Episode Highlights

• What is men’s work?
• Where personal development falls short and what the missing piece is.
• The elephant in the room: why should we listen to two white guys talk about men’s problems?
• Why it’s important to look at trauma instead of suppressing it.
• How Traver got involved in men’s work.
• Traver’s story of hitting rock bottom.
• Two important questions he asked himself to change his situation.
• Why does it have to be a men’s only group?
• Why my wife insists I train with my Ninja group every Sunday.
• The history of why men are culturally encouraged to suppress their emotions.
• Why men need a healthy release for the pressure they are under.
• The gender difference between acceptable emotions to express.
• Knowing when to be vulnerable and when to be strong.
• Is it true that a ‘happy wife equals a happy life’?
• Why all healthy relationships need conflict.
• The value in doing hard things.

Useful Links

• Man UNcivilized
• The Man UNcivilized Book
• The UNcivilized Podcast with Traver Boehm
• How I burned out as a burnout coach (and then bounced back)
• Dear Hollywood…We Create Entertainment For a Living. We’re Not Curing Cancer.
• Dear Hollywood: We Don’t Want to “Go Back to Normal.” Normal Wasn’t Working.

About Guest

Traver Boehm is the founder of the UNcivilized Men’s Movement, the fastest growing men’s movement in the world. He is the author of Today I Rise, and Man UNcivilized as well as a two time TEDx speaker, men’s coach and podcaster.

Drawing upon an eclectic background ranging from professional bodyguarding and Mixed Martial Arts to a Master’s Degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine and meditation, Traver counsels men, women, and couples on how to better understand men’s mental health and relationship difficulties.

Although he’s not quite sure how to feel about the title, he has been dubbed, “The Man Whisperer” as he has the unique ability to speak to men in a way they can hear and understand.

With a passion for people and a unique lens through which to view the human experience, Traver is a highly sought after teacher in the fields of consciousness, intimacy, and personal development.

When not teaching workshops or radically shifting the way men experience their masculinity, Traver can be found obsessing over a single word in front of his laptop, chasing surf around the globe, and being awful at yoga.

Follow our guest on Instagram, Click to visit our guest’s website

Transcript

Zack Arnold: My guest today is Traver Boehm, who's the founder of the Uncivilized Men's Movement, which is the fastest growing men's movement in the world. He is the author of Today I Rise and Man Uncivilized as well as a two time TEDx speaker, a men's coach and a podcaster. Tra ver's approach challenges the stereotyped Marlboro Man that we have been conditioned to believe is, quote unquote, masculine. And instead has men unpack the suppressed emotions that are dictating their unhealthy behaviors and their destructive actions that by the way, negatively affect all of us whether you are a man or a woman. Now I get it. By now, if you're already thinking that a men's movement is the last thing that our world needs right now, I probably would have agreed with you 100%. I too, was very skeptical about two white guys talking about quote unquote men's work. But I'm always willing to entertain different viewpoints if there is a clear benefit to society at large. By the way, standing desks and shorter work hours are another idea that comes to mind. Now, it doesn't take long for Traver to convince me that the men's work that he is doing is vital to moving towards a more equitable and empathetic society for all genders, races and other. Now during the course of this conversation, I even realized that my Sunday ninja training group is kinda sorta actually my unofficial men's group, for which by the way, my wife will attest to the benefits. Now whether you self identify as a man or if you simply have men in your life, this episode will help you better understand what it means to be a man in today's society. And spoiler alert, it includes having real emotions and being able to express them honestly. All right, without further ado, my conversation with the founder of the Uncivilized Men's Movement Traver Boehm. To access the show notes for this episode with all of the bonus links and resources discussed today, as well as to subscribe, leave a review and more simply visit zackarnold.com/episode180. I am here today with Traver Boehm, who is the founder of the Uncivilized Men's Movement, which is the fastest growing men's movement in the world. And his intention every day is to help men and by the way, women understand men and a couple of really cool fun facts. He meditated for 28 days straight in complete isolation in pitch black darkness and a Guatemalan hut. Have a feeling there might be a story there. And you also lived in the frigid Utah wilderness for over a month with only a knife, a water bottle and a blanket. You sir sound like a reality show. So welcome. It's such a pleasure to have you here, Traver.

Traver Boehm: thank you for having me brother. Truly pleasure is mine.

Zack Arnold: Alright, so I'm probably going to start with what's a very common question so much so that you got tired of answering it and you created an entire audio file that says the answer to what the hell is men's work? What does that even mean?

Traver Boehm: It's a juicy questions I appreciate you asking. It's to me, there's a pathway. Right. There's a number of pathways for for humans. jujitsu is a pathway, fitness is a pathway. Christianity is a pathway. But specifically one that's designed for people who are male, is that actually identifying and diving into the characteristics, the patterns, the things that help the things that hold us back as men is it's an entire pathway to satisfaction, to success, to better relationship to joy, to peace, to all of the positive things that we want to get out of life, as humans, men have a specific pathway called men's work. And it's both in identification with what the hell has happened to us? What are the traumas? What are the big T traumas? What are the little T traumas? What is being male done to us in this current time, current culture? And then to what the hell do we want to do with all of this? What do we want to do with our ideas with our ability to to lead to build to penetrate to to bring something new into the world? So to me men's work is the marriage of both of those. What I see a lot in the self development world are the this call it that is just one side of it. It's just the primal it's like you're a dude, what do you want to build? You want to get up at 4am and workout? Do you want to take cold showers? Do you want to f**k it up? Are we allowed to swear by the way?

Zack Arnold: You can. We'll probably be bleeping most of it but I want you to be yourself. So don't worry about it.

Traver Boehm: You know, can you do that? It's are you a Gary Vee fan? Are you a Jocko fan? How much can you bench? How much can you deadlift? But we don't really get into the Who are you here in your chest? Can you feel? Are you open to feeling and this isn't a very popular conversation with a lot of men. Are you do you understand that perhaps the things that have happened to you and your past are still informing you and your behaviors, even though you don't identify as a victim or or whatever it whatever it is. So to me, that's actually what men's work is, it's really taking the totality of the human potential experience for a man and walking it day in, day out.

Zack Arnold: The part that I'm really interested in, obviously, based on the name of the program is the totality of realizing potential, I've essentially now made it my life's work to help people realize their potential, because I frankly, don't think anybody is. However, I want to identify what I think is a pretty giant elephant in the room with this conversation that I'm sure you've had to address more than once. We are two white males, talking about the needs of white male world, right like these, these white men in this white male world. This probably is not the best time in human history to be caring about our own needs, given everything that's going on in the world. Todd, how do you address the fact that you know, oh, woe is me, I'm I'm a white male right now. And the world is essentially been handed to me, or I've conquered it for hundreds, if not 1000s. of years. But woe is me and my feelings?

Traver Boehm: Sure, well, there, it's not a woe is me. I think that's the reframe that needs to happen. It's an acceptance of the reality, that white skin doesn't disclude me from a human experience. It doesn't disclude me from a unique experience, that is my actual life. And if we actually do want to get to the root of what the, quote, white male problem is, or the problems that we're enacting in the world, we have to not bypass the fact that even though I have white skin, and I have a shaved head, and I look like your classic, you know, Charlottesville dude, that I still had things that happen to me, I still am responsible for my reactions to the pain and suffering that has happened in my life, I don't care how privileged you are, you can be the prince, you could be a king, literally. But things have happened to you, you have wounds. And you can either ignore them and pretend that they don't exist, or say like, oh, gosh, I'm not allowed to feel that because I look a certain way, I sound a certain way. And the culture tells me that I'm not allowed to then experience certain hurts. Or we can just take that and throw it out the window and go, Okay, let's deal with reality. Right, we just had three or four days ago, a mass shooting by a white male, I want I'm really curious of that guy's past, I'm really curious of what he's lived through. And this is not a well Poor him, I hope the worst things happen to him. And I'm really curious as to what led him there. Culturally, it's not popular to look at the root. Culturally, we are obsessed with the branches. Now we've made the branches into far more important aspects of culture, than we have the actual roots. And we have this dysfunctional belief now that certain people aren't allowed to feel certain things, because of how they look or identify. And then, wow, we're real shocked when we get a reaction from those people that we don't like. So it's this, it's this mix, Zack, we have to say, Cool. As a white male, my life is very different than a lot of the planet. And if I want to take full responsibility for who I am, and how I act as a human, I have to identify beyond the cultural label of what I look like.

Zack Arnold: Well, all I can say, just as a quick follow up to that elephant in the room in which you alluded to that if you and I took just a picture. And you and I are holding tiki torches, people are gonna make a lot of assumptions about who we are as people. And to us, we're gonna think well, how dare you think those things based on a single picture or an image or skin color? And there's a huge swath of the global population that's like, Yeah, welcome to how we have felt for hundreds and hundreds of years. Right. Again, I think that that's, that's kind of that's part of the awakening is that even if somebody like I've never considered myself never even really seeing color or acknowledging that I'm different or better than anybody else, that's the way that I was raised. I've had sure No, friends of all races and all nationalities and I've never even seen those things. But I never noticed I didn't necessarily see the privilege, either. And then the entire world shifted on its head a couple of years ago. And I would guess that that's kind of part of this awakening experience is really understanding how do I fit into all of this both as a human but more importantly, specifically, as a man?

Traver Boehm: Definitely, you know, one of the big challenges we have, and I'll use the word cultural evolutionarily is that we separate the perpetrator from the perpetrated. And so we can say, Let's take whiteness out of the question, and go, How are we as men even allowed to acknowledge that things have happened to us, when we are the ones who are perpetrating most of the ills on the world? And we can take that view, and then we can get nowhere? One of the current iterations of a new paradigm is to say, as a man, I do have these things that happened to me And my reaction to them, if it's unconscious, if it's unskilled, will create more trauma for the world. And so I don't know how to. I was asked this on a feminist podcast a couple of months ago. How do we look at men with compassion as women who have been traumatized by men, as women who have been objectified, abused, subjugated, raped, murdered all the things? And I was honest, I said, I don't know. I don't know how I asked someone who's lived with the trauma from men, to forgive men, or even if that's the right thing to say, except that that's probably a reaction from that man being traumatized. Here's the juice. Most men who have been traumatized, have been traumatized by other men too, or a vast majority of them. So we have this conundrum where we're kind of like eyes An eye for an eye, is it total, like bypass the acceptance? Or is it somewhere in the middle, where we say, Okay, we have to change our view of responsibility. And we have to change our view of compassion. And those two as men, we and I say, That guy put the all the pressure or the onus on us, Hey, I'm a dude, I'm going to make sure that other dudes aren't out there doing bad in the world. And and the first way I'm going to do that is to make sure that I'm not doing bad stuff in the world, which means I gotta go to therapy. I gotta get in a men's group, I got to get in front of other men who are like, hey, guess what? I think you're full of I think you're conning the whole world. And you're actually doing stuff that we don't know behind our back, and we're going to call you for it. We're not going to punish you. But we're going to love you so much, we're going to say that behavior is not acceptable to us, and we want it to not be acceptable to you anymore. Now, that's the shift. Right? It's like equal parts love equal parts responsibility, but it's man to man. That's where the big change is going to come.

Zack Arnold: You said two very, very scary words. For people that are supposed to be men, you use the word love, and therapy. Men are not supposed to have feelings, right? We're, we're the rocks were the strong ones. Like that's kind of the the old view of it. And I want to get a very clear understanding of where you come from, and kind of the origin story to really understand where all this is coming from. But I think to give a little bit more background just to us specifically, but also to my listeners, I was brought up in a household, just at least the immediate household where it wasn't about masculine or feminine, you're the strong one. And you've got to be the provider, like I was brought up in such a wonderful way. And that was like, you just be you as a person. And as long as you're kind of people. That's it, like, just be kind to everyone and be nice and provide value to others. That was great, right. But then an extended versions of my family, or specifically the world that I lived in, which was a very, very, you know, rural area, where it was all about the boroughs that are going to be on the football team and in the weight room and the wrestling team. And I was like super sensitive and highly creative. So I was essentially a punching bag for most of my, my young life. Right? Sure. So I have a lot of a lot of triggers and backgrounds to this idea of like the alpha male and the bro hams in the weight room. And, you know, ironically, when people look at me make a judgement before I talk, I look like the bro him in the weight room because I work out and I've got the shaved head and everything else just because I have no hair. Yeah, but I see it from both sides where people see me as like that super crazy, strong, alpha male. But I feel like I'm on the polar opposite end of the spectrum. So I'm curious what I've learned through years and years of personal development, or as you call it, self development. Everybody that does self development and turns that not only into their own personal journey, but into a job or a podcast or a book or whatever. They have an origin story. And there's a reason for it. There's a moment that came up where they went from this is who I was, this thing happened now I'm going in a different direction. What is your moment or your origin story that brought you to all of this so we can come back to this idea of men are not allowed to have feelings?

Traver Boehm: Sure, sure. Sure. There was a period of my life. This was probably seven years ago now. We're in very short succession. I was married and my ex wife was pregnant. And we lost that pregnancy. And in very short order, she took that as a sign that she needed to leave the marriage. And she did. And then within 24 hours, I had built a massive gym in Santa Barbara. My business partnership also began to end completely independent of the other event. So it was your cliche, and I was about to turn I think 39 So it's your cliche midlife. Welcome to rock bottom. Welcome to rock bottom in a way that's so big and so powerful and so overwhelming that you can't I can't ignore it, I cannot lift it, I cannot drink it. I cannot smoke it. I cannot get, I can't out, build another business. There's no like it's okay. I actually have to surrender to the fact that I'm going through a process that's bigger than I am. Things are getting cleared out that shouldn't be there are no longer serving me is probably a better way to put it. And guess what, you're now going to have to create a relationship with pain. My entire life up to that point I was a standard American do just like you was like pain. That's there's a pill for that. That's that that means something bad's happening. That means that means I need to pretend that it's not happening, or I need to rise above it and suddenly say, this is the best thing that ever happened to me. That rock bottom year, Zack was my initiation into a different level of consciousness. Because it also required me to look back and take responsibility for the fact that oh, this is the situation that I got myself into, by ignoring a lot of really big red flags. And I did so by getting high every day, even though I ran a gym. I did so by drinking four or five nights a week. I wasn't a drinker, like I wasn't a drunk. But what do you know, two, three drinks every night, six pack on the weekend. No other social life that didn't revolve around alcohol. Like I was unconscious. And so this was really my coming to consciousness, let's call it and it started the path of me beginning to ask and have to answer two questions. Who the hell am I? And who the hell am I as a man. That's when all of this started to come into place. And I found teachers, I found guides, I found books, I found workshops, I found all of the things that actually spoke to me at a depth beyond cool. This weekend, we're going to teach you how to Olympic lift. This weekend, we're going to teach you how to swing a kettlebell and teach other people how to swing the kettlebell. This weekend, we're going to meditate for 12 hours a day. But we're going to do it so that we can disconnect from what's really happening in our lives, as opposed to dive into what's really happening in our lives. And so that year of health was really the origin story of everything that I've built sense, and the way that I live and the way that I exist, the way that I teach what I teach, and I'm still in it, right? Like, I still go to therapy. I still go to workshops. I'm in men's groups now where I'm like, Hey, guys, I'm struggling. And it may be a different flavor of struggle. I'm not sitting here being like, my wife just left, we just had a miscarriage. And I've gotten my business partnerships over. But it's, Hey, I want to get a hold on these little struggles. So that they don't come to you guys two years from now after saying, Hey, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I just got my secretary pregnant, I have a coke problem. And I'm burning down my house this weekend. Like, which is most men's path? If they're not on the path? Does that make sense?

Zack Arnold: It absolutely makes sense. And without going too deep into any any details, because I need to be careful this but I have somebody very close in my family that it's almost like you just wrote their recent story where it was just like, everything's great. Everything's great pillar of their community. And you're like, what's been going on for the last year or two, like, so I won't go into the details. But sure, I can very much resonate with, with this on a personal perspective, knowing somebody else that kind of went down that that path without the support, or the men's group or any of those other things. So I guess the next thing to better understand is for somebody that's heard you say men's group several times, why can't it just be a group? Why does it have to be a men's group? Why do we need to differentiate?

Traver Boehm: You and I are unique. I think women are unique in the same way, that there's something that happens when the group, a group of a circle of men gets together. Our nervous systems connect in a way that's different than if there's one single woman in the room. We look similar. We smell similar. There's testosterone in the air, and there's a familiarity, Zack that I don't know how to quantify. Like, I can't tell you biochemically what happens. But I can tell you after running circles for years now, I think it is the familiarity of hey, this guy's like me. This guy's this guy knows who I am on a very visceral core level. And that allows for a vulnerability and a shared reality. That's the best way to put it. Here's an example. When I first started running men's circles, I would say Okay, everybody here Raise your hand if you've ever had an issue with alcohol, any kind of issue with alcohol at all. Right? And it was like everyone would kind of look around. And then the first hand would go up. And then what do you know? Like 90% of the hand? I'm like any issue, okay. 100% of the hands go up. All right, how about with drugs? And it's the same. Now there's a little more shame perhaps, and a little bit of like, a little more hiding, firsthand goes up, boom, most of the hands if not all the hands go up. Here's the biggie, where I know we're gonna have some some challenge. Okay, how many of you have had an issue with porn at any point in your life? And it's like, immediately the eyes go down, like, mumbling to themselves. One panky goes up of one dude. And then every damn hand I'm like, all of you put your damn hands up. And then here's the kicker question. How many of you thought you were going to be the only one in the room? To answer your question, to answer yes to any of these questions, and every hand goes up. So there's this dysfunctional view that gets popped. The dysfunctional view is, I'm the only one going through this experience. As a dude, I'm the single guy keeping Pornhub alive. I'm the single guy keeping Anheuser Busch in business, and every Colorado weed store in business, somehow we believe that. But then here's what happens. The magic sack. When you look around the room and go, Oh, you too. You too. You too. You too. You too. And the vast majority of these meetings, let's say are heteronormative most of the guys are heterosexual. So there is zero competition. For the one woman in the room, that you're like, hey, I don't want her to know. It's different if a woman knows because I may just possibly want to be with her. There's no romance flying around. This is just, it's like back to I don't know what your teenage years were. But from like, 12 to 14, I had a little skateboard gang. And it was like we could talk about anything. We were all in like, people could cry, people got hurt. We took care of each other. And then 1516 When women came into picture, suddenly everything changed. Because my buddy John is with Susan, and I really want to be with Susan. So John's now my competition. Now I have to keep things from Janelle, I keep things to myself. Now I'm quote, man, I'm not allowed to experience these really normal feelings. So I'll make sure that my life on the surface is perfect, or great, just like you're the person you were talking about. Right? When I when I hit the hit my downfall. My business was making more money than I ever had before. I was in the best shape of my life. I just started writing publicly, people were in shock. When I said, Hey, by the way, like I get high every day, and I know you guys don't know that. Yeah, I drink a ton. And I'm looking at more porn than they could could kill a horse. My marriage is a disaster. We are constantly fighting like you too. You're like the perfect cup I know. And so I created this outward persona that didn't allow for the truth of what the inward experience was. And so to answer your question, when it becomes a roomful of men, we get to go, Hey, we don't give a good who drove here in a Porsche, and who had to walk here and sandals, what's going on in the inside? And there's this collective safety that's created? Because we're all men.

Zack Arnold: That is an incredibly well articulated answer, and really helped me better understand this, and I hope it helped everybody else better understand it. And I want to follow that up, because you just made me realize something that I didn't realize about my own life, which is really interesting. Since the beginning of 2018, I had set the stupidly audacious goal of I'm going to become an American Ninja Warrior. Massive DadBod had dealt with huge amounts of burnout and depression, like suicidal depression, had no business you've been thinking about this no experience in parkour gymnastics or anything. It's like, yeah, right, whatever. But I'm like, No, when I decide I'm going to do something, I just do it. Right. And within about six months through networking and various relationships, I found my way into Tony Horton's backyard, who is the creator of the p90x programs, anybody in fitness knows the name Tony Horton. And I've worked out with him just about every Sunday for the last four years. What I didn't realize until just now is that working out with Tony Horton is my men's group. Because there's usually anywhere between three to five to 10 of us every once in a while there's a woman that shows up and it's a great experience one of the woman's there but we always talk about how man it's really different here today what's different bones cuz a woman can we just it feels different, where everybody kind of has to behave a slightly different way. We're, you know, more courteous, like, there's, you know, there's a lot of it's just the guys like getting out all the, you know, the nastiness and all it's just, you know, it's the kind of thing where if there were ever like video cameras, we probably all get ourselves in trouble, right? Sure, because it's just getting it out of our seats. stems but in between the exercises which are all brutal, because it's a four hour workout combination, pushing exercises pulling exercises. So imagine p90x on steroids for four hours. But in between exercises, it's just talking about life. And there's this thing happening at work. And it just never occurred to me until now. This is a men's group moron. Like, what's a men's group? Oh, I've been in one for four years. And it's now at a point where my wife has seen such benefit from me going, that she said to me last weekend, a couple of weekends ago, at least as far as when we're recording this. It was right before Mother's Day, she's like, why aren't you going to workout on Sunday? I'm like, It's Mother's Day. She's like, No, you should go to the workout. No, of course, we're gonna get you braces, like, you should go to the workout, right? Because she sees the difference that it makes. And it had never really occurred to me until now that that's what it was. But it is a much safer space to just kind of let a lot of that stuff out of your system. And you're like, a lot of the people that come or sudo or either major celebrity status, like I've met some pretty big A listers there. And they're just talking about all their issues and problems. I'm like, we got all the same problems, right? So I found that that it's tremendously beneficial, obviously, for a push and pull strength and biceps show, but it's so much more important for mental health. So I want to talk more about this fear or the stigma that as a man, you're not supposed to focus on mental health, you just swallow your feelings. You're the provider, you're the one that shows up, you're the rock sure can't have these feelings and the idea of going to therapy like come on, like no way. So let's talk a little bit more about that.

Traver Boehm: Sure. We have culturally, we're still not at a point where we understand what role feelings play in the male animal. Right in our probably our dads and grandfathers are, were probably about the same age, it was a very different idea of what was needed from those men. My dad was around the Vietnam era, the grandfather was World War Two. We couldn't send those men into the situations that we sent them in, and have them come back into the situations that they came back in, and say, by the way, we need you to have full access and full expression to your entire emotional library. We need that to be more important than your ability to compartmentalize and get things done. Right. My grandfather was second wave of the Normandy. They didn't stop the boats, like a half a mile out and be like, John, how you feeling? Okay, John, scared John's gonna leave the boat. Stewart, you look a little bit upset. How are you? You're a little emotional, cool, step out of this. Right. They couldn't do it. We weren't there. In any point of the culture, any point of society, I would say similar to Vietnam, although it was swinging out. Now unfortunately, we've swung the pendulum all the way over to the other side. And we've said guys, you need to be ruled entirely by your emotions. If you're not crying, if you're not triggered, and in a safe space and, and micro, all the things that you're a toxic male. Oh, by the way, California is now on fire. We need 10,000 of you to forget everything that we just told you and go fight these fires and die and watch your buddies get burned and have all this trauma and then come home like okay, okay, okay, now we need you to not be micro aggro at like any anybody's anything. So we have this weird. Like, we haven't landed somewhere that people understand yet, Zack, with the idea of emotion. And so what I'm trying to bring or what I am bringing into the culture is the yes end of yes, you need to there are days when you need to get your ass up and you need to get to work. You need to take your feelings you need to put them on the shelf, I need to accomplish the task. And there's going to be a lot of times when you actually have to take those feelings off the shelf. Look at them, examine them, feel them with the help of someone who this is what they do all day. They navigate you they prefer that you're there you go to Tony Horton's house, not because he's Tony Horton, because he's a pro. Because he's teaching you is guiding you. Right? There's a reason why you're getting that from that person. So we need to look at Trauma man, we need to look at saying hey, men who are traumatized, traumatized people in a really brutal way. Women who are traumatized often just re traumatize themselves. They go inward, we go outward, right? There's a reason why there's not a lot of school shooters who are women, or a lot of mass shooters are women. There's a reason why a lot of women don't beat the shit out of their husbands when they get upset, but they get depressed. They become more internal. So for us, guys, we need to realize that whatever we suppress, it's going to come out sideways. I don't care who you are, it's going to come out sideways. And what we deny will eventually be exponentiated feeling wise. And so we can say this is like hey, we're logical creatures, right? Like we get it. I can look at a spreadsheet To understand spreadsheets, if we say Ha, if I pretend that this line doesn't exist, this line is going to grow, it's probably going to grow in a way that's going to create even more trauma for somebody else. So this is why I say to men, it is now your responsibility to deal with alchemize work through accept and take ownership, for how the things that have happened to you, the grief that you hold the pain that you hold the trauma that you've received the wounds of your life, you have to take responsibility for the fact that they exist, and that you're probably acting out of alignment, or out of character, or in ways that you don't like or ways that are hurting other people. And just take that whole sentence and stop right there. And go, okay, if I'm responsible for my actions, I also have to be responsible for what's coming out of the source of them. And that's new. So if we deny men, the access to therapy culturally, you can't go to therapy, what are you worse? That sentence, right? There is why if we're, again, if we're logical creatures, which I think we are, let's just take a look at some statistics. Let's look at depression rates in men suicide rates, who's who's winning those murder rates, domestic violence rates, addiction rates, that, look, we're winning all of those. And I don't mean in a good way. So we look at the statistics, we say this is the reaction to how we're acting and how we're living. So we can say, Wow, we can't do that anymore. No more suicide, no more murder, no more sexual violence, no more domestic violence? Well, how are we going to do that we can't go to therapy, or you're worse? Well, I see a little bit of a conundrum, then what I'd rather do is shift the culture that says, Hey, man, that thing happened to you. And I'm really sorry. And now you need to take responsibility for the fact that it's making you do things that you don't want to do. So instead of trying to white knuckle this, like, Okay, I'm just never ever going to look at porn again. Go to therapy, or go to a men's group of therapy's too scary. hire a coach, hire someone where you can speak. And here's a key word, the truth, not the truth in your head, which is like, ah, you know, my upbringing wasn't really that bad. I never got hit with a closed fist. But the truth in your heart and the truth in your stomach is like God, it was terrifying to live in my house. It was terrifying. Whenever my dad came home, and I heard those keys at the counter. It was it was I felt hopeless. I felt helpless. I felt like a weakling. I felt impotent. I wanted to save I want to whatever, like that's the truth. When men speak the truth, and under other men see them and recognize them and hear them. Then the healing happens, then what do you know, they're not looking at porn. They're not drinking five nights a week. They're not working themselves to death. They're not thinking about killing themselves. They're in. I'm not trying to take away from the power of capital T trauma. But so many men, Zack, I've been in this business now long enough to hear the stories that go, I have no idea how you're even literally me going. I have no idea how you're even functioning as a human. Given what you've just told me that you witnessed and live through. And you, you started the sentence by saying there wasn't that bad. And then talk about, you know, your career in law enforcement where you had to pull dead kids out of cars, or you were walking in and seeing, like, just the horror. And this is law. This is first responders. This is soldiers. And this is just normal dudes who grew up in really, really awful environments, you're like, Well, you know, someone else had it worse. Or well, like, I'm white. So I mean, a lot of people have it worse or I'm a dude, a lot of people have it worse. Let me go okay. But look at your behavior. Your behavior is the indicator of the truth. Not your your verbal, your words that are dismissing it. Makes sense?

Zack Arnold: Absolutely makes sense. And what it brings up is something that I've been reading about quite a bit lately, and also something we talk about a lot. In our Sunday men's group, as I'm going, I'm going to think of it. But it's this idea that there's always going to be pressure, the pressure is always going to be there and is always going to build up. The pressure comes out in some way. So are you going to find a healthy release valve or an unhealthy release valve? Right? So one of the things that Tony always says he says it in his videos, he says it on Sunday, all the time, is that you can be angry, right? I want you to find that anger and be angry. You're never angry at your wife. You're never angry at your puppy. You're not angry at your kids. Get angry with these pushups get angry with this rope or this pegboard. Like this is the place to get rid of it. And that's one of the reasons that I go even on weeks where I feel like crap, actually, the week that I feel like crap or when I forced myself to go more, because it used to be well, I don't feel so great about the workouts or I ate crap or I drank last night. It's like the worst I feel the more I push myself to go because the chasm between how I feel at 9am and 1pm. I'm two different people, which is a And my wife on Mother's Day, no, really, you should go to your workout wink wink, nudge nudge, right, he's here's your bag, because that safety valve has to be released in some way, shape or form. And I've just found a way to release it in a healthy way. Even though every Monday morning, I feel like I've been hit by a truck. But I feel like a different person where I've hit the reset button, so to speak. But in some of the things that I've read, for example, about like some, like a list of elite level athletes, you always see that like, oh, this person, you know, gets making 10s of millions of dollars, they've got everything. And then all of a sudden, they're sleeping around, or they're a drunk, and people are like, Why would you ruin all this? Why would you take all these things that you've been given this gift and this money in the celebrity? Why would you be so dumb as to destroy it? But that's somebody that's thinking logically about something that's very emotional. And to me, it makes sense. And like, Oh, I see why, like Tiger Woods totally makes sense. Why he did what he did, I don't condone any of the behavior, but logically and like, yeah, I can understand why he would have behaved the way he did years ago, because of the immense amount of pressure he was under. So I'm assuming that this kind of pressure release valve is something that you guys talk about all the time.

Traver Boehm: All the time. I just did a workshop three weeks ago in Austin. And one of the guys God bless him said, so you said this to me in response to what I'd say. So you said this is a safe place for us to fall apart? How do we do that? And I thought, how many of us like right now you I see over your shoulder, it says, Dad, if you were like, you know, in the house, this is a great place for me just to fall apart all over the place. Probably not the best thing for a parent to do, or to do it day after day, week after week. But if the pressure is building so much, and you're just trying to if we say in quotes, keep it all together. At some point, it's going to crack, right? Anytime there's a crack in a foundation, which is what I view being human, you don't get to be 30. Without some cracks in the foundation, some stuff has happened. Susie Johnson broke up with you in the third grade, guess what? You there's a tiny little crack in your foundation, that will either come out through pressure, which is Oh, you just had your second kid. Oh, you just got a $10 million sponsorship from Nike. And now your pictures in Times Square will come out from pressure or from time? Oh, you've been married for 25 years? Oh, you've been at this job for 30 years? Oh, you've been in this position for 15 years, the foundation crumbles. Or like you said guys need a way to blow off that steam. We need to really take the lid off of it. Are there ticking time bombs? I said the same thing with Tiger Woods like anyone who said, How could he help us? Imagine his life? Imagine living that way under that much scrutiny? What did he do? He had a secret life? I guess I'm not condoning it either brother. But it makes perfect sense. If the cameras are on you all day, every moment of every day, wouldn't you want something that's a little bit yours. Now you can do that consciously, and say, Hey, I need to have a day a week where like, no one gets access to me. Or you do it unconsciously. And say Ha, I'm gonna have a couple of fairs with the nanny, no one's gonna know about it. It has to by nature be secret. So when I talk to so many men, I ask them, What are you denying? Or what are you suppressing? And be honest? How is it coming out in your life in ways that you would rather it not? And it's like that level of honesty of that level of an honest conversation is how we actually deal with what's real sack. We deal with what's real. We can't take a group of men and say, okay, because you anatomically have different genitalia. You don't feel things. Okay, we're good here. But that's not a smart move as a culture. It just doesn't work. Right? Because you have broader shoulders because you have testosterone, it doesn't work. Well, we then also don't get to say, Hey, by the way, we just we as a culture have decided that men are just big hairy women. And we're going to ask you to act in the exact same way. Okay, we cool here. Okay, good. Good luck with that, too. It doesn't work. So we need the yes end of the reality of we're different. We're wired different. Testosterone does different things to our bodies, our minds and our our lives. And we're humans. We need to have emotional intelligence. We need to have skill. It's another big word with guys. Like, I if I ask a lot of guys, how do you feel? They go? I don't know. No one's ever asked me. Like cool. Can you can you can you feel into your body like yeah, I feel my arms. Okay, awesome. Do you workout this morning? Yeah, yeah, okay.

Zack Arnold: I feel my pecs bro.

Traver Boehm: Do you feel sadness? No. Okay. Do you feel frustration? Do you feel grief? Do you feel? You feel anger? Right like, oh, yeah, I feel anger. I feel anger. Okay, yeah. So they need the skill and the attunement to actually realize what's happening to them humanly so that they can then work with it. We've given men acceptance, you're allowed to be angry. And we've given women the acceptance, you're allowed to be sad. But oftentimes when we say if a woman's angry, like, oh, we call her name, I call you're crazy, right? crazy, absolutely crazy. And a dude who's sad, oh, you're a worse your weekly. So that's where we see a lot of the challenges culturally. I feel like I'm rambling.

Zack Arnold: No, you're not rambling. You know, I tell you, if you're rambling, I think this is all great. And I think there's a really important word that I'm my guess is you brought it up before, but I want to make sure that it's very clear, because I think that least what I've learned in my upbringing, again, in a very alpha male type of community and culture, not household, I wanted to differentiate those because that was not my household, but very much community of alpha males. And it's exactly like you said, Men don't have feelings, and they're strong, and they're on the football team, etc, etc. Is that when you're thinking about antonyms strength, the antonym to strength is not necessarily just weakness. It's also vulnerability. And what I've come to realize and believe, is that one of my greatest strengths, as both a human and a man is the fact that I'm intensely insanely vulnerable, for sure. But that is terrifying. When you realize that

Traver Boehm: 1,000% Your sensitivity, I will even project on to you as someone you said, I'm an artist. I bet your sensitivity is a strength. And wouldn't it be in certain circumstances, hey, if we needed you if we were out in the woods, and someone was trying to kill us, and we're like, Hey, man, who's got the best ears, eyes and feelings, Zack, okay, you're the strong one. But we don't look at that culturally. I'm a jujitsu guy. It was like vulnerability. I'm gonna get choked. That no point was a coach ever, like, hey, you need to cultivate vulnerability, when someone's mounted on top of you and sliding their hands around your neck. Like, No, you need to get out of it. But we have to learn that we're not always under attack. We're not always being invaded, when I'm sitting across from my partner at dinner, and she says, Hey, your dad's sick. How are you feeling about that? She's not wrapping her hands around my throat. And it would behoove me and behoove her and behoove our relationship, if I was actually real about that. Now, it also puts a little bit of onus on her. Because if I say, Wow, I'm really sad. And she's like, Oh, well, you're not a real man. Look at you feeling sad about that. Then I shut down and I learn that being open and honest with her is a bad thing. And what's happened to so many of us we are, we're like this one and done creature. Like one time, we were sensitive in the fourth grade, and we got punched in the arm and call the West for it. And so in the fourth grade, we're like, cool, I get it. I will never ever, ever, ever, ever again show any kind of vulnerability or weakness. And now at 42, when you're when your wife's asking you, hey, how do you feel? You're like, oh, yeah, I remember what happened in fourth grade. Like, I'm fine. She's like, okay, you don't seem fine. No, but I'm fine. And so we have to learn to mature as well and recognize that we can take care of ourselves, and we're going to be okay. And this isn't before we even dive into the creation of trust in a relationship requires vulnerability. Like, you know, as a dude, if you have a buddy that's going through a hard time, and you can see it, it's written all over him. It's written, it's like, his patterns is changing, like, Hey, man, how are you? Like, I'm fine. Come on. I don't I don't need to be a psychologist here to recognize that you're not being truthful with me. So if he if that's the case, and how do you have trust, if every time you ask someone, I'm fine? I'm fine. Hey, man, it looks like you're bankrupt. Nope, I'm rich. I'm rich. Like, wow, we don't create trust that way. And then what do we not get? And I know, this is a terrifying word for men. We don't get intimacy. And we are craving and starving for realness with each other, with the world, with our women, with our children, with our male partner, don't care, don't care how you design your relationship. We're all starving for real intimacy, especially in the last three years of this is a zoom screen. I'm blessed that we get to do this. But how many of us had to live for years with this being our human interaction? So men as a culture need to say, hey, we require some things that we were told we didn't. And again, if we think that we that we were they were right, and we were wrong than let's let's get the statistics that prove how well we're doing. Okay, those don't exist. So let's actually shift things and say, Hey, man, I trust you Zack, because you're Open with me. I trust you, when you share what's real with me, I trust you when you get to meet me in the places that I'm being real with you. I trust you, because you actually asked me, Hey, man, how else are you besides fine,

you won't let it go at fine. You're not like, okay, cool, high five, let's go play basketball. Right? That's where we as a culture of men need to get. And if we speak to the women on the audience, they're craving this from us too. And they're craving us starting to take care of ourselves, and not outsource our emotional needs just from them. Like they got their own stuff to do, they have a lot of stuff a ton of stuff to deal with being huge female humans on this planet, they need us to start to take care of each other and start taking care of ourselves. So that we can actually be the ones who take care of them or hold for them emotionally, because they have a whole different nervous system. And we do have a whole different set of stresses than we do. They walk around in very different bodies that have very different reactions. And they have just a radically different human experience, because they are, and I'm just going to generalize, a little bit smaller, a little bit less physically strong, a little bit less physically aggressive, and far more vulnerable, to our outbursts, and our outbursts, politically, and our outburst, one to one. So that's where I say the cultural shift needs to happen. Let's let's deal with the root so that men get healthy. And men can then be healthier with women, and with children. And I'm speaking to a father. But one of the best things that comes out of the workshops I run is when guys come up and say, this whole thing is just changed my kid's life forever. And I start crying like a baby, and I don't care. So I'm like, good, because that kid is going to have a kid, and that kid may have a kid and that then we've shifted the whole deal. And so while I'm really grateful that that man's life is going to be different, what I'm really after is the downstream effect of how many people he's going to change.

Zack Arnold: And that's what I think is so important to point out is that if you are going to go to therapy, or find a release valve, or a men's group, or whatever it is, I think that a lot of people might see that as being selfish, not understanding, here's how it's going to make me a better and more present father or a better and present spouse or friend or whatever it might be. But I think that it talks about this idea of swinging pendulums and whatnot, I've got four words that I know are going to trigger the hell out of you. Happy wife, happy life, and go.

Traver Boehm: It's a lie. It's I say it's responsible for more divorces than Facebook and Eat, Pray, Love put together. And I know that that in itself will trigger some people. It's happy life, happy life. If you are literally as a man, so codependent that the only way you're going to have a happy life is if you make someone else happy, brother, good luck to that. I can sit here I can give you the names of 1000s of divorced men, who and myself included, who adopted that mantra. And how many women if we say really? Is that how you want your partnership to be? Do you want your partner to hide his needs to be afraid of conflict, to not have a mission not have a purpose, not lead, not be sovereign, and to need you hear the words need you to be happy for him to be happy? Is that really the kind of authentic conscious relationship you want to have? Any woman with any grain of consciousness in her soul will say no. Any human will. Right. I use the example. I was a bodyguard in Hollywood for a decade almost. And you would see these guys come into talent agencies you'd see like the big wig director. They'd have like a circle of Yes. People around them. Oh my god. That's a great idea. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I remember thinking this is when I was in my 20s. I remember thinking at some point, does that guy not want someone to go? Hey, I think that's a really dumb idea. Right? It's I know I do. I have a wonderful, incredible group of guy friends and men all over the world. And many times they're like, Hey, man, that's pretty stupid. Like all Thank you. I appreciate that. If they were constantly saying like, no, no, no, you're a genius. You're brilliant. Oh, you're upset right now? I totally changed my answer. I totally changed my answer. Let me just collapse what I what I think and believe so that you're okay. And I need you to be okay. So that I'm okay. That would drive us crazy. Because it's not happy wife happy life. It's not the root of it. The route is I'm okay. Only if you're okay. Now that doesn't give my partner or whoever this other person is even the allowance to have her own experience. Because part of being human sometimes is not being okay. Part of being human is not being happy all the time. So what it's really saying is let me be manipulative, and controlling, and conniving and collapsed. So that you're okay and you're happy so that I don't feel threatened in any way by being who I am. Then if that whole five minute diatribe hasn't shifted people, then just embrace the fact that you want control over your partner, that women you want a little boy, that's who you're marrying to married to, or in partnership with, because a grown ass man will say, Hey, I don't agree with that. And a grown ass man will want to be with a woman who says, hey, guess what? I'm not okay. Or I'm not really happy with that answer. I still love you. I'm not leaving the partnership. I'm this isn't blow up the container of our relationship, the man if there can't be any conflict in a relationship? I don't know. I think that's it's not real. It's not real.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree with all that. And to bring up something very, very personal that I don't even think I've ever talked about in 300 Plus episodes. But this kind of triggered a memory. Like anybody else has been married 15 years, two kids living in Los Angeles, both of us working parents. We've had some very close calls, things have been very rough. We've had our dark periods. So I don't think that that's like, Oh, my God, like I don't have a perfect marriage. Because I don't think that anybody does. And if they say they do, I'll show you a liar. Right. But I would say that if I had to pinpoint the one single thing that has brought me to the point where right now, I'm not only still married, but happily married through all of it, is it my wife and I, when we got engaged, we made a pact. We said, if at any point, either of us is unhappy, we have to tell the other person and we have to be willing to go to therapy. We have to and that was it. We just said okay, we agree. Yep. So the having that openness to say, Hey, this is really hard to say. But remember the pact, we need to talk. And we both had that conversation more than once. But if we didn't have that safety valve or safety net, so to speak, I would not be married right now, we would not have been able to figure it out. But because of that one conversation and that vulnerability, and you have permission to say that you are not happy and vice versa. I'm still married. Beautiful. Without that we wouldn't be here, right?

Traver Boehm: You have to deal with what's real. One of my teach co teachers and mentors, a guy named duty Freeman, who's in his 70s and has been a therapist longer than you and I've been alive and says like the actual definition of intimacy in relationship is going through hard things together. And then coming out the other side. Okay. Which is exactly what you just verbalized. Hey, there's something going on. Okay, this is uncomfortable. No one really is like, sweet. My wife just told me she's not happy. And we're going to therapy. Awesome. I'm stoked for this. But what's on the other side? Is the actual connection, the depth, the relatedness, like, Oh, I didn't know that. Thank you. Oh, and by the way, look at us. We just went through some hard stuff. And here we are still together. That's to me is like solidifying that foundation of a relationship.

Zack Arnold: And it's, it's the source of intimacy, right? Having to go through that you go from just, we're at each other, and I hate everything you do. And I hate everything you do. And you drive me crazy to you go through this process. You're like, Man, when did I become so much more connected to this person? Right? So it's, but you have to, as you would say, which is going to be what I call in the industry, the perfect segue, doing hard. Right? So I want to talk a little bit more about what that means to you. Because to me, it means that I go out and I run a Spartan Race or a Tough Mudder. And I put myself in incredibly uncomfortable positions that are still safe, ish, safe ish situations, but I have to do it with others. So it's not just about intimacy with my wife, like, I've got a close friend of mine, that's a fellow ninja, you'd see the guy you'd think like, Oh, there's another elephant row male, right. So the antithesis of it, but you see us running a Spartan Race, that's what you would think. But he and I have a very intimate connection because we do very hard together. And I've never forged closer relationships with just platonic ones, either with males or females faster than running a race with somebody and having to literally trudge underneath barbed wire through mud and electricity. And like, you really get to know somebody really, really quickly and I'll have new best friends in the matter of three hours, because I'm doing hard with other people. And you've got an entire program built around this concept.

Traver Boehm: It's again the yes and Zack of like, how, and I'm just gonna just ask you, how was your first podcast episode? Was it were you? Were you not nervous? Did you knew exactly what you were doing? Were you terrified that there wouldn't be like a eight second pause between a question and like, everything in life requires some challenge everything worthwhile. And I'm not one of those people that like life just has to be hard. If at any point, it's going well, you have to look out and make it harder. But then we have these initiations, let's call them, these thresholds that we have to pass through. Starting a podcast is an initiation, doing a Spartan Race is an initiation, going to therapy with your wife, three years in is an initiation, it's the entry fee to a new way of existing. That's why I say it's really valuable to look at things that are happening to you. And not just immediately say, like, Oh, they're happening for me, sometimes it just happens to you. But to say, I get to look at challenges, as either, gosh, this is hard, I'm gonna run the other direction, or look at them and say, Okay, this is an initiation for me. What I want is what's on the other side of this experience, right, I want to get to the point where I've done 300 episodes, I can show up two minutes before I can easily guide a beautiful conversation, any which direction it can go, there could be tears, there could be laughter, I can share things I've never shared before. But you earn that. That wasn't episode one. You've earned that through 300. I imagine there are times when you're like, this was a hard one. This was that was not an easy one to get through. Right. So if we just use that example, I want men specifically, I work with men and women, but specifically men to take the do hard idea. And put it in the physical plane. Because a lot of guys, it's like, you know, you need bro, you need push ups. Like you've been in therapy for eight years, you need to go do some. But then the guys are like, wow, you can do 1000 Push Ups. But you just told me you're fine. Even though you're clearly not fine. I need you to take the do hard parameter, let's say or archetype. And say, Okay, what's really hard? What's really hard. And I will speak to this because I'm even in the middle of it right now, with some family stuff that's happening is I need to take that same frame on the inner life, on my on my emotional life, on my gosh, why do I keep doing this thing? Why do I keep running into the same pattern? Why am I having the same argument over and over and over? Why do I start five businesses, but then as soon as they stop being sexy, go, that wasn't the thing for me. I need to do X. Why is it that my relationship with my family isn't the way I want it. But gosh, let me just throw my hands up in the air and say, golly, gee whiz, that's just the way things are. So I want men to look both externally and internally. And I will say I've had guys come through workshops, etc. that have been the highest level of elite, athleticism, or military or like the alpha of the alpha, that their lives have been like video games, right. And here they are with their hands shaking. And after working through something or getting processed through something saying, that's the most terrifying thing I've ever done in my life. Like literally the most terrifying thing I've ever done in my life. And so I say to guys, like You think you're tough? Okay, cool. It's one thing to be tough and go run five miles till you puke? Do your pull ups do the things. It's another thing to say, Okay, I'm tough. I'm actually going to face what's true. I'm actually going to surrender to a process that's going to take me places internally, that I am terrified to go.

Zack Arnold: We need to get you in the room with David Goggins. I would love to right? there's a scary experience for that guy, for anybody that's not familiar with David Goggins, like, the alpha of the alpha of the alpha is hard of a human being, as anybody that I've ever been exposed to ever, like, his book is just insane. But there's also a big part of me that's like, clearly that guy's trying to work out a lot of stuff. And he's very open and vulnerable, what what those things are in his book, and I think his book was a form of therapy. And without kind of belaboring this point too much, just because everybody in the world has talked about it over the last couple of months. But going back to this idea of safety release valve and understanding somebody's behavior, even if we don't condone it, I don't know if you read Will Smith's biography. I have it. It was absolutely phenomenal. I had just finished reading it. And I said, I gotta get this guy on my podcast. Three days later, the Oscars, right. And everybody's like, Oh, my God, he's at the app, like, literally the height of his career happened that night, and everybody's saying, how could this happened? read chapter one of his book, and it all makes complete and total sense. But like you said, it's not just well, I've got to do the heart and the heart is you know, going into a Spartan Race. For me, the Spartan Race was the hard thing because I was the soft, sensitive, creative person, and I needed to kind of bring that that inner physical warrior out so I can balance the two. And there are other people that yeah, they would run a Spartan Race with me and they're awesome. And I'd say, you know, tell me what you're really feeling today. Ah, that would be impossible for them. So I really like how you framed it as it's not just about, you know, do something that we all consider hard. It's what's the hard thing for you? Right? Whenever I'm given a decision between two things, and this happens at Tony's all the time, or it's like, well, I've got an idea for two moves. I'm not sure which one I want to do. My question is always, well, which one's harder? It's like, well, it's this one. That's the one we're doing. And everybody else in the group is like, Oh, God, I'm like, I want to do the harder thing. But it took me years to be able to confidently be that guy. We're always those I'm afraid of the hard thing. So I'm going to choose the comfortable thing, right? So given that's the case, if somebody has all this heart that they're suppressing, they spent so much time avoiding it. How do they even know they're avoiding it? It's not even there. It's one thing to say, I have all these suppressed feelings, but I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to be vulnerable, because I'm not supposed to. But have you ever gotten to the point where they literally just don't even know that it's there? Because it's so deep? It doesn't even exist? They can't even access it?

Traver Boehm: Yes. That's where it requires some guidance. Right? When you showed up to Tony's, he wasn't like, cool. What's that? What's the move that you don't know that you can't do yet? He was like, Here, try some stuff. Oh, what do you know? You got really weird shoulder flexibility, don't you? You have some weakness in your traps. You have some weakness here. Oh, what do you know what's underneath that? What's underneath that? What's underneath that? There's a lot of things Zack that I believe, are too big to hold on our own. They just are. Right, we don't have the capacity to deal with them on our own. Which is why we have to do this in relationship. And I'm not talking about with your romantic partner. That may be you and I on the phone. That may be you surrounded by four other men that may be used sitting across from a professional. Right? The first time I did jujitsu, I didn't walk in and say hey, here's the way the chink in my defense. Here's where people can get to I didn't know it was like, oh, no, they're like, here, roll around for a little bit. Okay, this is the problem with your, your game. And it's still I still show up to people. Like I don't know, I just keep getting choked in the same way. Like, cool. Let me see Oh, well, here's the thing on the Ask them to show me a cup. Oh, you're putting your hand here. You don't even know that you're I'd be like, I'm putting my hand up here. And they're like, really? That's interesting. It's on your neck, like, No, it's not it's over my head, like know, what's on your neck. And so, for a lot of us, that's the thing we don't know our own blind spots. That's why they're called blind spots. I don't know my own blind spots. Personally, I'll make I don't have any. And then I can pull my partner in here and be like, Okay, you guys got another hour. He's got some blind spots. And I think that's the thing. That's why we do this in relationship. That's why you go train with other people. That's why you train with a coach. It's why you have friends. It's why you have a partner, people who get to see things that you don't get to see. So if a guy doesn't even feel it, though, here's my question is, how is your life? Really? Is it fulfilling? Is it satisfying? Are you full of joy? Do you wake up with energy? You know this with diet, right? People like my diets Great. Then you have them eat a certain way for two months, like, oh my god, I had no idea I could feel like this. I just thought being gassy and bloated was normal. But two months off dairy and wow, that's my new normal. But it requires an intervention of someone else or someone else's knowledge to get you there. But if a guy is waking up and saying okay, let's be real, though. Here's the results you're getting. Here are the things you're doing. How are your anxiety levels? How often are you depressed? How often are you drinking? You have this idea, but you haven't enacted it in the world. You're you're on your third relationship that only lasted three months. Okay, talk to me here. Let's see if we can look at the results and then work backwards. And like you said, Show me a human who's like, I got no issues. And I'll show you a liar. Right. And it'll mean that shamefully or meanly. It's just the I'll show you a guy who's blind to his own stuff.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, that's just the reality, as you said, of the human experience, right. 1000 persons. So all of that having been said, I want to be very, very conscious of your time as it is valuable. But before we go have anybody's eyes, or more importantly, hearts have been opened by today's conversation and they want to dive deeper, read more, learn more. Work with you. How do they find you?

Traver Boehm: Beautiful, thank you. I'm mostly on Instagram @traverboehm t-r-a-v-e-r-b-o-e-h-m. You can get a hold of either one of my books at manuncivilized.com for the book Man Uncivilized which has actually been read by more women than men. It's manuncivilized.com forward slash the book. That's where I have my membership groups, my courses, and I also have a podcast The Uncivilized Podcast. I'm not hard to find, but just Google Traver Boehm or hit me up on Instagram. I'd love to hear from anybody who does did kind of punch in the heart or who ask questions or even if you disagree with me, which happens, you know, rarely, but quite often. I'm also happy to, to navigate any of those conversations. Yeah, find me on Instagram, or hit my website.

Zack Arnold: Awesome. And I love the idea that you said that more women get the book than men. I'm assuming it's like, where's the operating manual for this thing? Oh, okay. Now I get it right. So yeah, this has been immensely immensely useful for me and I'm sure that inspiring and useful for my listeners and viewers as well and I can't thank you enough for your time and your journey and your expertise. So thanks so much

Traver Boehm: Thanks for having me on so much, brother. I truly appreciate you. Have a great day.

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared by Debby Germino and published by Glen McNiel.

The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).