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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this episode I'm going to talk about how to be a man part to the advanced version I've addressed this topic in the past of how to be a man several years ago I released an episode that was quite popular and there what I basically told you was how to embody your masculinity talked about how masculinity works how it contrasts with femininity and then what practical steps you can take to go up your masculinity and that might involve going having sex with girls getting into relationships and other things like that that can be some useful advice and it still applies to many guys but I want to give you a deeper more advanced understanding of what it means to really be a man especially if you've already experimented with the advice I gave you in the previous episode and the insight that I'm going to give you here is going to be very simple but it's also going to be very counterintuitive here's the whole insight it could be said in like one sentence very very simple the key insight is if you want to be more of a man be more of a woman if you want to be more of a man be more of a woman what leo what what does that mean how is that going to make me more of a man no Leah what I want is I want to be alpha teach me how to be alpha so that I can get all the girls and I could be super macho and I could be super confident and stoic and nothing can touch me I want to be untouchable that untouchable Arnold Schwarzenegger character make me like that but you see that's your problem right there that's actually why you're struggling to be an authentic man is because that stereotype is a caricature of what it means to be a man that is not it means to be a man and for many men that's completely inauthentic and actually counter-intuitively what it does when you try to do that when you have this desire to be alpha it actually makes you beta you see very counterintuitive when you're trying so hard to be alpha and to be macho and that's your ideal image of who you're supposed to be but that's not actually real for you then you become very ungrounded and what I want to show you is I want to show you that it's actually possible to be feminine but to still really be a man and to be highly attractive to women and in fact this is a very powerful technique that you can use to embody your full masculinity the full spectrum of masculinity masculinity is not about becoming hyper macho alpha guy who goes to the gym and bench presses 300 pounds that's for kids that's a juvenile notion of what it means to be a man but first what we have to do is we have to challenge this alpha stereotype what is the Alpha stereotype well in our culture in Western culture I'm not really sure how it is in Eastern cultures but in the West here in America and probably in Europe what you've got is this idea this Hollywood idea of like being the big muscular guy the tall and handsome guy the guy with the deep voice and the big dick and the big balls and you're filled with testosterone and you're like this bro or this dude and you're very extroverted and gregarious and you've got charisma flowing out of every orifice of your body and you've got the cool sports car and you're always kind of nonchalant and you're icy and stoic you're unemotional nothing fazes you you're always confident and decisive you never hesitate you're very popular with everybody your friends your co-workers they all love you and you're well-dressed you're like the perfect package you're charming girls swoon over you and you're like the playboy who bangs a bunch of girls because they're constantly throwing themselves at you this is probably like the image that a lot of men these days have of being a man so when I say how to be a man you might be thinking oh yeah Leo tell me the techniques to become that guy that you just explained that sounds awesome I want to be like that guy and in your mind you have all these iconic images of like the James Bond character who tends to be this way or the Arnold Schwarzenegger character or the Vin Diesel character the Brad Pitt character maybe the George Clooney character something like that and you think back to high school and you think back to college and you remember though athlete jocks who got all the girls and who were at the top of the high school or college hierarchy and you want to be like that but what you never do is you never really question whether that's authentic to you and what this whole thing is this image of becoming this hyper macho guy what you need to realize is you need to realize that this is a silly cultural norm and that really you've been brainwashed since being a kid with this kind of thinking and so one of the hardest things I think for modern guys to do is to let go of that to actually have the courage to let go of that and develop an authentic identity in other words to be your self be yourself to the max and being yourself holds the danger that your authentic self is not going to be in line with this constructed ideal that you have of what it is like to be a macho guy most guys are not macho guys most guys are not the Arnold Schwartz or the James Bond sz's or the Brad Pitt's or the Vin Diesel's and that's okay the inner work that you need to do is to actually accept that can you accept that or are you going to accept that but then secretly in the back of your mind everything like yeah well yeah Leo you're probably right I know I'm not a macho guy but damn you know I mean I really want to be the macho guy I feel inferior well that's not what I'm telling you to do what I'm telling to do is to let go of that I deal so much that you make whatever you are into having that kind of high value that right now you place on the macho guy so that when you're around a macho guy you don't feel inferior but actually you feel superior not an egotistical son superior but just superior in the sense that you know that you're you and you know that that's the best you can be is to be you whatever you are is what you should be and it's what you love to be you see that's the deeper thing that's going on here that's what it really means to be a man being a man doesn't mean being hyper macho or being nonchalant and stoic actually what it means is it means being fully yourself and not selling out to anybody else's opinions and in this case what you're doing is you're dishonouring that because you're selling yourself out to this ideal that Hollywood has presented to you and all you need to do is to let go of that but see that's easier said than done because is really ingrained in you how do you do it well first you start questioning the cultural norms and then you apply this technique that I'm going to give you which means here's the how to the - is that you own and you accentuate your feminine qualities exactly the thing that you're running away from now you turn and you face it and you embrace it and you actually embody it more fully here's the logic behind this is that it actually takes courage a lot of courage to be authentic to successfully be authentic and to successfully embody the feminine qualities actually takes more growth from you than to act hyper macho because acting hyper macho that's fake and admitting and accepting the feminine qualities in you that's actually what's real that's what's true but see a lot of guys who are focused on becoming stronger guys they forget about the feminine qualities and they tend to wanna forget that they even exist and they swing their pendulum all the way to the masculine side and they say hi I'm gonna I'm gonna like go to the gym a lot and I'm gonna take muscle supplements and I'm gonna I'm gonna do all the stuff that the Arnold Schwarzenegger guys do but that's actually done out of a sense of fear and inauthenticity you see now I mean there's nothing wrong with that if you're naturally pulled to be a normal torturing your character go yeah go do that if that's authentic to you but that's not most guys and chances are that if you are that way then you wouldn't be coming to me for advice on how to be a stronger man and you know what funny enough even if you are the Arnold's forcing your character you might actually also be denying your feminine qualities see maybe you'd be denying it from birth because of the way you were told you know you're told like men shouldn't cry and men shouldn't have strong emotions and men be too nice and they shouldn't be too romantic in this kind of stuff so here's the technique that I want to give you and this is actually a great technique if you are whatever kind of man even if you're the macho guy I recommend you try this technique what you're going to find is you're going to actually become more fully human the reason this advice that I'm going to give you here is more advanced than the stuff I said before is because really I'm teaching you how to transcend the masculine and the feminine and to become holistic each man in each woman has the masculine and the feminine in them and really your goal is not to cling to one or to the other pole but to embody both poles that's what's going to make you feel the best so the technique is accentuate your feminine qualities that means be more emotional both the positive emotions and the negative emotions where your emotions more on your sleeve be nice be caring and be compassionate in other words all the things that for example pick up culture tells you not to do be cute be playful be like a little kid again cry be nerdy be romantic and of course you get bonus points for doing all these things in front of women because usually the guy is like thinking well if I'm going on a date with a woman or if I'm at a bar or a club I'm trying to impress some woman to get attracted to me then I have to act a little bit more alpha than usual here what I'm telling you is actually no resist that urge and go the complete opposite direction and actually act more like a woman more like a child more like a crybaby try being romantic and chivalrous and just see what happens just as an experiment and notice that's going to be emotionally difficult for you because you're kind of not wanting to do that because actually you feel like your masculinity is being threatened by these things but notice that if you feel that crying or being romantic or being compassionate and caring towards someone or just being nice to someone to somebody if that erodes your masculinity notice that your masculinity is not very strong a true test of your masculinity would be to cry in front of a hot woman and to not be fazed by it huh interesting how that works yes so be these things be romantic be nerdy do feminine activities go do something that women do that men don't usually do that isn't considered much like go do some yoga something like that or some Pilates you know and just see how that makes you feel does that make you feel like you're a woman all of a sudden does that make you feel insecure well that's a direct test of how authentically masculine you are it shows you that your masculinity is actually a facade that you've constructed and that it's not really grounded in something deeper yeah be artistic be creative be soft have the courage to be soft try being loyal try speaking with passion and emotion rather than indifference try saying whatever you want to say even what you're going to say is going to sound weak or pathetic or unattractive have sex the way you want to have sex make love the way you want to make love allow yourself to fall in love a lot of guys they're trying to be so macho that they actually don't have sex the way they want to have sex because they think it's going to be too soft or something like that yeah they don't let themselves fall in love because they feel like well that's for girls that's not for guys see so you have to go in there you have to really really carefully take a look at how much of your identity has been constructed artificially and what's really authentic there and that takes some some trial and error experimentation to really see where things lie so that's your technique so what I want you to do over the next few weeks or the over the next months you know however long you want to work on increasing your masculinity and becoming more of a man uh whenever you're around girls or whenever you're around your guy friends isn't like that you're going to behave in a more feminine manner and you're going to do it in a way where you're not ashamed and you're going to keep doing that until you become more and more comfortable with that and I actually recommend that you sort of swing your pendulum to the feminine end act a little bit hyper feminine act more feminine that you're then you're even comfortable with just because it's like an experiment and we want to see where the middle ground is to find the middle ground you got to kind of explore both extremes chances are you've already explored the mat the macho extreme and actually you've probably been disappointed with the results right that's why you're here so try doing that and just see what happens what you'll find is that the more you actually accept the feminine qualities in you the more girls love you because what girls are attracted to is they're attracted to authenticity authentic expressions of self and emotion regardless of whether it's macho or not that's why sometimes if you're puzzled like how can that hot girl that I know like I know this hot girl and she's attracted to this guy this guy looks just like a stupid douchebag he doesn't look like some macho a weightlifter guy and she's in love with him how can that be well it's probably because this guy is authentically himself even though your standards are like well I have to be macho to attract the girls but what that guy understands or maybe he doesn't understand it but either way what that guy is doing to keep that girl attracted is that he's just being himself and that might mean that he's like a crybaby or that he's insecure whether he's not very confident and that might shock you because you think like well but girls we all know girls are attracted to confidence and all this kind of stuff and this guy doesn't exhibit those qualities I know him I'm a good friend of his but see whatever qualities he does exhibit he exhibits them authentically without shame without embarrassment and that actually wins the girl over now you got to be careful here not to use this as like some meta strategy where you say like okay so let me go cry in front of a girl to attract the girl that would be a mistake the thing I want you to do is just define what's authentic to you whatever that happens to be hey and also remember that not every girl is supposed to like you so just because you act a little more feminine and then you see some girls rejecting you that doesn't mean anything girls reject guys of all stripes and colors so really what you'll discover if you interact a lot of girls is that the only thing that really repels girls is neediness neediness this kind of clean energy that you have for her um and that it's not about really like your personality or anything there's no ideal personality for you to have to attract girls different girls are attracted to different personalities so of course there's going to have to be a personality match between you and the girl and some girls you will not have a personality match with but more or less universally girls everywhere are repelled by neediness from guys now you might say but Leo what if I'm at the point in my life where I am authentically needy what should I do should I hide my neediness and pretend like I'm not needy or should I actually be needy what do I do that's interesting overall the way this problem is solved is by understanding that your neediness actually comes from a deep inauthenticity in you but it might take you a while to get to the root of what that inauthenticity is what I'm going to claim is that if you were fully authentically you and you completely deconstructed this false identity that you created for yourself you would not be needy the neediness would be fixed but that's uh you know that takes work to do that might take you a year or two or more to figure that out and in the meantime if you're interacting with girls you want some sort of like short-term solution so what do you do well I can recommend two things one try owning your neediness and being needy with the girl now that comes with the risk of her leaving you or losing attraction for you on the other hand if you try to hide your neediness usually what happens is something even worse because you try to hide your neediness and then you're you're really acting like a scared little boy and she can really feel that off you it's high it's hard to to hide true neediness so what I found in my own life is that when I try to really hide my neediness it still comes out and it often looks even uglier than it would have looked had it not been there had I expressed it fully authentically so that's something that you know carries risk with it try it out I also do think that sometimes it's helpful to just say you know just stop B let me stop being needy for the next week and just kind of try to the fake it till you make it that can also sometimes be useful but overall what you're working towards is more authenticity and as you're experimenting with this technique of embodying and accentuating your feminine qualities your neediness might increase because you're trying to be more authentic and I actually want you to experience what that looks like one of the best cures for neediness with women is to actually get into a relationship with a great woman be authentically needy with her repel her with your neediness and be just conscious of how that whole process worked and then go through the heartbreak that comes with her leaving you from being so needy and then you're like holy I lost an amazing girl because I was this pathetic pathetic needy um guy and I don't like being that way that's not authentic to me I'm just kind of giving my power away for I don't know what reasons to this girl and that actually moves you up to the next level that actually helps you to outgrow your neediness see so your overall goal here is to subvert the macho stereotype get that out of your mind the goal here is not to be macho the true definition of being a man is doing whatever the you want even if it's girly or weird that's what it really means to be man not because you're trying to be alpha but simply because it's you you're just being you and that's the on that's the bottom line and you're not changing who you are for anybody not for your girl not for your friends not for money not for anything that gives you that kind of groundedness that you attribute to an Arnold Schwarzenegger Vin Diesel character but that has nothing to do with having big muscles or fast car or any of this other kind of stuff right you need to a distinction between the outer signs of macho alpha behavior and the real internal psychological core and to not think that just because you can ape Arnold Schwarzenegger that that makes you now a man know if you're aping Arnold Schwarzenegger actually that makes you a betta a weak little betta and I want you to take the attitude that a real man brings the man into anything that he does and the best way to illustrate this is I love I love the following example I was listening to Abraham Maslow giving a seminar this was a recording because he's dead now but I was listening to one of his seminars and he gave this beautiful example he was talking about masculinity and femininity he gave this beautiful example he says that I remember a a while back hearing about the the Prime Minister of Italy this was like 60 or 70 years ago the Prime Minister of Italy and he was seen as this kind of like manly man and then one day the press got caught you know caught him at home wearing an apron like he comes out of his house and he's wearing an apron and the press they take some pictures of him and he's wearing this apron with these like flowery patterns or something on them and he looks very girly because he was cooking and cooking was apparently something that he liked to do but you know 70 years ago cooking was seen as like woman's work and so the press they asked him about this and like whoa why are you doing this this this woman's stuff we thought you were a man and he just told them he said whatever I do is man's stuff see that's the kind of attitude you want to take a real man brings the man in to whatever he's doing the activity doesn't define the man the man defines the activity so if you want to cook if you want to so if you want to go to yoga or pilates go do it do it and bring the man into it than being a little boy who is like oh I'm afraid to I'm afraid to go to Pilates class I'm afraid to put on an apron because of what I think that will mean about my masculine image that I'm trying to project out into the world you see can you see that a guy who can put on an apron and not wince and not even think twice about it how that's the guy that women actually want they want that guy they don't want that guy who is like oh well sorry honey I can't go with you to Pilates because I think that that will make me less of a man that's actually what she doesn't want you see so it's a little counterintuitive but I hope you can take this inside to heart go try it out try it out with your girlfriend with your wife or just girls you know in school or in class or coworkers or whatever and just see how it works what you're going to discover is that with a little bit of trial and error actually the women in your life will start to appreciate you for being more expressive of yourself and actually not just the women but also the men because to be attractive to men or women sexually or non sexually to have lots of friends is simply to be yourself to wear yourself on on your sleeve wear your heart on your sleeve and let the chips fall where they may and those people that will like you will like you and those people that will hate you will hate you and those that will be indifferent to you will be indifferent to you and you're cool with however the chips fall all right I'm done here please click the like button for me post your comments down below share this episode to the friend and lastly come sign up to my newsletter right here at actualize that org that's my website I got a free newsletter the newsletter helps you stay on track with this journey of self-actualization there's a lot of concepts and distinctions and techniques that I want to share with you in the future for how to live up to your full potential in life both as you know if you're trying to be a man or if you're trying to be a woman or if you're trying to be good at business or you're trying to be better meditate trying to have a better mood in your life whatever all those things come as byproducts for taking on this path of personal development of really looking inside yourself finding your authentic self what that thing is and then learning over the years to embody it to deeper and deeper and deeper degrees and when you do that you find that your life starts to flow and your passion becomes contagious you find that charisma becomes effortless you find that speaking becomes effortless you find that everything is just aligning perfectly for you with your top values and your top interests in life which is sort of what you've been after your whole life but you haven't been sure how to get that well this is the process takes quite a bit of work but it's also an amazing journey there's a lot to learn so we'll be talking about more concepts in the future a lot of advanced stuff coming soon so stay tuned watch me grow grow along with me build your life follow these techniques go actually embody this stuff act on it and then stick around for more Theory all right I'll see you soon with more you