Emotional Intelligence and Resilience: It isn’t the death of your hunter skills; it is a recalibration and invitation for all of your gifts and abilities to come back online.
Are you a man who is consciously choosing to expand his emotional resilience and is making personal growth a priority?
If you find yourself saying “yes” to either aspect of that question, then you have landed here for a reason.
Many men are painfully aware that if they don’t do the emotional resilience and personal growth work NOW, they will have to face their shadows later in life. Unfortunately, waiting to do the work later can significantly risk their financial freedom, health, and family relationships. Beyond the risk of these impacts, this emotional expansion, strengthening, and healing is needed as a foundation for the most intense changes and shifts we are seeing today in our world.
In my conversations with and witnessing of men, I am seeing them feeling the extreme pressure of wanting financial freedom while simultaneously having the responsibilities of supporting their employees, managing the bottom line of their companies, and providing for their family. There is a real pressure that is created because of the severe conditioning that men have been exposed to in our cultures, such as the strong belief of having to “grind” or “hustle” as much as possible to create wealth, security, and a prosperous lifestyle. I have personally witnessed this in my travels around the world over the last four years, and the toll it is taking on men is palpable and powerful.
I am seeing it visibly rampant on all social platforms, in the dating world, and even on vacation. You, and most other men, don’t have the outlets or resources needed to navigate really difficult situations with relationships, emotions, and money which when coupled with the extreme pressure you are already feel, can be, at times, combustible.
Additionally, you have learned to lock up their emotions and cover up sensitivity, while the professional environment is now beginning to demand that you show more empathy and compassion in the workplace. Thus, you are caught between a rock and a hard place…do you honor what feels safe and what you’ve known your entire life by hiding your emotions and continue to put your head down and hustle, or do you do the work to tap into the empathy and compassion being called forth from you?
Even with this conundrum placed clearly before you, you may feel strongly that you cannot do the emotional work because all your energy is needed to create a lifestyle that is abundant and offers safety and security. The uncertainty of doing the emotional work feels that it risks everything that you have worked for in this life, so you may tend to avoid it altogether.
The results of that avoidance? You swing into “living life for the weekend,” focusing on “short-term sacrifice for a long-term payoff,” and living with the mentality of “work hard, play hard,” all of which creates unhealthy positivity in pretending that things are ok. [bm1] Consistently living without the harmony that emotional resilience, balance, and strength offers keeps you in a place of deprivation of self, and avoidance of joy and bliss.
However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Men are finding balance in the everyday, and are expanding their emotional resilience to more deeply support their efforts in the world. It’s not necessarily that the high achiever needs to die, it’s more that the high achiever gets to be revamped in order to reclaim and access ALL of its faculties and abilities to thrive and live joyfully.
It is possible for you to oscillate between all the elements of a healthy self. It is a powerful place of sovereignty and connection.