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Resilience Development in Action
Discover practical resilience strategies that transform lives. Join Steve Bisson, licensed mental health counselor, as he guides first responders, leaders, and trauma survivors through actionable insights for mental wellness and professional growth.
Each week, dive deep into real conversations about grief processing, trauma recovery, and leadership development. Whether you're a first responder facing daily challenges, a leader navigating high-pressure situations, or someone on their healing journey, this podcast delivers the tools and strategies you need to build lasting resilience.
With over 20 years of mental health counseling experience, Steve brings authentic, professional expertise to every episode, making complex mental health concepts accessible and applicable to real-world situations.
Featured topics include:
• Practical resilience building strategies
• First responder mental wellness
• Trauma recovery and healing
• Leadership development
• Grief processing
• Professional growth
• Mental health insights
• Help you on your healing journey
Each week, join our community towards better mental health and turn your challenges into opportunities for growth with Resilience Development in Action.
Resilience Development in Action
E.215 From Fear to Connection: How Men Heal Through Community
What happens when men are finally given permission to explore their full emotional range? In this eye-opening conversation that concludes episode 212 with Lee Povey, we delve into the hidden emotional landscapes that many men navigate alone, often without the tools or language to understand their experiences.
The discussion challenges fundamental misconceptions about emotions, particularly for men. "There is no negative emotion," Lee explains. "An emotion is just telling you about your experience." This perspective invites listeners to reconsider how we view feelings like anger, fear, or sadness – not as weaknesses to overcome, but as valuable information about our lived experiences.
We explore the fascinating paradox of modern masculinity: men are simultaneously criticized for expressing certain emotions while being told others are unacceptable. This creates an impossible situation where many men retreat behind emotional walls, protecting vulnerability with anger or detachment. The conversation delves into how evolutionary responses to perceived threats continue to shape male behavior in ways that no longer serve us in contemporary society.
The transformative power of men's groups emerges as a beacon of hope throughout our discussion. These spaces provide opportunities for men to be truly seen and understood, often for the first time. As Lee shares from his extensive experience facilitating these groups, "When men can come to a group and let go of that mask... it can be easier for them to connect." The simple recognition that one's struggles aren't unique can be profoundly healing.
Whether you're a man seeking better understanding of your emotional life, someone who loves a man struggling with connection, or simply curious about how emotional intelligence develops across genders, this conversation offers valuable insights. Connect with Lee at leepovey.com or find him on Instagram and LinkedIn to learn more about his work with men's groups and emotional intelligence.
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Welcome to Resilience Development in Action, where strength meets strategy and courage to help you move forward. Each week, your host, steve Bisson, a therapist with over two decades of experience in the first responder community, brings you powerful conversations about resilience, growth and healing through trauma and grief. Through authentic interviews, expert discussions and real-world experiences, we dive deep into the heart of human resilience. We explore crucial topics like trauma recovery, grief processing, stress management and emotional well-being. This is Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to Episode 215. If you haven't listened to episode 214, it's Behind the Badge and Beyond group, Great group of people. It's the work we're doing here in Massachusetts, so go listen to that. But episode 215 will be with Lee Povey again Great conversation from episode 212. It was so long and so good, we never stopped, so we're going to do a two-parter here. So here's the other episode.
Speaker 2:Get freeai. You heard me talk about it. I'm going to keep on talking about it because I love it. I've had about a year and a half 18 months practice with it and I still enjoy it and it saves me time and it saves me energy.
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Speaker 3:In some ways, younger people are being taught more about their emotions and their emotional experience, which is awesome, because it's I like to teach is just data, and once guys understand that, they're not afraid of their emotions anymore, like there's a. There's a lot of fear for guys about their emotions because it's this thing I've been told I shouldn't have, as you say, I mean even joy and anger. Don't be too happy as a bloke, like it's not attractive to be too happy, and you got all these tiktokers telling you you know exactly how you should be as a man and how stoic you should be and don't give away too much. That's for women and oh my god. And then for women it's don't be angry nothing worse than being angry. So women can't be assertive. Assertive is on the anger uh spectrum.
Speaker 3:Right, it's, that's not ladylike healthy use of anger is to be assertive, boundaries being broken. I need to be clear about this here. And we have these weird toxic positivity stuff about not feeling negative emotions. There is no negative emotion. An emotion is just telling you about your experience. That's it. And we might have negative experiences. Right, you might lose a loved one and feel sad, and that's a negative experience from the emotion, but I actually I'm glad I feel sad because the sadness tells me that person was important to me, so the sadness itself isn't negative. Losing the person might be negative. So I think we just really need to allow ourselves to have a much more human experience and then the trick to that is okay how do you learn from emotions and how do you choose how you want to be? Instead, and because we don't give guys that opportunity to learn, instead they become very reactive. So they react from anger without even realizing that we're reacting from anger. They react from sadness or fear without realizing. We have so many men who are afraid and making choices based on fear who have no idea that those choices are being made from fear. When we see men taking things away from others or punishing others, usually it's about fear of what's going to happen for them and we need you know, society needs people to. We mentioned at the beginning to have more empathy for each other. There is.
Speaker 3:Simon Sinek talks a lot about this and I love some of his work around this infinite game. Right, there's no winners and losers in life. It doesn't matter if you're a billionaire or you're a peasant. You get to the end of it, you die, that's it. And what matters is what are the moments of joy you have along the way and what are the connections you create, and, especially for men, what do you feel that you achieve?
Speaker 3:And money isn't an achievement. Money is just something right. It doesn't buy you happiness. It definitely doesn't buy you fulfillment. So one area of clients I have ste is I have middle-aged men that come to me because they're feeling unfulfilled. They're usually very successful. We're talking seven figures plus net worth and I'm not happy. Lee, the American dream told me that if I was wealthy and I had a hot wife and a couple of kids and a nice car and a nice house, that's it, I've done it, I'd be happy and I'm not happy. And it's because they're not having impact. That makes them proud of their legacy. And then we work on. Okay, what's the impact you want to have?
Speaker 2:And legacy is what? Um? I kind of remind people of the importance um other things that you mentioned. The other part that I work hard with in clients but also in my group. My first responders is when you think about emotions, stop thinking about the extreme of the emotions.
Speaker 2:When I'm angry with someone dinging my car, which happened recently, I'm angry. Did I go out and beat the living hell out of the guy or fuck up someone or hit my kid or whatever? No, but I got angry, but my first instinct was to say everyone okay. And then after that I'm like you didn't look where you're going. I'm pretty pissed at you. I didn't punch her, I didn't hurt her, but I did express how I felt. And I think the other part too that I talk about is the emotions don't have to be extreme. When I cry, if I did cry today, I won't cry, for at best you're going to cry 15 minutes. By the way, your parasympathetic nervous system will not let you have an emotion more than 15 minutes intensely. Your body just shuts down. So when I tell people about oh, I'll never stop crying, actually you will, uh, your body, and usually it doesn't even last that long.
Speaker 2:It's usually like a few seconds to a you know, a few minutes and I and well, I also talk about it with panic attacks, when people like I had a 30 minute panic attack and I'm like you may have felt that way, but it's just not genetically possible um, and learning to know that all emotions don't have to be extreme. You know, um, having the fear. Someone doesn't stop at a stop sign, they don't come close to my car, but I had that moment of fear and that was fear. It's okay to have those emotions. I think that what we do is we go to look at the extreme and that's, oh, that's the emotion. No, that's the extreme of the emotion. There's a large variability.
Speaker 2:You know, what I disagree with you on this point of view is could be based on anger, but I didn't punch anyone, I didn't disagree with someone in violence, I just disagreed and you talked about, you know, the, the, the length of the emotion and the extremes of emotions. And the length is, I agree, I've never had an emotion more than five minutes and also the expression of the emotion, like I can be happy, and I'm certainly happy today, even though I'm not smiling this exact moment but I also can't go 15 minutes. Hi, I might go to YouTube to see it. Hi, because it just feels weird. So I can't do that either. So I think that that's why, like when we talk about emotions and expressing it, especially with men, I think they've never been educated in that way and that's what I find individually and in group.
Speaker 2:When my first responder people, um, that it's okay to have those emotions one of my guys almost was ready to quit after he got angry at someone, had to walk away and expresses he was angry somewhere else, he was alone. He's like, oh my god, they probably caught that I'm gonna lose. Like, no, you had an emotion, they're not gonna fucking fire you for this shit. And you didn't do it in front of the person? Even better, you had an emotion. They're not going to fucking fire you for this shit. And you didn't do it in front of the person? Even better, and the situation was safe. At the end of the day, it's learning to be able to have those emotions. And sometimes, yeah, do I come home and I yell in a pillow. Sure, call me crazy, I don't give a crap. But hey, I didn't hurt anyone and it's okay to yell and I moved on from that emotion. But I don't know, that's kind of what I got from what you're saying.
Speaker 3:A lot of men, and especially young men today, have been told their anger is not welcome, which is super unhealthy, because it's OK to be angry about things, right, if somebody's pushing your boundary, somebody's breaking an agreement with you, somebody's let you down, it's OK to be angry about that. And because we tell them they can't be angry, then they have this fear of if I ever am angry, it's rage, and anger is mild irritation to rage, right, mild irritations. You know 0.5 on the scale and rage is 11 on the you know the 0 to 10 scale and most of the time we feel angry it's a two or three. We're not going to go kill someone over a two or three. It's just like you know what. I'm pissed off with what you did, and it's okay to express that, and then say how would we like things to be different next time? And because we discourage people from feeling anger and especially now, women tell men your anger makes me feel unsafe. Well then, how am I meant to communicate with you? Because it's okay for me to be angry about some of your behavior and we need to learn to be able to express that anger, as you say, without physicality, which most men can do. It's very few men that actually need to physically express their anger. But we've just kind of vilified anger to the point that we can't use it for what it should be used for, which is a communication tool.
Speaker 3:And then a lot of men are so scared of their fear and being fearful and what it means about them that they protect their fear with anger. So there's a lot of men walking around that are very afraid and they protect it with anger. You know, you see that in America with this, you know culture of like I've got 10 guns. It's like what are you really afraid of then? Why do you need this? And it's the shield around you to protect you from the things that you're afraid of.
Speaker 3:And in modern society it's so easy to be afraid because these threats get amplified that aren't even really there, because we read the news story that's a one in a million occurrence and we assume that that means that's going to happen to us. The world is safer right now than it's ever been in human history, yet people are just afraid, as they've always been, and that that fear doesn't match our actual human experience and it damages us. It damages parents with kids, because they don't let kids go and try things because they're worried that they're going to get hurt. And then these kids don't learn any resilience, they don't learn any self-control, they don't learn any grit, they don't learn where their limits are, which is all part of the human experience.
Speaker 2:And I think I go back to a little bit of our pre-interview questions and I'm going to keep it a little bit in general for purposes of keeping it on the subject. But it's the fear of others and what I mean by that is I grew up as a Quebecer who spoke French and I live with a lot of English people. I had the biggest paper route for an English paper in the Montreal area at one point and there was this fear of the French and they would call me as the French guy. A big insult was a frog, and then if you were English, the French would call you a squarehead and it was all based on fear of the others, because we never got to know each other and when people would talk to me like it was a weird sense of the English liked me because I spoke English and I could talk to the French, and the French liked me because I spoke English and I could talk to the French, and the French liked me because I spoke English and I could talk to the English. But as soon as I didn't agree with them, then I was the square hair of the frog, depending on who wanted to insult me, and it was because there was a fear of blank.
Speaker 2:And I tell people that fear is so much around the fear of others, the fear of the Europeans, fear of Middle East, the fear of politics, the fear of another gender, like if a woman's. But just for the record, in case anyone ever doubted if I'm a feminist, if a woman's more empowered than me, you know what it takes away from me Zero, zilch, nothing. I don't care, it's good. And this is way before I had daughters that I thought that way. And now I have two daughters, believe me, I think that way.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, I think that that fear of others is what also does a lot of that fuel of. Oh, I can't have fear. And I tell people, like, be curious and you were talking about curiosity earlier Learn how to be with, quote others. And so I think that you know we were. We joked around about the Commonwealth, but one of the things I particularly enjoy about the commons, whether it's Canada and Britain or Australia. We'll just pick on the liberals and conservatives for a second. They will deemously disagree about something. We'll just pick on the liberals and the conservatives for a second. They will deemously disagree about something, but they'll be at the pub, having a beer after, and those two things exist, and to me, that's where, once you get over the fear of others, it makes such a world of difference.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like so much of our human experience, there's a strong evolutionary tie for this, because way, way, way back in the day, you absolutely should be afraid of somebody that didn't look like you or sound like you, because the chances are they were going to come and steal your food or steal your women so that they could procreate with them. So that was a threat. Now we live in a world where those threats just don't really exist or are very, very minor. But because our brain hasn't caught up, you know, the evolution of our brain hasn't caught up with the lack of threat. These days we still see people that don't look like us, that don't speak like us, that don't sound like us, have different ideas to us as to be in the threat and to be in dangerous, when they're really really not. And this is why we see, when you take people from more rural areas and you put them into cities, they actually develop more empathy because they are around these people that are different from them and look different and sound different from them, and they realize that they have the same wants and the same dreams and the same hopes as them, and it doesn't matter what their religion is or whether they're religious or not. What matters is they want their kids to have a good life just as much as you want your kids to have a good life, right? They want to be healthy just the same as you want to be healthy. They want friends just the same as you want friends. They want fulfilling work just the same as you do.
Speaker 3:And once we are around people that are different from us and we realize that we're much, much closer than we think we are and that social media leads us to believe, then they become less threatening.
Speaker 3:And I see this all the time in my men's groups, where people share things and you know, there might be some initial reaction to it, and then they realize there's way more in common than they thought. And when we start with the premise of let's find what we've got in common rather than what we disagree on, we realize that we agree on 80% of stuff and the 20%, so what? We can have fun talking about it, but because we agree on the 80%, it's much easier for us to find this common ground that we can connect on. And it's just evolution, right, it's just biology makes us afraid of things that are not what we used to, and we just have to take a conscious step to get over that and go. This is not something to be afraid of, and that is literally the human experience. This is not something to be afraid of, and if we can keep saying that to ourselves, the experience is much better and we can have more empathy for each other.
Speaker 2:I go back to what you talked about cycling earlier or any individual sport. I think that it can go for group sports, but I want to stick on individual. Is a marathoner better than the 100-meter sprinter? Different skills, I don't know who's better or worse, but when you're able to see that, because you're in it, you're no longer vilifying, you might pick on each other, that's going to happen. That's fun, that's okay, but ultimately you see the difference and you're okay with that. Doing the velodrome. You talked about speed cycling. I call it speed cycling. It might be a French direct translation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's vitesse, vitesse, and then you go to right now being July, we're in Tour de France going on. Right now Is the Tour de France better than velodrome? Different skills it's okay, and you accept the differences a lot more when you see that the athletes have a different skill set, not better or worse different, and so people who are into sports should see that the medley versus the backstroke versus the whatever Again, to me, different skills doesn't mean one's better than the other, although Phelps kind of proved us all wrong. But in general it's talking about how these differences are so minor. It's just a different skill.
Speaker 2:And I think now, once people realize that I find that individual sports people really see that I don't work as many sports athletes as you do I'm 100% sure of that, but I do work with some. And they really see that I don't work as many sports athletes as you do I'm 100% sure of that, but I do work with some and they really see that as, yes, they'll pick on the marathon or, oh, you can't run fast or you're going to run slow on the long distance, but it's a joke, it's not meant to really go after the person. So I think that's really working on these differences and learning that this is one of my favorite staying people who've listened to my podcast will hear it again. And for those who know me individually, you know I say this all the time 95% of cops firefighters, emts, paramedics, military, male, female, whoever you want to call a group they just want to do their job, do their life and go home safely. That's all they care about. They don't care. There's 5% of them fucking douchebags, fucking assholes.
Speaker 3:Athletes in the NFL- which is exactly the same in every single walk of life. It might just be that, say, the police in America can cause more harm because they have guns and the douchebag in the office doesn't have a gun, but still there is a percentage of society 5% to 10% that is more sociopathic, that has less empathy and can cause harm and certain careers that harm is amplified by what they can do. You know people in boardrooms, of course you know. Let's talk about the. You know the, the drug companies that knew that their product was super addictive and hid it, or the cigarette companies that knew that their product caused cancer and hid it. It's exactly the same stuff, same level of sociopathy.
Speaker 3:I wanted to come back to what you said about sports, steve, because I I've lived this, so um, I used to train, um, when I was first doing the cycling coach, and I trained with a couple of my young athletes and we had a strength and conditioning coach who also trained triathletes complete different end of the scale to us, right, for those that don't know, track sprinters, some of the most powerful athletes on the planet. It's basically a weightlifter that rides a bike. None of our events last more than a minute and most of it is 30 seconds and under it's just bang as much power as you can produce, as quickly as you can. Triathletes three different sports, huge amount of endurance and you know, even the sprint triathlete lasts an hour and a half and it's it's an endurance event and they're little humans and they need to be light because that's a benefit in their event. And we're in the gym and these triathletes are like on their third training session or fourth training session of the day. They've got up at four o'clock in the morning, whatever, to go for a run, then they've gone to the pool, then did a bike race, then they're in a gym and typically track athletes might train twice a day.
Speaker 3:At most we might do a gym and track session. Typically it's once a day, maybe twice a day, and we would be in awe of them. Like, how the hell do you guys do it? Where do you get the energy from? Like, how do you do it? And then they're looking at us lifting four times as much weight as they are and they're going how the hell do you do that? Like, how do you stand under 400 pounds and squat? So what I discovered was there was usually just a a lot of, you know camaraderie, because we all know how hard we were trying. Like they'd come in the gym. They'd be like, oh you sprint as you're lazy. Then I'd watch our weight workout and they'd be like, holy crap, how are you guys doing that? Because their weight workout would be half the length of ours with a quarter of the volume. And you know it's a maintenance weight workout where we're smashing the hell out of each other. We're lying on the floor in between efforts, barely able to function.
Speaker 3:So when you get elite athletes together and they watch each other train, often there's this huge respect for what the other is capable of doing. I look at tour de france cyclists and I'm like I just don't know how they do that. I think that is the hardest thing that human beings are capable of doing 21 days of five hours plus a day of the most intense exercise possible. Yet those guys would come and watch me train in the velotrome and go how the hell do you go that fast? Like they're just like how are you doing it? Or they come to the gym and I'm like, right, let's do squats and let's do five sets of 10 on squats and like what is wrong with you? This is horrible. So I think high performers can always look at another high performer and have a lot of camaraderie and a lot of respect and I see that across the thing. You know, in high level business it's the same thing. We have respect for other people that are working at that level of intensity and I think that's you.
Speaker 2:You talk about the other part, about men's group or any type of group is to have respect. Yeah, yeah, to me, you know it's the saying if you haven't walked a mile in my shoes, don't judge me. And sometimes that's what I kind of remind people, even in group. It's like before you react to whatever the person said, remember, did you walk a mile in their shoes? And worst case scenario, if you don't know how to say anything, nice, you're a mile away, so who cares. But at the end of the day, I think that that's the other part too is I don't know what it is to live in south of the south of london, near the english channel. I don't know what that is. I've been there but I don't know what it is and I'm not going to pretend. You don't know what it is to grow up as a quebecer in canada, and you're not going to pretend.
Speaker 3:I'm glad, because that sounds way too cold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, that's the English for you. But anyway, there's a reason why I live in Southern California now, Steve.
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought it was just the environment. You're talking about the actual climate. Okay, all joking aside, it's sitting there and being curious, and someone who sits there and learns about curiosity how the hell do you do that is a curiosity statement. And to me, once you want to keep your humanity in general and that's what I bring into men's groups is to also talk about be able to like. How the hell did you do that? How do you like to me, working out? I'm not in great shape. I haven't worked out regularly in a while, but I'm like a three sets of 15 type of guy. I used to run half marathons. I was lazy, I just did halves. That's kind of what I like to do. But when I see someone like sitting there with like three, 50 and they go, all right, this is my warmup before my six, six and I'm like I can't even lift a 350.
Speaker 2:What are you talking about? So? And I think that, to me, once you see, that respect and it's not a I think that's the other part too is it's not a competition, it's different skill set and I think that's the other part too, that I kind of remind a whole lot of people and when you're in a group setting that's a lot easier to convey and be listened to than when you're in individual situations. But that's why I wanted to bring it back to the group stuff yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I think the world just needs a lot more love and a lot more empathy, and it's in us, it's it's factions, it's tribes that get in the way silos is a word that you use, and it's comfortable to be around people that are like us, it's comfortable to look for people that look like us. Yeah, when we broaden that and when we have these experiences that broaden that for us by, you know, living around a variety of people or joining a men's group with a bunch of different guys, we realize that we're not as far away as we thought we were. And something I love doing in men's groups is a guy will share something, and I'll pause them for a second. I'll say who else feels like this and the amount of times that the majority of the group will be like. Yeah, I feel like that too, and you see this relief on the face of the person who's sharing, who goes oh, I'm not alone, I'm not the freak who feels like this or is experiencing this. And then you see the connection with the other guys of like, looking around, going, I'm not alone either. And we all feel like this and I just think there's so much, there's so much power in getting people together and sharing those experiences and feeling like we want to be there and support each other. And, in my experience, men are incredibly loving when given the chance. And I think we spoke about it off air and I think it's time to touch on it now, which is how do you get men to these groups, how do we get men to step into these spaces? And, uh, you know what did it for me and it took time.
Speaker 3:I was a young man in uk. We're not known for going to therapy that. That wasn't what young men in uk did 30 years ago when I was in my 20s, and it took a bit of time and it took a lot of love from guys who just kept saying come, do this thing, it's gonna shock you, it's gonna surprise you. I went to a men's group. I sat down in circle with a bunch of other guys and they shared their stuff and by the end of them sharing, I'm like, oh, I gotta do this, I've got to be in, like that's it and that's what I find.
Speaker 3:You know, if we can get guys there to experience it, they experience something that they're not expecting. They experience a level of connection and camaraderie and especially being seen, and I get it like guys are scared of being seen. You know it's, it's, it's, there's some, there's some protection in not being seen. Because you judge yourself very harshly and you're wondered how worried, how others will judge you. But when you get seen in this space and these guys aren't judging you and telling you that you're a prick or that you're useless or that you're a failure or you should be better or you're ugly or whatever the internal voices that you tell yourself, when they just hear you and go I hear you, brother suddenly you know that this is something that you just want more and more of.
Speaker 3:And the men in my group very rarely leave, you know, once they've started, the group takes about four or five weeks and then they're like, oh god, this is it, I'm in, and they stay for years and years and years and um, I just want to provide opportunities for men to feel that love from other men.
Speaker 3:And I remember when I first got tugged at, this therapist said to me something along the lines of like, there's nothing like experiencing the love of other guys and it's different from the love for women. I was like, yeah, whatever, fucking queer, you know, that was my stupid childhood boy like teasing response. And then you know, I was there and I had that experience. I'm like, oh god, he's so right. He's so right, like what was? What was my weak ego trying to protect me from like? This is just such a wonderful experience to be seen by other men and to be emotionally held by other guys and I'm so glad that he was patient and he ignored my bullshit and he just kept inviting me until I was ready to step in, and when I did, I've never looked back.
Speaker 2:Well, I think this is a good step up point to talk about one more thing before we go, because you just talked about men's group. We talked about men's group. Sometimes women join my group. Sometimes they're comfortable, sometimes they're not. It ends up being mostly a men's group. This group off and on for seven years. I would say 80% of the time it's a men's group and, yes, sometimes women join. What's the value of doing men with men versus having women there?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I run both mixed groups and gender-oriented groups. I run mixed groups in a business setting, so I run executive groups and whoever's on the executive team, we're all in it together. And then I run men's groups and I think the advantage to men only groups is there's a place where they're not trying to show off to women and it's not quite the same in the executive groups because it's like, okay, we've got this aim here, that we're trying to do this for the business and there can still be some of that male bravado there. And also for women, right?
Speaker 3:Women behave differently around men and women when they're in groups with other women can let go of some of that mask or some of that expectation of how men want them to behave. So I think men get to let go of the how should I behave in front of women to still look attractive? And that's a very subconscious thing. It's not like they're consciously going I would like to be attractive. There's a subconscious thing there to it and we see that in gyms. Like guys in gyms it's just a male gyms as opposed to guys in gym where the women there. They behave differently and it's observable. So I think it's this opportunity for men to take the mask off.
Speaker 3:I've got a friend who runs a men's group called Men Without Masks and I think that's a really astute group name. Like you want men to come and take that mask off and to let go of trying to appeal to people, and especially women, because that's a very powerful motivator. It's a core genetic motivator. I want to procreate, right, I want to procreate. What does that mean? I'm driven to have sex. I'm driven to get the opposite sex to like me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think when men can come to a group and you know, even gay men coming to a group typically don't have that kind of response, right, they're not trying to show off to the men in the same way. But when men are trying to show off to women, it can get in the way of them connecting and it can get combative and then they're trying to be like the top dog in a group. And when they come to a group and it's a group of men, it's easier for them to let go of that kind of stuff. And then I still think there's a place for you should go to groups with women as well and have that experience where you've let the mask go and now what can you show up like in a mixed group? I just find there's a lot of power in coming to this group and having this special space where you get to really share without that mask that you might have outside.
Speaker 2:I've seen that too. You're right about the competition. It comes to mind thinking about AA and not putting down AA for the record, just mentioning it, and I think that's a great explanation for people to understand. I do see the value of both, but I think it takes a certain level of maturity and that may take time. So that's why sometimes I'm like maybe it's just a maturity thing and not calling men or women immature. That is not what I'm saying.
Speaker 3:I'm just saying it takes that maturity to get there, I'm going to, I'm going to call men immature and, um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call men immature. And there's lots of immature men. How dare you, I know. And I think society does a bad job of meeting them, because what we typically do is we call them toxic and we call their behaviors toxic. And when you call somebody toxic, you're saying you're broken, right, you're there's, you're bad. And what we really want to say is you are immature and you're displaying immature behaviors and we want to invite you into mature masculinity.
Speaker 3:You know, when I think about so much of what we see on the internet, it's immature masculinity that's glorified as healthy masculinity. It's boys acting out. You know, boyhood hero stuff, the hero's journey, instead of what does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to, like you right, have daughters and raise daughters to be strong, successful, loving women, and you've got to let go of all the boyhood bullshit to be able to do that. So I I think of part of the groups right rite of passage and we step aside. There were women in a young man's life where they did, you know, I'm trying to think what the Aborigines call it in Australia, like the something walk, where they go off and have to survive in nature for like a week or something and you have this rite of passage that signifies I'm leaving boyhood behind and becoming a man.
Speaker 3:And now we celebrate boyhood, we celebrate the collection of toys. I mean, literally, we have middle aged men who just want to outdo each other with the size of their yachts and their toys. It's like come on, guys, and it doesn't bring you any joy. Like Daniel Kahneman, fantastic psychologist, had done a ton of work on this and he sadly died fairly recently. It's a great loss and what he showed is the accumulation of things brings you no more joy. You get it, you get a moment of joy, forgetting it, and then your happiness level does not increase and in fact, sometimes it goes down. So what actually matters for human beings, men and women, is connection and a sense of fulfillment and a sense of purpose, especially for men, purpose. You know, women can drive a lot of purpose from from child care and from bringing up children, and men drive less purpose and I can still drive a lot of purpose from it, but they tend to drive less purpose from that and they need to do something to be of use and as society we've downvalued that do something to be of use right, and a society. We've downvalued that like men like using their hands or at least certain section of men like using their hands and we have downvalued trades people in america.
Speaker 3:It's like if you don't go to university, you're useless. I didn't go to university. Nobody ever asked me hey, lee, what's your education level? Did you go to university? Everybody I work with has a degree. Everybody I work with as an mpa, everybody I work with is incredibly smart. That's what they do.
Speaker 3:That wasn't my pathway. That wasn't what worked for me, because the education system didn't understand somebody like me. The message I got at school was you're incredibly smart and you're lazy not lazy, I just couldn't learn in their model, so they judged that as being lazy instead of oh, how do we help you learn? So, yeah, I think we we just need more kindness in the world and we need more empathy in the world and we need more opportunity to lovingly hold people accountable instead of, you know, calling them broke and calling them toxic and saying hey.
Speaker 3:Instead of calling them broke and calling them toxic and saying, hey, let's let go of that boyhood way of being and instead let's step into what's it like to be a man and to actually feel connection and fulfillment, rather than here's my big atti and here's my expensive scotch and here's me smoking a cigar. And there's place for that. Don't get me wrong, I race go-karts. There's a helmet back there. I like speed. Speed has been a huge part of my life, right, and I know that connection is really what makes me feel loved, and one of the best things about my go-kart racing is hanging out with the guys that I go-kart race like.
Speaker 2:That's just as important as the go-kart racing and the performance itself well, I think this is all good stuff and I agree with you. As my therapist taught me a long time ago, a couple of years ago, it's not it's not about going to pickleball and being the best pickleball champ.
Speaker 2:It's about connecting with other people they're men and women, usually men and having that good time going, going to play basketball, going to play any sport. It's about that camaraderie that makes you feel connected as a human being. And talking about empathy, I think connection is the next best thing and I want to mention that because you were talking about it and I think it's so important and that's why men's group work.
Speaker 3:But I want to finish on this. We're designed to be connected, Steve. That's who we are. It's in our genetic and psychological makeup.
Speaker 2:And that's why no one makes it out of here alive, and certainly no one makes it on their own, which is the other part that I kind of remind people. I'm going to do this on my own now, but, ok, continue thinking that way. But I want you to tell me a little bit more about your men's groups, what you do for you know and what, where people can reach you, cause I think that might be important for a whole lot of people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like to be simple, steve, so you can find me at Lee Povey everywhere leepoveycom leepovey on Instagram, linkedin and Facebook, and I'm most active on LinkedIn and Instagram. I want to be of service. I want to be of service to men. I want to keep creating bigger and bigger platforms for men to get together, to share, to support each other. I think there is a huge loneliness. I don't think there is a huge loneliness epidemic. Right now.
Speaker 3:Suicide rates are skyrocketing for middle-aged men where their family is broken up, they get divorced, their kids are off doing their own thing and they're lonely because men are worse at creating friends and maintaining friendships than women are, and that's one of the roles that my men's group, you know, fulfills is creating that connection and that friendship group. That's something that comes out of there and, um, yeah, just come and talk to me. It doesn't matter whether you're going to join my groups or not. If you're a man, you want some help, some advice, come and talk to me. If you're a founder, you're a business owner and you are getting in your own way, you're my ideal client, right? You've got to that point where your intelligence is holding the business back because you can do everything better than everybody else, but you need to scale. Come and chat to me. I'll help you with that. I am very mission driven. I want to amplify my impact by the impact I have on others. So you know, I look at these men's groups and if the guys become better men because of the men's group, they'll go and affect other men and their children and their partners in their community, and that is the way to make change happen.
Speaker 3:And one last little aside when myself and the endurance coach created the olympic development program for usa cycling, the first thing we put down was create better humans. The second thing we put down was create olympic champions. And to come back to your thing about sport, when I crashed and had to rebuild myself, a big shift for me was I have to enjoy the training, I have to enjoy the racing, and it can't just be about the winning. Before that was about the winning. Now, and I'm intensely competitive.
Speaker 3:You won't meet somebody more competitive for me, I promise you. However, now the only competition is with myself. I want to be the best version of myself, and that actually allows me to be much better connected to the other people that I do sport with, because they're not my rivals. Now the only person I'm competing with is me, and I can have those friendships. It doesn't matter whether they win or I win, as long as I feel like I'm pushing forwards and being a better version of myself. And guess what? I won more stuff after adopting that attitude than before it, when it was all about winning.
Speaker 2:I hope that one of my particular clients where I have that conversation with them all the time, the best competition in the world is with yourself. Yeah, and once you get there and show you what matters, yeah, I mean that's kind of what, and hopefully she or he is listening.
Speaker 1:But thank you so much.
Speaker 2:I'm happy that we're going to make two episodes out of this. I'm happy for everything you shared and it's nice to have. We never met until today and I am so happy we met and I sincerely hope we stay in contact because I truly, truly enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, me too.
Speaker 2:Well, that completes episode 215. Thank you so much, lee Povey, and go find him on his website, great guy, and I will see you in the next episode.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada.
