Curt Storring 0:00

Welcome to the Dad.Work podcast. My name is Curt Storring, your host and the founder of Dad.Work. Today's episode is another Friday reflections. This is the these episodes are all about what I've been thinking about recently, some of my own journey, some things that have happened in my life that I have been meditating on, and that I want to share with you because I think they're valuable. And today we're going to be talking about community and why lone wolves die, how and why to stop living as a lone wolf. This is one that I know a lot of you guys resonate with, I was a lone wolf for ages, before I finally figured out the power of community. And the power of community changed my life, I always felt like it was missing something, I would always slide back into my old habits and patterns. But it was only when I started opening up and sharing my life with other men, that things finally clicked, and it clicked for good. I feel grounded, secure, strong, energetic, calm, confident, like a leader, like a true man now, and it's all because I joined community with other men, I've got an offer. At the end of this, I've got an invite at the end of this for a community that we are building an online community of other fathers who are doing the work. It's like a combination between a men's group, a private forum, a learning dojo, you'll get access to our courses to weekly calls to a private group of men who you can do life with who have your back, there'll be all sorts of things called experts, resources, it'll just be in this amazing community of men, fathers who are walking the path alongside you who have your back, who you can access at any time, whether it's through the calls, text, message groups, the forum, any of these things, you'll have it available forever, whenever you'll have it available whenever you need it, we're going to do a small launch at the beginning of the year, only letting a few men in just to test things out and make sure we're serving people and providing a lot of value. If this is interesting to you, you'll you'll hear more about it at the end of this episode. But I want you to go to dad dot work slash Pro, da d w o RK slash P R O, this is an exclusive community, it will be private, it will be gated. This is where you go to do the serious work to become a better man, partner and father. And if this interests you go to Dad.Work/Pro and just fill up the short application and you will be on the list for the first intake at the start of 2022. We're going to start off the year strong in community with other men finally having direction and being held accountable. With that being said, I'm going to walk you through why being a lone wolf is actually terrible, especially as a father and how to go about building your own community, finding a community to join or going deeper with your existing friends. All that being said, have an excellent weekend, make sure you do something with your kids. Get some one on one time, have a date with your wife, have some you time, and we'll see you next week on Monday. Let's go.

Do you consider yourself a lone wolf? Do you think there's glory in being a lone wolf doing everything yourself? Being independent, being tough, not needing anyone else's help hogging all the glory, when you actually do achieve something, there's a good chance that you relate to some of this. I know that this is very common for a lot of men, especially in the West, especially in American culture, which is extremely independent. And also in Canada, where I'm based. This, I think, is one of the worst things that we as men have experienced over the last, who, perhaps a couple of centuries, this idea that we need to be the alpha and the omega, in our family, with our children, in our business, in our relationship and our friendships, everything. If we are not doing it alone, we are weak. There's this idea of being weak and pathetic if you need help if you do things, not by yourself. And when you actually do achieve something as a lone wolf, it's great, you feel amazing, you did it by yourself. You're a self made man. But those achievements typically pale in comparison to what you could have gotten done with a team. I don't think we should be comparing the achievements of doing it all yourself versus having failed, I think we should be comparing what you can do by yourself with what you can get done with a team or a group or a community around you. lone wolves don't stay alone if they want to thrive. I don't know where this came from as though the lone wolf is some like mythical amazing creature, it's actually not. If they leave the pack, they either find a new pack by beating the alpha male of the other pack and taking control basically, or they go back to their old familial pack, and realize that it's a lot easier to get along with other people and being together is actually a net positive, or they die. lone wolves find a different pack or they die their existence when they are alone, which happens sometimes when the young male wolves will leave to find their own space or their own pack. Its existence which is typically fraught with uncertainty and fear and solitude and silence and mediocrity. They don't even howl as often because they don't want to give themselves away because they know they're weak. compared to a pack full of wolves, and there's one thing for sure is that lone wolves don't raise cups. Okay, so as fathers are know where this idea of lone wolves came from, I'm sure there's a great answer for that. But we shouldn't be looking to become lone wolves, we should be looking to create or lead our own packs to be in a pack to be with other people and community. And like, I get it, okay, like we've all been conditioned, that asking for help is weak, needing support is weak, that being in community is weak that we only care for and defend our own nuclear family. But if we look at how we have evolved as a species, it wasn't alone. It wasn't as one family unit, it was typically in a larger group or a village, we had extended family, we had other families working together for the betterment of the group, the kids would not just have you and the mother around, they would have grandparents would have aunts and uncles, they'd have friends, they'd have your friends, they'd have the parents of their friends, everyone would be working in conjunction to make sure that everyone is being taken care of, and that you were not the be all end all for your family, your kids, or the tribe of people that you are with, he wasn't going alone, when you went alone, things were hard. Imagine the people in the frontier who came over as one family, they lived a crazy difficult life, it was much easier when you were part of a group who could travel together who could pick up the slack, who could have strengths and weaknesses that actually matched each other so that there was not a huge weakness, glaring, that was going to take them all out, we could pick up the slack and support each other. We are absolutely social creatures, which is much much different than the alleged 1000s of friends or interactions we have on social media. I was talking about this the other day on a podcast I had with Tom of the complete dad, which is just fantastic, really loved the time that I spent with Tom. And he was suggesting that even doing what we do, and talking to 1000s of people on Instagram or the podcast is not natural. It's not we were designed or made or whatever to do. We're not growing up, we haven't grown up in a society where it was normal to have this amount of people know you. And, you know, we are thankfully human and have amazing brains and can work in this modern environment without being completely derailed. And yet, there's something about that sort of natural, innate, almost caveman quality that we all share because we can't just evolve in like two or 300 years, or even a couple 1000 years since you know agriculture, we are much more like the hunter gatherers, the people who wandered than we are from some new type of human that, you know, is modern, allegedly.

And I'm not an anthropologist or historian. So whatever I said take with a grain of salt. But let's get into the modern healing and growth. As a man and a father as it relates to community. I have experienced that there is only so far you can go alone. I did a million things I meditated. I journaled. I did my deep inner work to find out where my wounds were, I noticed my triggers I meditated on my triggers, I came up with all sorts of little things to stop me from feeling so badly in the moment. But there was never anything that actually pushed me over the edge to where I felt truly grounded and healed and good. I did so many things. And I was honestly very good at it. This was for some reason, the superpower of mind to actually do a good job in healing myself and becoming a better man, partner and father. And yet it wasn't enough. It was only when I started having conversations with men, with my grandfather, with friends with men's groups, with breathwork facilitators with coaches. That's when I finally took the next step to heal and grow. That's when I could finally face what I needed to face. That's when I finally had a container in which to feel safe into the healing is only in relation to those men that I healed and grown and found leadership and initiated myself or was initiated by these other men into the realm of adulthood. I felt like a child in a man's body for years. I truly, truly identified with being a sad, scared hurt three year old boy who was just trying to figure out, you know, where Mommy and Daddy was basically. And that hurt that really, really hurt for a long time. It wasn't until I started doing this work with other men that I finally feel like a calm, confident, mature adult men, a leader. With men around me, I feel less scared to fail, which by the way is huge for me, there's a lot of story that goes behind feeling like a failure to me and not being perfect. I'm sure many of you can relate with men around me I have more support, I don't have to hold the burden of everything on my own. And this is an important note that I have realized recently is that we as men can create a container of safety for ourselves, for our feminine partners for other men around us. And yet many of us feel as though we have the world on our shoulders as perhaps we should. Perhaps this is exactly what we all feel and perhaps it's only so crushing these days because nobody else has any support. We feel like we have to do everything alone and we can Have any support and perhaps this is truly what the problem is not that we are taking on too much responsibility, but that we have no help with responsibility that we're taking. And so imagine yourself as being a strong, masculine, mature man, you have a container that you can create, and there's solid presence to this container, you can take the emotions and the chaos and the feminine energy and the flow and everything that comes at you, you can hold that to a certain degree, and you can give strength and support and safety. You can do this to others around you. But you can also learn to do this for yourself, that you can be your best support in a storm. But what if something comes up that it feels too big for you? What if some wounds from childhood come up what if you're dealing with societal assumptions or, or programming from your family or the environment in which you live? What if you're dealing with something that feels so big that it feels as though it's going to crush you, and you can't get out from underneath it, you can't seem to process it, you keep trying to dig at it, but it just keeps overwhelming you. And this is very common. Like this happens all the time. If you're just starting out on the healing path, there are huge things waiting for you. And yes, you can take small bites, and they will take years sometimes to get through. But when you have a community of men, each man in an intentional circle in an intentional men's group in an intentional community of other men, brings his full presence and with that the container into which you can place your troubles. If you claim the space, if you bring a problem to your intentional group of men, their containers add up to be large enough to hold the issue that you feel is overwhelming for your container alone. And this is perhaps some of the most beautiful parts of men's group, this is one of the greatest things that I have discovered is that it expands the container in which we can be held and we have a group of men. So the collective space holding the man is much bigger. Even if it's a forum, online, even a text message group, even if it's a couple of friends, or a weekly community, a weekly men's group, something that you have in your life all the time, these have done wonders for me. And they've done wonders for the men I work with and speak to this is so insanely valuable. It's like a cheat code. And it shouldn't be a cheat code because we're not actually getting further than we ought be. We're simply returning to where we ought be as men, as a species as humans, I think this is something we have lost. This is not something we were newly adding. This is a part of ourselves that was lost in the modern world that we are now replacing. But where can you find this? There's a few options here. The first one is that you can invite your current friends to go deeper and invite them to truly open up by opening up yourself by leading invulnerability and allowing them to hear you to see you to support you and challenge you. And letting them know that you support them equally that you have their back. Now this can be tricky. This can be nerve racking, it can be vulnerable, it could backfire. And that's the problem that a lot of guys have with this, it could backfire and you could lose your friends. But until and unless you start showing up as your authentic self, ready to accept help ready to join with other men, you won't find those men, you have to show up as you fully if you're scared of losing your friends by being vulnerable. And by being truly you what kind of friends are those anyway, not good ones, not the ones who are going to make your life better. Like I get it, it's scary. But the payoffs are enormous. You may go through a period of transition. This is very common, where you find new friends where your old friends don't choose to do the work that you're doing to become a better man, partner and father, they are not ready for it. They have never had people in their life do that. And they shy away. They guard themselves, they protect themselves because they are triggered by you in this case, but in many cases, what they will do is they will push away, they will make fun of you to deflect the discomfort that they have in seeing you do this because they know deep down that they should probably do this too. And many times they back away. But sometimes it works. Sometimes it works because as David Stegman said on this very podcast, he said that men, all men have a craving and a desire to go deeper, but very few get an invitation. So why don't you extend the invitation? When you start to be the real you when you start to act this way you will attract people to you. And I kept hearing this, I kept hearing this from men's group. And it sounded like Oh yeah, sure people are just gonna find you. I don't think so. But when you start acting like yourself, you will attract real people who are genuinely interested in supporting and loving you. And this is so much better. The second option is to join a group or a team based around something that you love, whether it's sports, or some other shared interest. Bonding usually happens here. You can have shared experiences and sometimes you can even go deeper. If you're struggling or something happens. You all get through it together. You can kind of let down that guard and be vulnerable. You're not alone. And this is probably the biggest part of this is simply not feeling alone. And there is a potential to be alone when you're holding back because you don't think you'll be fully accepted which is certainly something to consider, but you're generally not going through life alone. And it actually works. And it actually helps. But as I said, there's a limit, you're probably not going to sit down and have deep talks about your innermost secrets, and being able to shine light on the shadow parts of yourself that you need to heal to become a better parent, or a better man, a better partner. And so that leaves you with the third choice. And this is obviously my favorite, which is to join a men's group or an intentional men's community. One that is specifically for supporting and celebrating men and especially fathers. There's a lot of men's groups out there, and there are much fewer fathers groups out there, fathers have to build their own village these days. And you've you've heard that quote that raising a child requires a village. But unfortunately, these days, fathers have to build that village themselves, we have to do the extra work, because it's not just built into the society anymore the culture anymore, we have to do the work to build our own village to build our own community or to join one that is currently thriving, it's too bad, but it is now our responsibility. So you can start one yourself, you can join a local group, you can invite your friends into this container. So rather than just doing it like an option one and asking them what's going on in their life, you can actually say, Hey, I'm going to have this meeting, we're going to still hang out like we usually do, but I want to invite you over. And every week or every two weeks, we're just going to go a little bit deeper, and I want to create this space. It's not where we're hanging out, we don't have to ruin that. What we can do is just come together here, you can join one, there's plenty of men's groups, like I said, fewer fathers groups, but there are men's groups that are extremely, extremely good from the samurai brotherhood, in Canada, in the United States and Australia, to every man to the mankind project to all sorts of local one off groups, these are typically very, very important. They're also in fact, this is such an important part of the journey that this is where I will be focusing most of my time on building a community of forefathers in 2022, I'm going to be creating a community that will allow you to be seen, heard, supported, challenged, held accountable, something that you have in your back pocket at literally any time, a group of men who have your back, who are willing to share their wisdom and are willing to support you in your challenges and your journey to become a better man, partner. And Father, it'll be full of teachings and wisdom, men's work, support, challenges, accountability, growth, I'll be bringing in experts, coaches, leaders to inspire, challenge and educate you, I will be doing regular calls. So you'll always have access to a larger community of men, to me to your brothers, you'll be placed in a smaller community of men to start your own men's group to have weekly or bi weekly, you might only take one thing from a community experience. But sometimes that one thing will set you on a path for a different life. And I know a lot of people say that it's impossible to find just that one big, mind blowing, transcendent experience. And I tend to agree that that's true. But I also believe and I have experienced that simply being exposed to one idea at the right time, can lead to a longer term growth that longer term, even if it's not transcendence, that contentment, that satisfaction, that healing and that growth, and simply listen to this podcast exposes you to a lot of these new ideas. And that is my entire hope with doing the podcast that you hear one thing, or one group of things that helps you on your path to become a better man, partner, and father, but more likely, rather than the one single thing, which is why I joined this group. So I'm about to tell you is it keeps me focused on my Northstar. joining a group like this having weekly check ins having a monthly theme, having lessons and a forum and a discussion. This keeps you focused on who you actually want to be when I go to men's group myself, I know that I am showing up in comparison to who I say I want to be. And I am going to be reflected back by all the other men in my group. If I'm not showing up as that man, every week, I go okay, why am I here again? Oh, right. Because I want to be this man, I want to do this better. I want to improve here. And when I show up and I simply sit in a circle or I simply do the work, then I know that I'm much more likely to stay on track. If I'm there every couple of weeks or every week or even once a month, I know that I can't stray that far. There's no way for me to stay that far in that short amount of time. So that I'm always drawn back to the best version of myself because the container is strong. Because we are intentional. We're all there to become better men. If you have to face the group, the community, your squad and you show up in a way that's out of alignment or authenticity, you'll be called on it. They will ask how can we support you, you're not going to fall through the cracks. It's used to keep you going in the right direction with regular commitment so that everything you do so that eventually you do become the better version of yourself. It's amazing. When this happens. You can learn more about yourself this way It forces you to have the space to do the work, to introspect to practice to find presence, to find calm, to have fun even and to share your life with other men. Simply speaking your truth. Confessing is one of the most underappreciated parts of men's work. Being able to speak out loud what it is you're feeling has been One of the most impactful things that I have ever done and simply having that space to do that was the requirement for me to get there. Sometimes we think about our lives, we think out loud, sometimes you think forever and ever and ever. And you can't quite get there because you just go in circular motions. And this perhaps isn't true for everyone. But I noticed a lot of men think better when they are speaking. And they can actually get deeper when they speak their truth. And so if I tell you out loud, the surface level stuff that sort of dissipates it in my mind, and what is left underneath is the truth, the real truth of the matter. And when I keep speaking and being held in the safe container, I can often get that darker truth, I can shine a light on my shadow, and I can start to integrate that into becoming a more authentic hole. Man. I know personally, the intense relief and the alchemical power of sharing your truth and letting it see the light of day. Simply that act alone can make it all worth it. But imagine all the other things, support along your journey to become the best man possible. achieving your goals, having the best relationship full of love, support sex, fun laughter, becoming the best father who has time and presence for his kids, that his kids want to be around that they can't get enough of that learn from him and become amazing human beings. Imagine limiting regret later in your life. Because you didn't miss the important years, having a group that stops you from feeling so shitty and alone all the time. That gives you the absolute joy and astonishment and all of waking up each day with a wide open heart and gratitude and satisfaction and contentment. This is what we're building, I encourage you to join a group to start a group to go deeper with your friends to make the invitation to extend to be the one who opens up and is vulnerable. Because remember, lone wolves, they die, or they go back and find another pack. lone wolves don't raise cubs. We need a village to do this if we're going to heal and grow as the men and fathers and partners that we need to be and that our family needs from us. If you're interested in joining the Dad.Work community, this village that we're creating, and surrounding yourself with other men who are on a similar path of fatherhood and growth and healing and want to be seen, heard, supported and challenged. Join me if this sounds like it's up your alley,

I put up a quick application. I'm ironing out all the details. Right now I'm building the backend, I'm talking to other men, getting them excited and involved. We're going to be launching sometime early 2022. I want you to join if this is something that you're feeling called toward. Imagine it's like it's like a men's group with a community that you can access at any time with a smaller men's group with experts with worksheets with access to our courses, with access to me on calls regularly throughout the month. If this is something that you would love in your life, a group of men on the same path walking beside you who have your back, why don't you apply, go to dad.org/pro and you'll be directed to a form, all you have to do is fill out a few questions on that form. And as soon as we launched I'm going to have you in the first bucket of eligible men to join. We're gonna keep it small at first, we're going to keep this intimate first. But this will be your chance to do the work in a community that has your back that can hold a bigger container for you than you could hold for yourself. So you can finally show up and become a better man partner and Father Go to dad Dad.Work slash pro that's da di W O RK slash pro in your browser and apply today. Whatever you do, make sure you don't go alone. It is so so much easier to do with group of men so find it or build it or join us I honestly don't care what it is as long as it serves you and as long as it helps you become the man that you know you can be your true authentic self find community guys don't go this alone. I know how hard it is I know how difficult it can be to put yourself out there and it's literally been the single biggest thing that I have ever done to feel better and grow. So get to work you can do this find your group of men

that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. It means the world to find out more about everything that we talked about in the episode today, including Show Notes resources and links to subscribe leave a review work with us go to Dad.Work/Pod that's (D I D . W O R K / P O D) type that into your browser just like a normal URL, Dad.Work/Pod to find everything there you need to become a better man, a better partner and a better father. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.

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