The qualities that make us the men that we are are largely attributable to the relationships that we have with our fathers. We take on mannerisms, traits, quirks, behaviors and emotions. Our intimate relationships, in many ways, are also results of our relationships with our fathers.

Too many men have difficulties being the fathers that they should be to their sons. Many times, they never got the right role modeling from their parents. Without the right tools, or no tools at all, problems get created. Men go on to have imperfect relationships, and don’t know how to be effective intimate partners to their wives and girlfriends.

First, men learn from their fathers how to be emotionally withdrawn from their women. They learn from the environment they grew up in at home, over time, to shut down, stay in their heads and generally not be present to their feelings. This is the nucleus of the problem. Men have learned a lot of negative coping skills to gets their needs and feelings met, and sometimes that comes out as anger, rage, substance abuse, violence, criticizing or judging, or just avoiding and withdrawing altogether from their women.

Second, as children we model behavioral patterns from our parents. As boys, we model the ways of being in a relationship from our fathers (and mothers). Many times, our fathers never got it right, so we simply take from them what we see, because unconsciously, if we do what they did, we just might get our needs met after all.

This is child’s logic, and somewhere down the road, we fail to drop those tools when they don’t work for us anymore. As kids, they might have had some basic effectiveness, but now they just don’t work anymore.

The key is to understand and deal with these negative behavioral patterns, and the emotions that we avoid buried underneath. In seeing these, often for the first time, and experiencing them in the present moment unconditionally, they begin to transform themselves and set us free from the patterns that keep us stuck in conflict and unsatisfying relationships.

We can work towards freedom from these problems if we can first see them. Our fathers might not have been able to do it for themselves, but we can for ourselves. We can change those relationships by digging deeper, so we don’t have to create those same relationships for ourselves, and so the problems don’t get handed down the generations again.

Need an energy boost, and don’t necessarily need to get it from a can? Try considering these energy drainers and boosters, for more sustained energy.

8 psychological energy drainers/boosters

Drainers:

1. Energy vampires: the people that suck energy from you, and don’t bother replacing it
2. Poor time management: contributes to stress, which drains your energy
3. Poor diet: lots of sugar, caffeine, refined carbohydrates and heavy foods can deplete you mentally. also, not eating periodically throughout the day, including breakfast.
4. Poor or not restful sleep
5. Sedentary lifestyle: not walking, running or engaging in another form of exercise can leave you feeling flat and low on energy.
6. Not taking time out of the day for yourself: even if it’s five or 10 minutes to meditate or to organize your thoughts, when we don’t attend ourselves, and are consumed with attending to others (family, work responsibilities), it can leave you feeling burned out.
7. The news: is usually filled with stories of suffering. Try a news fast, or limiting your time or exposure to TV or Internet news.
8. Anger: learning how to deal effectively with anger, and communicated in a way that it is non-toxic to others, will help to expel it and leave you more available to yourself and others.

Boosters:

1. Nature: taking a walk outside, or on your lunch break can revitalize and reinvigorate you for the rest the day
2. Hanging out with positive people, who can fill you up and rub off positivity on you.
3. Meditation: my preferred method of meditating is mindfulness meditation. There are a lot of good books, podcasts, and other resources on the subject. Try looking into Jon Kabat Zinn and mindfulness-based stress reduction to help.
4. Dumping your worrisome thoughts onto a to do list, into a journal, or onto some thing external from your brain that can help you expel the thoughts that are nagging at you and to help you organize them in a way that you can attend to them later.
5. Yoga: there are plenty of guys doing yoga, and it’s great way to crank up your energy in a short amount of time. Try a class in town, or go with someone you know.
6. Get in touch with your emotions: emotions, especially negative ones, have this way of freezing up and going nowhere when you don’t attend them. They suck up valuable psychic energy and physical energy, so if you can learn to get in touch with them in process then, you’ll free up needed energy for other things.
7. Eating small meals regularly through the day: when your blood sugar is consistent and not spiked, you’ll experience more stable energy through the day. Try eating five or six times throughout the day, drinking plenty of water as ago, and notice if your energy levels stay balanced.
8. Positive self talk: the way that we talk to ourselves is critical to how we deal with the world and with other people. Try validating yourself, talking positively to yourself or generally supporting yourself through your own self talk to improve your positivity in your energy.

Pleasing others sure has it’s benefits. People think well and highly of us, we get to do good for others and feel good about ourselves, and it leaves the world in a generally better place. Right? Not so fast.

Helping and giving to others certainly is honorable and selfless, and others certainly do like us much more. But, for those that fall victim to people pleasing behavior, effects can be just as harmful as they are pleasing.

For those who fall victim to the “disease” of people pleasing, saying “no” to others is like the kiss of death. For guys, just like women, being driven by the need to please other people, or the fear that they will fail to do so, keeps people in this cycle of pushing aside their emotions and needs and giving their power over to other people.

Dealing with Guilt

For people pleasers, guilt is a familiar emotion. A lot of times, we feel guilty because there’s a part of our brains that feels we need to, should or have to do for other people or give to people in certain ways. competing with that experience is that voice inside of ourselves that knows what we really want for our own selves, that may be different from pleasing others.

When those voices stay in conflict, life becomes really challenging. We stop listening to ourselves, and push that second voice away, leaving the people pleasing voice to act and behave in the world (and if you’re wondering, no, you’re not schizophrenic).

I believe guilt is the byproduct of these two voices clashing. Guilt is highly associated with anger, and when we feel guilty about something, there’s probably a “should” or “have to” associated with it. What we really want is to not indulge in the pleasing behavior, except were not listening to ourselves, and feeling guilty as a result. people pleasers off and just carry around the guilt, without really attending to what it is that they truly want for themselves.

Fear of rejection

A lot of times, people pleasers are deeply afraid and insecure of others rejecting them. It’s the fear, or better yet the avoidance of fear, that promotes the people pleasing behavior. for some people pleasers, being afraid of being rejected by others in their lives is tantamount to death, and would do anything to avoid putting themselves in a situation where they felt rejected.

The people pleasing behavior arises as a way to manage the fear and help you keep it in check, ensuring that the pleaser doesn’t set himself or herself up for a situation in which he is rejected. work on the fear, and you start to chip away at the people pleasing behavior. Most often, our fear of rejection comes from early childhood experiences, when we felt rejected, or were actually rejected, by a parent or a parent figure.

We develop the people pleasing behavior as a way to deal with that original rejection, and grow up into adults that perpetuate people pleasing with those in our lives. The best ways to deal with people pleasing behavior are to get to the root of the issues, which are often fear-based, and start to work on those.

Journaling, talking with close friends or family, or seeking out counseling to work on those issues are all effective. challenging and training yourself to learn to say “no” is difficult, but it’s essential to breaking the habit of people pleasing.

Additionally, learning what the differences are between “should” and “want to” Is equally important to busting up this cycle. identifying what you really want, aside from what others want from you or what you think others want from you, is also really crucial to ending the people pleasing behavior.

The traditional way to making decisions may be slightly outdated. For men, we’re used to making quick decisions based on fact, reason, and experience. We make decisions everyday, and when those decisions prove correct, it reinforces our sense of being smart and in control. But, what if there are decisions we just can’t make with our heads, like whether to stay or go in a bad relationship, or how to learn to connect emotionally with our partner?

No Guts, No Glory

Learning to “tune in” to that “gut feeling” is difficult, because what’s happening is that you’re tuning into emotions. Emotions are not logical, and men get hung up on logic to get out of difficult situations. When your gut (whether that’s your actual stomach, heart or some other place in your body), starts “glowing” and trying to communicate to you, do you listen, or tend to ignore it? Try listening to it, and try to suspend “rationality” for a minute or two. What would happen if you actually acted on what your gut was trying to tell you?

The Brain and the Gut

Researchers at the Centre for Organizational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School have the science to back it up. They conclude that intuition is the brain pulling on our previous experiences and external cues to make a decision, but the decision is largely unconscious and below our awareness.  What we’re left with, and what we then experience, is our awareness of a general feeling that something is right or wrong.

Missed Opportunities, or Not?

When you don’t tune into your gut, you may be making decisions you’ll later regret. Sometimes, we look back on decisions we should have made, “only if we’d have listened to our gut.” But sometimes, there are time you may not want to listen to your gut. In “High Fidelity”, John Cusack said “Should I bolt every time I get that feeling in my gut when I meet someone new? Well, I’ve been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I’ve come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains”.

Some decisions are better left to “gut feelings”; others, not so much. I think developing your gut intuition, and being able to reference it when it’s good for you, makes sense: you have both your rational mind and intuitive gut both working for you at the same time. You get the combined awareness of both.

The end of the year is a great time to step back from the whirlwind of work, home and life expectations, and take a keen look at how the year went.

What I like to do at the end of the year is sit down and reflect on 7 life domains, gauging what worked, and what needed improvement, in each area. I do this in December, and take an hour or so to type out my answers.

From year to year, I look back and find a record of my life from year to year, and see where I’ve challenged myself. It’s interesting to have a complete picture after several years of doing this.

Here are the life domains I traditionally use for self-assesment from year to year:

1. Relationships with Others
2. Relationship with Self
3. Money
4. Mental Health
5. Health + Wellness
6. Spirit
7. Hobbies and Interests

I find that I’m able to have an honest conversation with myself to see where I shined, and where I could have spent more time and energy focusing, as to improve on those things next year.

I invite you to try this exercise out. As to accurately gauge your level of progress, it might be helpful to get some feedback from those close to you, especially when it comes to the “Relationships with Others” section. Sometimes, we’re not able to fully appreciate how our relationships with others go, unless we know how they feel about them as well.

Personal Values and Happiness

What this self-assessment is designed to do is to close the gap between what we’re actually doing in our day-today lives, and where we want to be (our values). The more closely we can live our values, the more in synch we our with our life, and the happier we can report our lives to be.

Happiness is more than just a function of how well we’re living our values, of course, but it helps gets us there.Each person is different; therefore, each set of values is going to be completely unique from the next person.

Take an hour out one weekend morning in December, grab a cup of coffee, and write or type out your responses. Put some thought into your responses, and be honest to yourself.

Here are some possible suggestions to think about when you start your self-assessment, based on each category:

1. Relationships with Others

• Which relationships have you felt successful at this past year? Why?
• Which relationships do you think could use more of your attention and energy?
• Pick two people close to you. In what ways would they characterize your relationship with them, both good and bad?
• If you could choose, which is one relationship you would like to see improve? What is one thing that you could do in the next year, on a ongoing basis, to reinvest in that relationship?
• Do you have unfinished business with someone or more than one person? What would it take to help bring some closure to you? A phone conversation? An apology?

2. Relationship with Self

• How would you rate the relationship with yourself over the past year?
• In what ways do you find yourself critical of yourself, or not feeling good enough or inferior? Explain.
• How can you choose one way to help yourself feel better about yourself? Elaborate.
• How do you deal with your needs that go unmet? Do you get angry? Or do you withdraw? How can you make a commitment in 2012 to change that behavioral pattern and communicate your needs?
• Do you know what your needs are? Many guys don’t. Take 5 minutes and look at what you really need from others, and learn to make clear for yourself those needs.

3. Money

• What were some successes and areas of improvement in terms of your financial situation this year?
• Where did you feel most comfortable with money this year? Most uncomfortable? Explain.
• Were your successful in your money goals? Did you meet certain milestones for income, savings, retirement savings?
• How did you discuss money this year with your partner? What could change for you around the conversations you have with your significant other?
• What problems did money bring you this year?
• What would you like to change about your relationship with money in 2012?

4. Mental Health

• Overall, how would you rate your level of mental health from 1-10 in the past year (“1” being most unhappy; “10” being extremely happy)? What would need to change in the new year for that number to rise?
• What three things did you do this year to contribute to your positive mental health? Exercise? Be with friends? Converse?
• What two things consistently trigger a negative mood or negative emotions in you from others?
• What can you identify to work on in 2012 to contribute to a better overall mental health, including diet, relationships, lifestyle, exercise, counseling, hobbies, time with family, friends, etc.

5. Health + Wellness

• Overall, how would you rate your level of physical health from 1-10 in the past year (“1” being unhealthy; “10” being very healthy)? What would need to change in the new year for that number to rise?
• What stopped you from taking control of your health this year?
• List two excuses that prevented your activity towards greater health.
• What would 2012’s physical health outlook be like, as different from this year’s?
• What successes can you celebrate around your health and well being?
• What limited you physically (e.g. injury, illness, disease) from achieving your physical and health goals?

6. Spirit

• Did you engage in things to fill your spirit in the last year? What were they?
• How many opportunities did you “commune with nature” in 2011? What were those experiences like?
• Is spiritual engagement important to you? Why?
• What got in your way of filling your spiritual self?
• How can you make time for regular spiritual engagement in the new year (if this is important to you; e.g. yoga, meditation, chi gung, church, spiritual reading, nature, etc.)

7. Hobbies and Interests

• What did you do in 2011 for fun that brought you happiness and a sense of fulfillment?
• What have you been putting off that you’d like to engage in during the new year? Learning a new language? Playing guitar? Urban farming?
• What prevented you from engaging in your hobby this year – time? money? laziness?

These questions are intended to stoke the mental fires a bit, so please, come up with your own questions and ideas for your self-assessment. This is just for you, and honesty and self-disclosure will help you most here. Good luck, and I hope this exercise can help you change what’s not working in your life in 2012.

I work with an increasing amount of guys who find it really hard to say ‘no’ to others, even if it means foregoing their own wants, needs and desires. For these guys, they swallow their own voice to meet the demands of others, usually with women in romantic relationships, but more commonly with coworkers, service providers, people on the street… whomever.

The “nice guys” out there look unassuming on the surface. They’re extra friendly, people love them, and their generally non-toxic to others. It’s when it comes to themselves that the problems begin.

Here are some features of the “Nice Guy”:

• Has a hard time saying ‘no’ to others, including intimate partners
• Doing for others until they’re tired, or exhausted
• Have a high degree need for appreciation or validation, and will work hard for it
• Not feeling in control of relationships
• Carry around guilty feelings
• Being dependent on others – including women – or “orbiting” them like a human satellite
• Deals poorly with rejection
• Takes many things very personally
• Tries to be the life of the party, make others laugh, take on other’s personalities

Fundamentally, Nice Guys don’t know how to meet their needs, because if their needs are known, they could not be met by those who are in the position to meet those needs. Instead, they end up playing games – sometimes through coersion or manipulation – through playing the role of the “nice guy”. They’re not straight with others, or themselves. It’s too risky to be oneself, because the role or mask is the one they think gets all of the attention and validation. Nice Guys forget that pleasing other people is not pleasing themselves.

The other issue is anger. Anger gets stuffed within nice guys, but ends up seeping out as passive aggressive behavior. Their anger cannot be communicated directly, because of the risk that runs of being rejected or abandoned. But, it has to go somewhere, and so it gets filtered through other ways like the passive-aggressive approach. This can be displayed through constant joking, sarcasm, not being straight with one’s anger, playing the victim, etc.

A good book on the topic of “nice guys” was written a couple of years back by Dr. Robert Glover. “No More Mr. Nice Guy” explains these types of issues that guys struggle with. It’s worth a read.

If you think you’re a “Nice Guy” and want to start to break the cycle, start by understanding how you can’t say ‘no’ to others. Is it fear? Is is rejection? Are you taking too much ownership or responsibility for other people?

• Practice saying no in small ways, and try building up to the big ‘no’s.
• Start monitoring your anger and seeing how it might leak out in less direct ways, as mentioned above.
• Work on validating your own self more, instead of being dependent on other’s to fill you up
• Start to differentiate between those people that are truly your friends, and those people who are friendly with you because you do things for them solely. If the relationship isn’t reciprocal, reconsider your investment in it.
• Look at your schedule, and determine which activities, chores, events, etc. you do that’s for others, and really reconsider what you’re getting out of the deal? Is it worth my time? Does it prevent me from taking care of myself adequately

I was once a “Nice Guy,” and let me tell you: it’s a lot better on the other side. People still like me, even more so than when I was trying to be nice and cordial all of the time. I understand the struggles, and reform can happen if you work at it.

Making a decision is hard enough. Having the wrench of guilt thrown into your machinery while you’re making a decision is even worse. Many times, were not even aware of the guilt that we carry, and it operates beneath our consciousness and controls our thoughts, feelings and decision-making skills. When we indulge in our guilt, we are generally not making the right decisions for us, or what’s in our best interest as individuals.

When we try to adhere to other people’s desires of us, whether it’s family, friends, or our significant other, we sometimes get lost in trying to both please them and ourselves. The friction that’s created is where guilt lies. Guilt is more about “should” or “have to,” rather than “wanting to.”

Guilt is corrosive. When we let it fester, it eats us up inside. It stops our better judgment of how best to live our own lives. I think guilt is more related to people pleasing, and when we: the people pleasing, we lose our own voice.

What we call ‘guilt’ is usually representative of a blade within us, between pleasing some outside person or entity and ourselves. The more we can learn to tune into what we really want, the more will find happiness, contentment and confidence. We’re certainly not going to find those things if we endlessly tried to attend to or appease others, or try to do their agenda. Ultimately, will fail, and fall victim to addictive people pleasing.

Ask yourself: “what is it that I really want, if I can cut away trying to always please others?”. if you didn’t have to deal with guilt, what would your certain outcome or decision actually be? Would it looked different than how you’re used to doing it? Are you prepared for that outcome?

If we actually take the risk of listening to ourselves and what we truly want, and not others, what are the risks? usually, there is fear or panic about letting others down, or doing the opposite of what others want from us. When we grow up, we often develop guilt from interacting with our parents. They usually have a certain agenda for us, and we usually just learned to absorb it. As kids, we never really considered doing things our own way, or if we did, it was usually in a defiant or flippant way.

I think the first way to successfully deal with guilt is to start to recognize what it is that you actually want. What would your relationship look like if you really wanted it to be free of guilt? Would your friendships change? would you end up dropping friends who you didn’t feel guilty around?

On the other end, sometimes guilt is flared up by others manipulative tendencies. Manipulation and guilt are bedfellows. Where there is manipulation, there’s often guilt. if you’re feeling manipulated by someone close, it’s important to start to understand that dynamic in your relationship, and start to address it head-on. If you allow yourself to be manipulated, the end product will probably be guilt. And guilt is extremely corrosive to the soul.

New! Affordable Counseling Services in Phoenix – Starting Today! Now only $60 a session!

If you’ve been putting off counseling, and expenses have been an issue these days, we’ve got just the deal for you. And it’s gotten a little better.

Phoenix Men’s Counseling expands it’s service menu to include affordably priced counseling for individuals and couples.

Counseling services will be offered by Trent Leupp, a counseling student intern from Argosy University in Phoenix, under the direct supervision of a licensed professional counselor – yours truly. Sessions are now priced at $60 for a 50-minute counseling session with Trent.

Appointments are currently being set up, and there are a limited amount of bookings available.

New to counseling? Been hesitant to give it a try? This is your opportunity to start to make a real investment in your well-being and your relationships.

Contact Jason at 602.309.0568, or visit us at www.phoenixmenscounseling.com to book an online appointment.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what is takes to be a good man. I think there are plenty of answers out there: from media and culture, to our own preconceptions of what it means to be a man. But what if we truly listened to ourselves and came up with our own answers?

I’ve decided to put together a men’s self-assessment, and included five areas of life that I think are key to developing oneself as a man. Take a couples of minutes out on a break to consider your answers to these life areas.

• Living Your Values
• Do you live by what you believe in? How so?
• Is there a difference between what you believe in and how you practice your life? If yes,
• Being Genuine/Authentic
• Are you truly open and honest about your thoughts, feelings and behaviors to those close to you? If not, how do you prevent or inhibit yourself?
• Are you generally being true with yourself? If not, how are you untrue to yourself?
• Taking Responsibility
• Do you find yourself playing the ‘victim’ to others, or life in general? How?
• Is it hard to “own” your stuff, even if it’s negative, paints you in a negative light, or tarnishes your facade? Why?
• Practicing Self-Respect
• Do you practice regular self care, such as exercise, good nutrition, stress management? If not, what gets in your way?
• Can you keep healthy boundaries with others (i.e. be firm with others by saying ‘no’, not compromising your values, etc.). If not, how are you flexible on your boundaries with others?
• Do you criticize or judge yourself too harshly? What do you get out of this, if you do?
• Navigating Life Balance
• How does your life tip out of balance? What are your “traps” to fall out of balance (i.e. work, kids, etc.)
• Would others in your life consider you to be balanced in your life? What would they say?
• What is one area of your life that begs for your attention, in needing more balance? What is one thing you can do to feed that unattended part of your life?

What answers did you come up with? Were you surprised by any of your answers? It’s hard to take an honest look at ourselves, when life commands our attention, or when our perception of ourselves is filtered through other people.

If you came up with more questions, let those be the starting point to develop your next answers. How can you develop an action plan to be able to improve some of these life areas for yourself? Will it take time, money, energy, other people – what resources will you need to seek out to help you in developing these things?

Taking an honest look at ourselves takes some courage, especially if we’re not in the habit of doing so. Try to make small but incremental changes in developing your awareness. You can’t change what you’re not aware of, so stay open and get others feedback if you choose. All the luck and support to you.

So often, we catch ourselves lost in our thought stream – thinking about our long term plans, or just weekend plans, wondering about past regrets we have, or stressing about things that have yet to come true. But, how well do we live grounded in our own present reality?

It’s quite common to get lost in our memories, hopes, fears, goals and stressors. But, when we lose ourselves in those places, life end us passing us by.

Many men live in the regret of the past – whether that’s dwelling on professional opportunities lost or squandered, women that have gotten away or generally idealizing their pasts in a way that we can’t let go. Often times, when we hold onto the past, intrusive thoughts predominate our thinking, and it’s as if we’re living in a parallel world where we’re not quite available to ourselves and others in the present.

Learning to let go of regret, anger and shame is an important step to letting go of the past. Developing more of a compassionate relationship with yourself means not beating yourself up for not taking that dream job, not actualizing your potential as a star tennis player, or failing in previous relationships. Living in the present moment often entails working through grief as a way to let go of the past, even if the past is so easy to hold on to.

The problem most men face is that they avoid their emotions. In doing this, what happens is that we develop these mental fixations on things in the past or future, and the negative emotions stay stuck and frozen. If you create space to see just how much you’re ruminating on things, people, places, etc., you’ll probably find that you’re avoiding dealing with the emotions that have resulted. Dealing with emotions is hard, especially when they run so deep, but it’s imperative to do so to get unstuck and back into the present moment of your life.

Mindfulness meditation is one way to come to develop more presence and live in the present moment. There are many good books on the subject. Jon Kabat Zinn developed Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR; http://www.mindfullivingprograms.com/whatMBSR.php). Developing a mindfulness meditation practice is helpful to clarifying the mind and learning to detach from one’s thought stream, where suffering lies. It’s not about better avoidance – it’s about being present with everything that arises, including wishful thinking, negative emotions and the pain of our experience of being human.

I personally practice yoga and find it’s a great way to develop more presence and anchor myself in the present moment. There are a number of great yoga studios here in Phoenix, and probably close to your home. Find the yoga style that works best for you, check out different classes from different instructors, and develop a regular routine to experience the best benefits.

Having intimate conversations with those close to you also has the transformative power of change to anchor you back in your present reality. In taking the risk to share fears, hopes, sadness, pain and insecurities with your partner or spouse, a close friend, or a family member, you’ll develop more personal awareness and make contact with those negative emotions in order to expunge them and live more presently.

Lastly, I believe lifestyle has a lot to do with being present – how much sleep you get, if you get regular exercise, how you eat and take care of your body. Optimizing your lifestyle and learning what works best for your body will most definitely help you to get closer access to the present moment. Tune in and listen to your body to see how much sleep you’ll need, when too many stimulants or too much alcohol affects your body, or what foods and supplements will be most beneficial to you maximizing your energy and presence.