, and hopefully they'll
meet at several intersection points and we'll get to enjoy
of you together. It's not going to be dropped off
at your front door the same Amazon.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
I love that. And you know something that you at
the beginning part of your statement just absolutely jumped off
the page at me, which was to repackage it my
own words, identifying you know, what the issue is. I
talked earlier about the NWTA being a shellbreaking event, and

(33:43):
that is really identifying what an issue is. And to
your point, you know, on the path of finding joy,
on the path of finding love, and you know, whatever
type of spirituality you want, whatever type of connection you want.
I think that there's there's something about really identifying what

(34:04):
the problem is. Doctor k Are you familiar with his
work at all? He's he's rose to prominence over the
last few years. He forgive me, I cannot remember what
his actual last name is. He calls himself doctor Kay.
He I believe is a psychologist, and he is a gamer.

(34:24):
He came from gaming addiction actually, where he wrestled with
gaming addiction. And he is just one of the smartest,
most capable mental health practitioners I've come across. He's just
the guy is a walking font of of psychological knowledge.
I can't can't say enough about how much I like
his stuff. He has this really wonderful way of saying

(34:49):
and when we talk about positivity, he's like if I
if you have a glass full of piss, and I
and and I pour sugar in it. No amount of
sugar takes the piss out. Yeah, and so.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
You have told me this before.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
Yeah, Yeah, it's And I say it and I laugh
and I smile because it's so funny to think of,
because it's it's such a it's such a fantastic descriptor.
But what I love about it is that it is
he's saying, it's like we have to and I'm saying
this is kind of a modification to statements like we
have to identify the problem and then we need to
do something about it. We can't positive think our way

(35:30):
out of trauma. We can't like there's like positive thinking
is is amazing. Like I have an affirmation statement on
my door that I read every night when I go
to bed, when I shut off the lights and lock
the door. I read it every time I walk out
the door. Because there's something to be said about positive statements,
and I'd love to come back to that, but I

(35:51):
don't want to lose this train of thought that I have.
Identifying the problem is so important, and part of identifying
the problem is separating feelings from thoughts and understanding that,

(36:12):
you know, like our feelings don't lie to us, Our
feelings are a response system. The thought that comes before
the feeling and the thoughts that come after the feeling
can absolutely be lies. In fact, I would dare say
they oftentimes are. One of the things that I have
learned to do over the years when I coach people

(36:34):
is learning to truly identify a feeling, and people really
struggle with us. I struggled with it for a long time.
And one of my favorite tools. I'm actually going to
link this to you right now. Have you ever heard
of a feelings wheel? No, a feelings wheel is exactly

(36:57):
what it sounds like. It's a wheel of feelings, right, Hey.

Speaker 1 (37:02):
Good marketing.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
But if you'll pull this up, you'll see that essentially
what this is is it's saying that, like, there's a
few core feelings that we experience, but there may be
pardon me, there may be lots of ways of describing
a core feeling. So like, as an example, if I

(37:29):
look at angry, angry could be let down, humiliated, bitter, mad, furious, violated, indignant.
There could be all sorts of words with this, And
this is one of my favorite tools to help people
on their journey, because, first of all, a lot of
people don't know how they're feeling. Yeah, I know, we

(37:51):
talked about f words before we got on here. There's
no but you know, like, first of all, most people
have a very hard time identifying even what they're feeling.
And usually when you say how are you feeling, like
all manner of story comes up. So one of the
first things that I teach, whether it's someone I'm coaching

(38:14):
independently or whether it's you know, a primary integration training
someone in the Mankind Project wherever they are on their journey,
is we start off with trying to say, I want
you to tell me how you're feeling in one word.

(38:34):
And that's tough for most people, Like it feels super restrict,
and I've seen people get like actually angry about it
and say like why why do I need to distill
it down to one is it's intentional, like I want
you to find one word to figure this out, because
I just want you to say I'm angry, I'm sad,

(38:55):
I'm depressed, i am disgusted, I'm whatever I'm at for
a couple of reasons. One is to really help whittle
down and refine through simplicity, and also there's a deeper
element that it took me a long time to really

(39:16):
figure out, which is that while you and I and
every other person are on our own unique journey, there's
more that connects us than divides us. And so while
you may have had an entirely different experience with anger
than I had, if I sit down and say I'm
angry and you say down, you say I'm angry, we

(39:39):
now have a connection point of two people who understand
their own version of anger. And now I don't feel
so alone that someone else feels anger and someone else
feels something similar, and so it's a method of bringing
us together through commonality. Excellent.

Speaker 1 (39:59):
Well, And like you were saying it whenever you started
talking about coming down to one emotion, it it's hard
to do that because so often we as in men
don't necessarily have the vocabulary pardon me, Men of a
certain age are not necessarily given the tools to express

(40:20):
themselves concisely when speaking on emotion. Yeah, And it's almost
like asking someone what they want, what do you want
out of life? And the first thing they do is
start crossing off all the things they don't. I'm like, wonderful, helpful, great,
not the question. And it seems very similar in the

(40:40):
fact that what are you feeling right now? And I'm
just I'm mad, okay, great, I am disappointed. Okay. That
leads into mad, oh, well, why didn't you? And it
also kind of trickles back into the idea of masculine
shame as far as like you ask a question and
I was not prepared to answer this question, and I

(41:00):
was not raised in such a way that I have
access to all of these words or feelings. Da da
da necessarily I being a man typical model blah blah blah,
not necessarily James Bullard, but whomever, right, And it's they all,
You've got to let down a lot of walls before

(41:21):
you can get to something like that. I mean, a
lot of teaching and conditioning.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Yeah, couldn't couldn't have said it better myself, Like it is,
It is an effort, which is why I think that, uh,
we we have such a you know, a low conversion
rate from the NWTA into the pit and you know,
most places in the country, the price of that primary
integration training is included in the price of going to

(41:50):
the end. You've already paid for it, right, So why
wouldn't you go?

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Why wouldn't you go? The mon where you spent y'all,
you're just investing in yourself.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah, go, why wouldn't you have go have more connection,
Why wouldn't you take the next step on the journey.
But I'm telling you, our conversion rate is half usually
less that we'll have, you know, Like as an example,
we'll have nine dudes come out of Seattle go through
the NWTA, and I'll see four of them, yeah in

(42:19):
the pit, you know, and some of them will say, oh,
I'll get to.

Speaker 1 (42:21):
It eventually, and like you'll never see that person again.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
Probably not.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
The beback bus has no tickets, right, there's there's another
sales term for you.

Speaker 2 (42:31):
Yeah, yeah, I I I wish that I knew better
how to get people to decide to take a personal journey.
In fact, you know my so, I've started working on

(42:53):
a three book series with a co author, my good friend,
doctor Professor. I call him doctor Professor. It brings us
smile to my face, Doctor Professor Nicholas herber Lapierre. He's
such a good friend. I met him. This is a
funny story. I met him at a Mankind project NWTA

(43:15):
on a hillside in rural you know, Washington, and he
was on what we call the man of service team.
Those are the men who prepare the food for the weekend.
So there's the MOS team and then there's the staff team,
and the staff are dealing with actually getting the men
through the weekend, and then and the men of service

(43:37):
are are just doing the food part because there's a
lot of guys. Mean, you think that there's you know,
thirty two men that are attending, and there's one and
a half staff men per man attending. So that's a
lot of dudes out on a hill in Washington, right.
And so I happened to be standing in the kitchen
one day talking with this guy that I didn't know,

(44:00):
and I've made some comment about being from Michigan. He goes, oh,
I'm from Michigan too. Where are you from? And I said,
I Traverse City, Michigan, which is a tiny town in
northern Michigan. You know, it's one hundred thousand people, which
I say tiny because in comparison to like Seattle of
a million, like, that's pretty small. And he goes, no,

(44:22):
you're not. I'm like, why would I make that up?
You know, Like he goes, I'm from Traverse City, Michigan.
So we just immediately connected, immediately connected. And it turns
out that we knew a couple of the same people

(44:43):
and have just been such good friends since then. And
I reached out to him. You know, we've we've been
in contact ever since. I reached out to him at
some point and I said, you know, I am so
passionate about mental health and a well being and I
love sitting and talking with men. A friend of mine

(45:09):
is a quick, quick story. A friend of mine, she
lives in Tennessee, and she called me and said that
her brother was going through a hard time. And I said,
please have him call me. You would do that, I'm
like absolutely, And I said, is he going to see
a therapist? And she said something I think that you'll

(45:29):
resonate with. Yeah. Men in the South don't do that.
Men in the South don't go to a therapists. And
I said, all right, well, let's spend it this way.
Then tell him I'm not a therapist, because I'm not.
I'm not a credential therapist. I said, have him reach
out if he wants to talk, We'll just have a
conversation and see where it goes. And we got on

(45:53):
a phone call and I was on the phone with
him for three and a half hours the first time,
and then a couple of months later when we had
our follow up, we were on the we were on
the phone for four hours, just two dudes talking, you know,
and some of it some of it sounded, you know,
like like coaching, you know, and a lot of it

(46:15):
was just one dude listening to, you know, another. And
to go back to my original my original statement, original story,
I reached out to Nick one day and I said,
I want to take all of this stuff that I'm
passionate about and I want to help other people and

(46:41):
I don't know how to do that yet, but here's
what I'm thinking. And I kind of like outlined some
bullet points to him and I said, I would love
to have you be a part of this, if you
would like to be. And we sat down had several
hours worth the meetings, and and by the end of
the first one he was just so excited. He goes, yeah, like,
let's do this. And so we are in the process

(47:02):
of working on a three books series in an ocean
of self help books. And one of the things that
he and I talk about constantly is how do you
get someone to wake up? How do you get someone

(47:25):
to say, I need to take a journey of self improvement.
I could be a better man, a better woman, a
better parent, a better lover, a better whatever, better brother,
Like how can I be a better version of myself?
And in short, there is no way to do that.
This is inception. Like you know, I can't give you

(47:48):
an idea. All I can do is share a story
with you about how much better my life has been
deciding to do something very difficult to a point that
you brought up earlier, and go, I just have to
believe there's something better on the other side of this,
that I that I can surmount some of these obstacles,
to overcome some of this hardship, wounds, trauma, and be

(48:11):
a better person, and that I will be better for
taking that journey. But I don't know. I have as
of yet found the magic words or the magic wand
to just say think and now someone says, oh my gosh,
I want to take a journey of self improvement.

Speaker 1 (48:27):
I think it needs to be approached from a parallel
idea instead of a head on I want to think
of this as almost again like I have for whatever reason,
I have this idea of emotional physics in my head.
When you run parallel to something, it gets caught in
the stream, in the jet stream, beside it, in the draft,

(48:50):
and instead of trying to attack it head on, you
are excelling in parallel instead of intersecting, because you're not
doing it for them, you're doing it for you near them,
and so the attention is not necessarily on that person,
but it's more on your journey. You just like to

(49:12):
do it in their proximity so that they can get
what it is that you're doing. And it's not nearly
as scary because they're just watching your journey, but they
have to keep up at a certain level in order
to continue watching. It's one of those things where, like
you're saying, it's not therapy, it's two dudes talking. Great,
then let me stay on the phone with you for

(49:32):
three and a half hours, right, See if we could
do this more often. Yeah, but we can't call it
what it is. We've got to call it. We've got
to package it differently. It's got to be something that
doesn't shrink a scrotum or give that ice cold water
in the pit of your stomach kind of feeling. It's
got to be one of those things where you are
left like a wild animal. If you try to approach

(49:53):
a wild animal with the most delicious piece of meat,
it will still shy from you with suspicion and fee.
But if you sit there and let the aroma entice
it to come closer to the fire and don't pay
attention to it, do your own thing, etc. Eventually it
will warm to what you're doing and it will stay
closer to learn more about what you're about and hopefully

(50:16):
join you. If you're the kind of person who likes
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(50:38):
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intermost thoughts, stay hydrated, or putter around town as always. Friends,
Thank you so much for listening, and please never forget
how much we love y'all. Thank you for taking time

(51:10):
to share a moment of joy and hope with me.
We're so grateful you're here. If this is your first time,
take a moment to check out our archive. See if
there's something else in there that fires you up, rekindles
the joy in you, he spread the word. If you
got something out of being with us today, we welcome
your thoughts and suggestions.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Now.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
I've rarely run out of things to talk about, but
if there's something I haven't covered that's on your mind
or heart, I want to hear from you. To learn
more about me and Seelwu Studios, follow the links in
the show notes. Hey, don't forget. When you leave Radical
Joy Review, be sure to send us a screenshot. We'll
send you some kick ass swag to show our gratitude.
I am not a therapist or a medical professional. If

(51:46):
you're experiencing a mental health emergency, please call nine to
eighty eight to reach the National Crisis Lifeline. This content
and other content produced by Clau Studios and affiliated partners
is not therapy, and nothing in this content indicates a
therapy relationship. Any opinions of guests on this podcast are
their own and do not represent the opinions of James.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Or Claw Studios.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
Please consult with your therapist or see what in your
area if you're experiencing mental health symptoms. Everything in this
podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes. Have a great
one and we will see you next week for another
dose of radical journy.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Love y'all,