Creating purpose and meaning

So many men are just going through the motions, working a 9 to 5 job they hate, with no passion or purpose in life. This lack of purpose shows up inside every area of life.

The signs of lack of purpose are…

● Living a life you don’t want to live

● Feeling stuck inside of habits and routines

● Feeling like you are in a rut

● A gnawing sense of incompleteness and or missing something 

● Seeking to escape life through addictions and sedatives

● Not feeling any feeling of contentment and satisfaction

● You are looking to a future day for everything to change

10. Judgements and opinions

Our own personal judgements are what causes us pain. The Stoic philosophy has a corner on this market of really dismantling these stories and getting established inside of wisdom. We walk you through how to do this, both for yourself and others.

Examples of assumptions are…

1. You don't get the promotion at work, so you assume the boss is out to get you. 2. You assume most people are bad at heart, so don't trust anyone you meet. 3. Your partner isn't very talkative lately, so you assume they are angry with you.

4. Someone does something that hurts you, and you begin to assume why they did it.

These judgements look like…

● Assuming to know why

● Thinking we know the motives of another

● Trying to fill in the blanks with incomplete information

● Jumping to conclusions that are a stretch

● Believing from a one-sided perspective

● Hide behind their version of the story

11. Expressing emotions

Because of the stigma, men have a hard time saying how they feel. They tend to hold it in and then blow up. We have to stop holding on to pain like a ticking time bomb.

Suppression is all about pretending that you are not …

● Angry

● Sad

● Frustrated

● Disappointed

● Discouraged

● Out of control

● Fearful

Denying these things doesn't make them disappear.

12. Responsibility

We must come out of the realm of victimhood and begin to accept responsibility as the creator of our own lives.

Signs of lack of responsibility...

● Excuses for everything

● It's everyone else's fault - Consistent blaming of others or circumstances 

● Complaining about the condition of your life

● Broke all the time

● Procrastination

● Living for pleasure

● Feeling the need to be rescued

● Feeling powerless or a lack of control

● Feel like the world is out to get you

● Love the sympathy you receive from others

13. Relationships

Men have problems with relationships. It breaks down to an intimacy problem, a communication problem, and an overall becoming one problem. Men sometimes see their relationship with their significant other as separate, when it should be as one. Signs of relationship issues…

● Unforgiveness & resentment is growing

● Sex is few and far between

● Conversations are very surface level and they never go deep

● Uninterested in each other's life

● Keep distracted through excessive entertainment

● Start losing their cool often

● Being excessively nitpicky and starting to pick at each other through sarcasm 

● Not willing to cocreate any solution to fix any problems

● Stay at the bar or work to avoid being home

Passive-aggressive

A lot of men like to play Mr. Nice Guy and go with the flow to their own detriment. They’ve lost their sense of assertiveness and settled into people-pleasing. This kind of behavior causes a lot of resentment that often gets buried.

Some signs of passive aggressiveness…

● Unwillingly to communicate how they feel

● Denying they are angry or frustrated

● Take stabs at people through comedy

● Use criticism to deal with problems

● Do the silent treatment

● Withdraw to gain pity

● Being outwardly compliant but inwardly resistant

● They say they are on broad but are secretly sabotaging the plans 6. Mental health and emotional stability

The facts are that men are more likely to commit suicide. There’s a real mental health stigma when it comes to men coming forward for help.

● 70% of all suicides are men

● Men die by suicide 3.63 times more often than women

● Men are almost two times more likely to binge-drink than women 

● Men are more likely to use (and die from) illegal drugs

● Men are less likely to access psychological therapies than women

● 73% of adults who ‘go missing’ are men

● 87% of rough sleepers are men

● Men make up 95% of the prison population

● Men commit 86% of violent crimes

● Boys are performing less well than girls at all levels of education

● 34% of men would be embarrassed or ashamed to take time off work for mental health

7. Maintaining balance

The reality is that men gravitate towards things they are good at, and in turn tend to neglect the areas we’re not good at. If men are good at business and making money, they will spend most of their time doing that. If they are not good at relationships and communication, they will spend very little time inside those situations.

Life is a holistic thing and all the areas of our life need to be built up at the same time. What good is it to be awesome at business but have a marriage that’s falling apart? Maintaining balance is key to any holistic growth and development. We will teach you how to help bring men into balance inside their lives.

Signs of being out of balance…

● Focusing on strengths only

● Neglecting your weak areas of life

● Focusing on one area of your life to the detriment of the others

● Excessive time at the office

● Excessive time at the gym

● Excessive time having fun

● Excessive time at church, in books etc.

8. Lacking identity

A lot of men don’t know who they are apart from what they do. Their mindset and identity is too attached to the roles that they play. We must all establish ourselves in a true, unshakable identity, this comes through discovering who you really are.

Signs of lacking a sense of identity…

● Changing to the environment you are in

● Allowing your relationships to decide who you are

● Allowing your beliefs to be swayed back and forth

● Excessive attachment to your roles in life

● Excess attachment to your career and position

● You can say who you are without saying what you do

● Repeatedly divested by external events that are beyond your control

The man in the mirror, self-sabotage

Most of the pain that men are experiencing comes from self sabotaging and limiting beliefs. In this sense, we are our own worst enemy, and the real fight is getting ourselves to come into alignment with our higher nature.

Men can often think that their biggest challenges are outside them, but in reality the struggle is within. Once we begin to win the fight internally, it begins to manifest externality. We become what we believe ourselves to be. We can hardly ever rise above our own self-perceptions.

Signs of self-sabotage

● They have been dealing with the same problems repeatedly, year after year.

● Whenever they begin to rise in life, they quickly return to the state and condition they once were.

● They beat themselves up over past mistakes.

● They fail to encourage themselves to take the necessary actions for success. 

● They create an environment that sets them up for failure.

● Create too big of goals, and never focus on daily action steps.

● They have a shame-based identity that keeps them from raising. 

4. Morality, integrity, and honesty

These three things are the formation of our character. Men are facing an issue with alignment inside them. Alignment is when what we believe, say and do all line up.

As a Stoic life coach, we need to help them develop virtue, core values, and belief systems that will help them be successful inside of life. We will train you how to do that.

How character issues cause men to fail…

● Inside a marriage due to infidelity.

● Inside business due to shady practices.

● Not keeping your word with your children.

● Lust for more and are never satisfied

● Stepping on everyone to get to the top

● Trying to prove they are an Alpha male by being aggressive

● Being jealous and insecure about what others have

● Living in vanity and trying to get external validation to feel adequate 

● Using their anxiety and fear as an excuse for their reactions

Seneca said, “The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach, but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it”. This is the greatest reality men are facing. We all have the greatest blessings on the inside; the talent, skills, and resources are inside us. The problem is: They’ve been covered by lies, manipulation, limiting beliefs, and ultimately by our conditioning. These things need to be rediscovered. As a Stoic life coach, we need to come alongside them and help them to understand that they have everything they need to be successful inside their lives.

We did a poll and below are the 13 difficulties men are struggling with. These 13 struggles will give you clarity into what's going on in your client's life.

1. Demasculinization

This is something that is in full force inside today’s society. It also comes from lack of male mentors inside of men's lives, fatherless homes, neglectful fathers, and being taught strictly by women. Men learn how to become men by other men. I never really knew what manhood was until another man began to mentor me and speak into my life.

When all the men in your life are losers, It's really hard to begin to navigate manhood successfully. Many men are becoming father’s before they know what it means to be a man.

Here are some stats, so we can thoroughly understand the extent of this problem.

● An estimated 24.7 million children (33%) live absent their biological father.

● Of students in grades 1 through 12, 39 percent (17.7 million) live in homes absent their biological fathers.

● According to 72.2 % of the U.S. population, faithlessness is the most significant family or social problem facing America.

● Children from fatherless homes are 2 times more likely to drop out of school. 

2. Selfishness

Many men become consumed with their own self interests. This is where they only begin to focus on their own comfort, pleasure and overall well-being.

Here are some signs of selfishness.

● Their desires are the only thing that matters.

● They are going to get what they want, even if someone else gets hurt. 

● Displaying controlling and manipulating behavior.

● Doing favors only to gain what they want.

● Trying to get everyone around them to conform to their will.

● Using other people, then discarding them when they become empty and can no longer give.

● They try to center your life around them

8.) About blame; it's about responsibility.

When we dive into the depths of ‘why’ we get numerous reasons, but it usually comes down to conditioning, or how you were raised. This thoroughly gives us someone to blame, often our parents. Once we accept this modality of thinking, we’ll always find someone to blame because that’s how our brain has been wired. This leads to numerous excuses.

Stoic life coaching focuses on responsibility. While you may have experienced a traumatic event or bad childhood that developed limiting beliefs, it’s your responsibility to heal. We can’t control triggers, but we can control the awareness of triggers and develop a plan to respond to them in a more healthy manner.

Once all excuses and blame begins to stop, change becomes a possibility. 

9.) Positivity; focuses more on reality

Some life coaching would have us walking around like Ned Flanders, smiling all the time, putting on a happy face even when things are falling apart. We need to bust that mindset and come out of positivity and into reality. We don’t need false hopes and expectations in our life. That only leads to frustration, depression, or a funk.

Some dangers of positivity can include…

● Avoiding the negative things in life.

● Attempting to fake being happy.

● Refusing to look at the inevitable situations of life.

● Fake affirmations usually have the opposite effect.

● Sometimes we need to consider the worst-case scenario to be better prepared.

● Can often become detached from reality.

● Sets up the idea that we should be happy constantly.

10.) Lifetime scope of work; It’s about creating habits that produce success.

There are some modern therapeutic modalities out there where the goal is to keep you in the process for a lifetime. If you get well, they lose their money. This sets up a codependency; if you get well, you’ll stop paying. Coaching has an end of scope.

Stoic life coaching focuses on short-term behavior of life and deals with core issues. When we begin to change our behaviors and plant different seeds, change happens, mindsets change, and we get better results.

Seneca said, “don’t stumble on something behind you”. We need to focus on the present and current moment to help the client to expand and grow in their life. There’s nothing we can do to change the past. We can help to reframe the past and let go of the significance of the past, but we shouldn’t dwell on the past.

Signs of being stuck in the past…

● Always talking about past events.

● Thinking that your good days are behind you; the good ol’ days' syndrome.

● Hold on to hurts and pains.

● Refusing to forgive someone.

● Excessive anger towards people.

● Have regrets that cause you to suffer today.

6.) Focusing on diagnoses

We leave the diagnosis to the professionals and instead focus on objectives. We have to understand we’re all human, and we’re all in this human experience. Furthermore, we’re all subject to frailty. If we thoroughly accept the labels put on us, we can be stuck inside the problem, not being able to see a way out. We focus instead on objectives. What do you want your life to look like, what do you want to accomplish, and what areas are within your control? That’s the focus of Stoic life coaching.

What are the possible dangers of focusing on a diagnosis?

● Focus more on the problem than the treatment.

● Focus more on the label than the actual experience.

● Use the diagnosis as an excuse to opt out on life.

● Embrace all the stigma the diagnosis entails.

● Communicate this to the wrong people and experience a fall-out because of it. 

● Feeling like it damages your own credibility and self-worth.

● The label can become an identity.

● The label can give you permission to detrimental behaviors.

Inside common therapy, there is a mindset of sharing all your problems and burdens with another person. There might be times and occasions where this could be beneficial. But the process of continually rehashing old wounds doesn’t bring the healing that we are looking for. It only brings the pain to the surface to be re-lived. As a coach, we take careful steps to remain inside a solution-based approach.

If you become a dump site for people, you begin to carry all the weight and pressure. Boundaries get skewed, and their issues become your issues. This will always happen if we allow ourselves to be a dump site for other people’s garbage.

Signs of over burden bearing…

● Enjoy hearing about the problem.

● Get excited when you start hearing all the juicy details.

● Experience stress and anxiety from carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.

● Other people's problems become theirs.

● Becoming frustrated with your life when you have no reason to do so. 

● Consistently think you need to do more to help.

● Begin to take responsibility for others' actions.

● Begin to have excessive anxiety about what could take place in someone else's life.

4.) Being a validator of victimhood

We’re not there to nurse or rehearse the pain. Nursing the pain is providing the source for the pain to grow. Rehearsing the pain is being a sounding board for them to constantly rehearse the pain over and over again without being challenged.

We never remember events as they were, we only remember how they made us feel. As we experience the pain over and over, we attach more significance and feeling to the situation. This is how pain grows. Whatever we magnify gets bigger.

Victimhood looks like…

● Pointing the finger at someone else to evade responsibility.

● Failing to correlate decisions to consequences.

● Feeling like the world is out to get you.

● Don't feel like you have the power to change your problems.

● Feeling like your issues are unique and special in some way.

● Use substances to cope and withdraw from life issues.

● Make concerns much bigger than they are.

● Believe that you are always being targeted by someone.

We’re not the person who has all the answers, we’re there to help them to discover the answers. They have the answers and/or can discover the answers with a small amount of assistance. The relationship turns detrimental when we excessively become the go-to-source for everything. We often don't intentionally endeavor to become someone's life leader, but it can happen if the process is left unchecked. The best way to avoid this scenario is to find your fulfillment and self-worth apart from coaching or helping others.

Signs of dysfunctional guru-ism…

● Think they know everything.

● Have all the answers.

● Overly involved in other people's lives.

● Try to fix other people's problems.

● Find validation in fixing other people's messes.

● Use fear to motivate people to action.

● Make big decisions for other people.

● Organize other people's lives around theirs.

● Dominate the relationship encounters with excessive talking to avoid listening. ● They are not open to feedback or are unchangeable.