Shaun (00:10)
Hi and welcome back to Raising Men. Today I'm with Don Ross of Manhood Tribes and together we're gonna go through his How Manly Are You Questionnaire. I'm gonna answer the questions myself. We'll talk a little bit about where this questionnaire came from and then we'll go through the results. How's that sound, Don?

Don Ross (00:29)
Man, it sounds great. I'm actually really excited about doing this live with you. This is gonna be fun.

Shaun (00:31)
I am too, I'm

Shaun (00:33)
too. I'm so thrilled about it. I'm a little scared. I'm a little concerned that I'm gonna find out some things about myself that I wish I didn't know, but that's the exciting thing about stuff like this, isn't it? There you go.

Don Ross (00:41)
It'll be all good. Yeah, it's going to be helpful one way or another.

Shaun (00:46)
I'm gonna rate myself on a scale of one to five. One is not true, five is really true, and we'll start going on. When a hard conversation needs to be had, I engage in that conversation instead of avoiding or putting it off. I'm gonna give myself a four for that. I'm pretty good at having those conversations sometimes. mean, obviously I don't like to do it, but I'm pretty good at doing it. Number two, I know or can figure out how to fix most things around my home.

Shaun (01:14)
I definitely a four and I would give myself a five if that includes having someone I can call to make it happen. Even if it's not me, but I'm actually okay. I do have tools and I can watch YouTube and I can figure out most things. I got a funny story about that though. The buddy about, actually this is going on about six months ago. I had just gotten home from an international trip.

Don Ross (01:22)
Hahaha

Don Ross (01:28)
There you go. Yeah.

Don Ross (01:31)
Okay.

Shaun (01:41)
and so was really jet lagged and I woke up at two o'clock in the morning. I'd gone to bed, I guess, kind of early. I tried to get back on my normal schedule, but I woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed at two o'clock in the morning and just had all this energy. And what I decided to do at that time, because the entire family was asleep, is that I was going to descale my water heater. Now this was only the second time I'd ever descaled my water heater. And so I got the bucket.

Don Ross (02:00)
my gosh.

Shaun (02:07)
and I got the descaling solution and I put everything and I mixed it all together and I plopped the pump in there. The pump is basically a sump pump and I hooked it up and everything and I plugged the pump in and turned it on, nothing happened. And so I'm like troubleshooting and troubleshooting and I'm like, I take the hoses off and I kind of jiggle the thing around. Meanwhile, I leave the pump plugged in while I'm doing all of this stuff.

Don Ross (02:20)
gosh.

Don Ross (02:33)
no.

Don Ross (02:34)
no.

Shaun (02:34)
and I

Shaun (02:34)
start like kind of shaking and I'm looking down and I'm peering, I'm literally peering down into the hole. As I'm taking the thing down, by the way, my face is totally uncovered. I'm peering down into this hole and that's when it comes on. And it is immersed in the descaling solution and literally I have in my mind's eye, my recollection is this.

Don Ross (02:46)
Yeah. Yeah.

Don Ross (02:51)
Of course, yeah.

Don Ross (02:55)
Ugh.

Shaun (03:02)
volume of water just pumping straight into both of my eyeballs. And I dropped the thing, I unplugged it, and I was like, this is bad. It didn't hurt or anything like that, but this is my eyes I'm talking about. And so I go in and I rinse it out, and I take some warm water, and I rinse it out for about five minutes at that time. And then I went on to...

Don Ross (03:06)
Gushing,

Don Ross (03:14)
Yeah.

Don Ross (03:18)
Right, yeah, with all that solution, yeah.

Shaun (03:27)
I went onto the internet and I started researching what I should do about this stuff. And the consensus was that I need to flush it out. And that's really all you can do. And so I did a lot of flushing, about 30 minutes of flushing. But it also said you should really think about going to the emergency.

Don Ross (03:37)
Yeah, just a basic, just basic, yeah.

Don Ross (03:49)
In the middle of the night.

Shaun (03:50)
in the middle of the night. And so I texted my wife, said, you know, I woke up with a bunch of energy and bubble. I told her the whole story and said, I'm going to the emergency room. If you wake up and I'm not there, that's why. I think everything's going to be fine. And so that's what I did. I went to the emergency room and they just flushed out my eyes. was they put this like magical flusher thing on my eyes and that that was really unpleasant and really painful. I don't wear contacts or anything like that. I'm not used to having things on my eyes.

Don Ross (04:01)
Yeah.

Don Ross (04:08)
Yeah, again, yeah. Right, right.

Shaun (04:17)
And, but I've had no issues since then, but so yeah, I'm gonna give myself a three.

Don Ross (04:24)
No.

Don Ross (04:26)
Well, it's all right,

Don Ross (04:28)
yeah. Your eyeballs are limestone free for at least a year, you know, so you're all good.

Shaun (04:31)
That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Shaun (04:32)
I did not make the mistake the next time I which de-scaled my thing, which was not long ago, which is how I know this was about six months ago. I am definitely physically strong enough to go through my normal daily tasks without getting winter tired. I am quite strong. I'm a large man and I'm not, you know, I'm maybe a little bit overweight, but not too bad. The men in my life know they can count on me. You know what? I would give myself a five.

Shaun (04:58)
if this read, the men in my life can count on me. But do I make that known to them? I don't know if I do. And so I'm gonna go, some of them definitely do, but not all of them do. I'm gonna give myself, I think I'm gonna give myself a three there. In emergency situation, I call for extreme physical ability. Oh, yikes. I'm confident I could be helpful.

Don Ross (05:04)
Okay.

Shaun (05:19)
Depending on the situation, I would definitely say yes, so I'll give myself a four. I tend to have good work in relationships with my bosses and supervisors. That is absolutely true. So I would say five. I have a strong network of male friendships around me.

Don Ross (05:24)
Yeah, there you go. Just go with your gut.

Shaun (05:35)
This is a tough one for me to answer. Again, this is one of those things. Part of the whole motivation of starting the whole Raising Men project was because I had my buddy come to me and say, I'm getting a divorce. And I didn't have any idea of what he was going through. And this is one of my closest friends from childhood. And we just didn't share that stuff with me. So, you know, to the extent that that's a function of having a strong network, then

Don Ross (05:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shaun (06:03)
I'm kind of failing at that, but I do have good friends. I do have a number of friends. I people I would call and in the case of emergencies and that sort of thing, I'm gonna go ahead and give myself a four here or a three. Let's give myself a three. I regularly push myself. Absolutely I do. I use things that I'm good at to help others and make their lives better. I would say I would give myself a five for that.

Shaun (06:28)
I tell you, as I'm going through this, I am just struck by the vision of masculinity that this is starting to form in my brain. mean, it's just. Yeah, I just like it's such a healthy. just absolutely I'm I'm I'm really drawn to this and I absolutely love it. you know, it's funny, I I have a masculinity podcast, right?

Don Ross (06:38)
Yeah, maybe not what you expected,

Shaun (06:53)
And I struggle with the question, what is masculinity? And part of the reason I struggle with it is because it's very hard to distill it down. A healthy vision of masculinity is hard to drill down into a very concise tweet, right? But this is doing such a good job of really fleshing that out. I'm free from the influence of harmful substances or behaviors? Yeah, I'm...

Don Ross (07:12)
Good, I'm glad to hear that.

Shaun (07:20)
I'll give myself a four for that. I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty good. Where are the voices and opinions that affect my thinking and decision making? Try not to be swayed. I'll give myself a four. Working towards being physically stronger, more capable. You know what? I would have given myself a five for this several months ago. I have fallen off the wagon when it comes to working out. I used to work out three to four times a week. Used to get in there. I have been having some physical struggles lately that have been really preventing me.

Shaun (07:46)
from being able to get to the gym and I've let that prevent me from doing that. But I do get outside and I do, you know, it's probably down to once or twice a week to doing a rigorous workout. So I'm gonna give myself a three on that.

Don Ross (08:03)
Yeah. as you're doing that, I'll just say that that's a, that's a great, live example of why it's good to take this thing every so often. It's not necessarily a one and done kind of thing, like, because our answers change over time, how we're handling certain situations and how things are affecting us and impacting us in a particular season. you know, the scores change and it's okay that they do, but that's a good reminder of like, now I need to be working on this. That maybe I wasn't having to pay as much attention to, you know, six months or a year ago. So yeah, that's great.

Shaun (08:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shaun (08:31)
Yeah, and you just have this reminder. All right, I know, what's a month? I'm going to have to go to this thing, right? And I'm going to have to give myself a score and help me keep present about that. I like that as a mechanism. I'm intentional about building relationships with people who share my values and help me improve in those areas.

Shaun (08:50)
Man, I can't really give myself a really good mark on that. It's not one, but it's not higher than two. For myself, I think I'm good about finding people to do that with. And if I come across somebody in my life that I see that about, then...

Shaun (09:14)
I really do try and build a relationship with that person. but it's not like I'm doing a really good job of seeking people out. And then, course, as I'm saying that this very podcast itself is a counterexample. Part of the reason I'm doing it is to seek people out, know, build relationships with folks like you. So I don't know, maybe that's not accurate, but I'm going to stick with my two there. When I come across something I don't know how to do, I try to learn how 100 percent.

Shaun (09:41)
If I were caught in a dangerous situation, I feel confident I could move towards the danger to protect others and myself. Absolutely. My weekly schedule is not overly committed. I have margin with my time so I can easily adjust my schedule to match my values and priorities. You just blew my mind with this, I gotta tell you that as a component of healthy masculinity.

Don Ross (10:00)
You

Shaun (10:08)
It has never occurred to me until this very moment about how important that is. And up until a couple of months ago, I would not be able to give myself high marks on that. I would give myself very low marks, a one. Recently, I've had a lot more flexibility with my time, and so I'm gonna give myself a higher mark for that now, but.

Shaun (10:34)
I'll tell you something, I'll give you a personal anecdote that kind of illustrates where I am on this. I just went on a ski trip with my family.

Shaun (10:42)
And that meant I had a bunch of free time, sorta. I had a bunch of time that I could claim was free, right? know, downtime is what I had. And I spent a lot of it doing a project that I, you know, I'd kind of been waiting, that had sort of been, it was something I wanted to learn, a technological thing that I wanted to learn, but I needed to be on my laptop to do it. And I spent a lot of that time.

Don Ross (10:49)
Yeah. Uh-huh. Right. Right.

Shaun (11:07)
And my wife called me out on it after it was over. She said, you know, I really wish you would have been more present during our trip. And I didn't feel like I wasn't, I, but it's, you know, cause I kind of always had this thing that I was going over the laptop and working on this thing every once in a while. I wish I hadn't done that. And even though I had the time, I wasn't utilizing it properly. So I'm not going to give myself a one on this, which is what I would have given myself six months ago, but I will give myself a two because it's a lot of it. It's not.

Don Ross (11:19)
Yeah. Yeah.

Shaun (11:33)
It's not so much time as much anymore. It is now mind share. And I'm good at taking things I learn and putting them into action. I would say five, my body projects an image of strength and confidence. I would give myself a four. That's interesting. That's partially a physical thing and partially a psychological thing, isn't it?

Don Ross (11:59)
You're right. Yeah,

Don Ross (12:00)
you're right.

Shaun (12:00)
If you

Shaun (12:00)
stand and you're tall and you're, know, but part of it is, you know, for me, I get some of that for free. I'm six foot five. I weigh 230 pounds. I'm a big dude. I'm a big dude. I'm gonna project an image of strength. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It would be much more of a psychological thing if I were five too, right?

Don Ross (12:16)
You're a big dude, you get away with it almost regardless, yeah. I'm the opposite, I'm 5'9", 155 pounds, so yeah.

Shaun (12:29)
And so yeah, that's I get extra points for that just for free, which I don't know. I'm intentional about serving those around me and helping them be better. I'm going to this is the same kind of thing about building relationships. It's something that I do opportunistically, but I would not say that I'm particularly intentional about it. So I'm not going to give myself the lowest possible score, but I'm not going to give myself a very good score.

Don Ross (12:36)
for being. Yeah.

Shaun (12:55)
When a physical job needs doing, like lifting heavy objects or helping a friend move, others feel comfortable, this, yes, 100%. When I see someone abusing their power, treating others inappropriately, I'm able to stand up to that person or call them out for that behavior. You know what?

Shaun (13:11)
I actually, I have a bone to pick with this one. I think this should read not I am able to stand up to that person, but that I do stand up to that person. So I'm going to answer like that and I'm going to give myself.

Don Ross (13:14)
Okay.

Don Ross (13:19)
Sure. OK.

Shaun (13:23)
three and a half, which rounds down to three.

Don Ross (13:26)
No.

Shaun (13:26)
I have a skill or ability that others come to me for help or teach them how to improve. Yes, that is true. I would say five. Yeah, I've actually that's something I like. I like about I really like collecting skills so you know, I can fly an airplane and I can scoop a dive and I can drive a boat and a sailboat and you know those sorts of things, right? And I just I love accumulating skills like.

Don Ross (13:50)
Yeah, awesome.

Don Ross (13:54)
Yeah, that's great. You're the guy that every guy wants to go to and can be like, hey, can you help me out with? And you can say yes, which is awesome. It's good to be that guy.

Shaun (13:57)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there are certainly

Shaun (14:00)
things I can't do, especially, you know, I won't necessarily be able to fix the engine, but I can take the bolts off. I don't operate as a lone wolf, but tend to seek out companions or partners and everything I do. I am going to give myself a two on that. I do not do a good job of seeking help from others. This is that is not I love that as a as a as a component.

Don Ross (14:06)
Yeah.

Shaun (14:22)
I'm honest with other men in my life about my insecurities and struggles. There are two components of this and I'm gonna give myself high marks in one of them and low marks in the other. I am honest with other men in my life about my insecurities and struggles. I am willing to open up, but I don't do it that often. And so I'm gonna give myself a three.

Don Ross (14:31)
Okay.

Shaun (14:46)
I have code principles, God in which I order all life in which I follow consistency consistently. I'm going to give myself a three on that as well.

Shaun (14:54)
Okay, I'm finished with the quiz and now we need to give it the score. So we'll go ahead and we will stop the recording right now and then we will edit this out and then come back when we're done with the score.

Shaun (15:13)
Okay, we are fully scored and I got some surprising results. I got to tell you, Don, I'm a little bit surprised about some of this stuff. Some of it makes a lot of sense to me based on based on what I'm seeing. But let's go through it over and over. Let's talk about strength first. how you know, I'm 21 there. That's, one of my one of my three best.

Shaun (15:37)
Attributes here, how do you define strength in this content? So what do you make of this result?

Don Ross (15:42)
Yeah, this is great. So just as a little bit of setup, let me just say, you can kind of see there with the columns of the score totals that they add up to five different things. Those things at the bottom there, strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. Those are what I call the five marks of manhood. We talked about that right in our other episode just briefly. But really the things that I would say are what demonstrate what it means to be a man. They don't necessarily make you a good man. There's ways to be able to do all of these things in ways that are good and ways that are bad.

Shaun (16:00)
Mm-hmm.

Don Ross (16:11)
But they're kind of just the baseline of what when you look at men and manhood across all times and cultures, you're going to find kind of this cluster of traits wherever you find men. So that's really kind of what we're going for here is just are you doing the things that demonstrate what it means to be a man? So we'll get into a little more of kind of the specifics. But as you said about strength in particular, we're talking about physical strength here. So this is

Don Ross (16:37)
I would say strength is really the core attribute of manhood. So at the centerpiece of what it means to be a man, our bodies are built for physical strength. This is really like at just a base, you know, physiological level, this is how men in particular stand apart from women. Our bodies are built for strength. That's how we're meant to show up and offer ourselves to the world is through our physical strength. And that doesn't mean that like, you know, men who have some disabilities in that way, or who, you know, for whatever reason,

Don Ross (17:06)
can't be like in the gym and you know, like maxing out a bench press rep. Like that's not necessarily what we're talking about here, but it does mean that as men, we should be developing our bodies in a way that we can use them and contribute to the good of others around us. That's really what strength is all about. So,

Shaun (17:21)
And sort of culturally,

Shaun (17:22)
that's what's expected.

Don Ross (17:25)
Yeah. So culturally, you

Don Ross (17:26)
know, strength means like, do you have big biceps and a six pack, you know, that's what we're talking about. and that really like that totally misses the mark in terms of historically what manhood has looked like, right? It's, it's never really been for show, although, you know, like show is a part of it, right? Guys are always kind of drawn to and impressed by, bigger, more muscular men. Like there's something literally just about the size of a man that does communicate masculinity. There's nothing really inherently bad about that.

Don Ross (17:54)
But the fact that that's been, that's a nearly universal experience for men does indicate that, you know, there is something masculine about that. So, that's okay. It just means that as men, like we need to learn to use our bodies effectively for strength. And that just means whatever the task that you're called to, you need to be able to perform them well, you know? So I kind of tell guys, look, the baseline standard here should be, and even one of the questions is, can you make it through the physical demands of your day without getting winded? Right? A number one, can you do that? If you're

Don Ross (18:23)
If you have to go into work and there's stairs at your workplace, can you go up and down your stairs throughout the day without it tiring you out? You know that? mean, that's just, that's a part of your day. the second thing would be if you do get put into some kind of situation where, strength is called upon and sort of an emergency moment, know, whatever that could kind of look like. You've got a kid that gets trapped under a piece of furniture or, you know, somebody gets wedged in between something like, can you show up with some emergency strength to be able to help out in that kind of a situation?

Don Ross (18:51)
And if you can't, then there's some things that need to be worked on there, you know, like in terms of just taking care of your body and being able to use it in a way that you can offer some help. So that's kind of where we're coming from. Every guy I'll be, ought to be able to show up in some of those kinds of ways. whether or not you're the, you're the bodybuilder or, know, Hollywood action star type. you can still, you know, aim for strength.

Shaun (19:10)
Yeah, I like that sentiment.

Shaun (19:12)
All right, next we have courage. talk to me about courage. How do you define that and what's the importance?

Don Ross (19:18)
Yeah.

Don Ross (19:19)
Courage is really just facing your fears, being able to move towards the things that are inhibiting you. So, right. We, we sometimes tend to think of courage as being this sort of like, bravado where it's like, I'm the macho guy who's not really afraid of anything. that's a myth and a lie.

Don Ross (19:37)
There's really no such thing as a human being who's afraid of nothing unless you're dealing with some kind of like pathological illness, right? Did not experience fear is really subhuman. That's just not a part of who we are. so courage is really then what's, this is like an essential, mean, anywhere you hear any discussion about manhood, you're going to hear courage come up. And it really is just because men need this. We need the ability to move towards our fears and not run away from them. That's how we are meant to be called into confronting the world around us.

Don Ross (20:07)
And that can be physical fears, you know, that can be like, Hey, if you've got a home invader, what are you going to do about it? You know, are you able to show up in that kind of situation and offer something for protection? or are you going to move towards cowering in the corner? but it can also look like, you know, more simple kind of day to day things like, you need to have a conversation with your boss about getting a raise.

Don Ross (20:26)
or you need to have a hard conversation with your wife about a moment of conflict that the two of you had and you're pretty sure that when you bring it up, she's just gonna yell at you again. Like, can you move towards that conversation or are you just avoiding it? All of those kinds of things have to do with what courage looks like.

Shaun (20:40)
How about skill?

Don Ross (20:41)
Yeah. Skill is probably the most basic, the easiest to understand. also I think the most fun of all the marks of manhood really is just basically like, you need to be good at some things, right? Men are dependent upon for our set of skills. We are meant to be relied on for being able to do things, to accomplish things, to get shit done in the world. Right? That's just, that's kind of what it. Yeah, exactly.

Shaun (21:01)
and you do things and be of value to the community.

Don Ross (21:05)
Yeah,

Don Ross (21:05)
and that, and that, think that's really where skill becomes a good in the world is that our skills shouldn't just be for show or even really for our own benefit. They should be for helping better others around us. And part of the way that men need to learn to use and develop their skills is actually in developing others to be able to use those skills as well.

Don Ross (21:26)
part of passing on masculinity is actually passing on skills. One of the ways that men have always taught other men to be men is by teaching them how to do other things that men are called upon in the world to be able to do. That time spent together as men is a great way of just kind of affirming and calling out manhood in others. These days, most of us learn our skills not from other men, but from YouTube.

Don Ross (21:51)
And look, like I'm guilty of this as well. Like I go to YouTube for, you know, home repair fixes and how to handle this on my car. That's not a bad thing to do, but there is something really valuable about being able to learn those things from other men and in the context of relationship with other men that I do think we're missing out on today. And that's a good way that we can kind of push ourselves towards a more masculine experience of skill, which the internet kind of robs us of a little bit.

Shaun (22:17)
Yeah, it's a good point. I so I feel really good about those three scores. I feel like, you know, I'm doing all right. And then we have honor. And then I didn't do so hard on this. And honestly, Don, this is a real surprise to me. This is not something this is not I would not have expected to to be deficient in this. So I'm really interested to talk about

Don Ross (22:22)
Yeah, so this is great. yeah. These are your strong suits. Yeah, well, let's, let me just say for, yeah.

Shaun (22:46)
What's going on here?

Don Ross (22:46)
Yeah, absolutely. Real quick, before we jump to honor, let me just say the cool thing about this quiz is that even in the places where you are doing really well, know, the first three that we talked about, you can go back and look at your individual question scores and kind of say like, I'm just, looking at yours and saying like, okay, your strength scores look really good, but on question 12, you got a three where the others, you got a four and five. Maybe it's worth going back to look at, Hey, what's question 12?

Shaun (23:09)
Yeah, so let's go back. On the course of the 12th. Yeah.

Don Ross (23:14)
And just seeing is that something that needs a little more attention? You know, we kind of talked about that as you were going through it, like I've kind of slacked off on my consistency in my workouts because of some physical pain. Hey, maybe that's an area that needs addressing at the moment so that I can get back to that. It's just a good way of kind of measuring, even in the places where you're doing well, you still got room for improvement. So yeah, that's good. But okay, let's talk about honor a little bit. Cause I think this is, if skill is the easiest one to understand, honor is the hardest one to understand. So, it's good to spend a little time on that because.

Shaun (23:17)
Get into the gym.

Shaun (23:40)
Okay.

Don Ross (23:43)
I use the word honor a little differently than we tend to use in our culture today, right? We, tend to think of honor as a, a morally positive thing pretty much across the board, know, that, honor means something like integrity, like that. We stand for something good. We represent something good. We tend to think about honor a lot of times in like a military context that, you know, those who serve and are willing to give up themselves, have honor and are worthy of honor. all of those things are true. There's nothing wrong with that.

Don Ross (24:10)
but it's kind of an old, that's kind of a newer definition of the word. The older and I think kind of truer definition of the word really just means are you doing right by the people around you? So honor really has just basically kind of what we call peer pressure today is really closer to what kind of the older idea of honor was. It just really means the people that you're around, if you are living in a way that demonstrates you share their values and interests,

Don Ross (24:37)
then they're gonna consider you worthy of honor. They're gonna give you praise for it. They're gonna like you. They're gonna accept you. They're going to, you know, toot your horn and let you know that you're one of the group. You you kind of fit the standards for being part of the pack. That means that you are worthy of honor. Now, that's where honor becomes more of a morally neutral trait because if you're surrounding yourselves with people who have bad values and who are reinforcing things that aren't constructive to society, you can still be worthy of their honor.

Shaun (25:06)
Of their

Don Ross (25:07)
but you might be doing really bad things, right?

Shaun (25:07)
honor, Yeah.

Don Ross (25:10)
So, you we see this kind of in the way that we use the phrase, like there's honor among thieves, right? Are you kind of think about that in the sense of like almost like a pirate code, you know, sort of like, yeah, pirates had honor among each other, but that didn't mean they were doing good things. But we see this today, even especially with guys, I think probably the most prominent places like in fraternity culture. I was in a fraternity in college.

Don Ross (25:31)
And there's no doubt that like fraternity culture can devolve really quickly into guys doing some really poor things. but it's because, the big man on campus can kind of be the guy who like, you know, drinks the most and is able to, you know, have the worst antics and kind of survive the weekend with the best stories to tell about it. but unfortunately some guys like don't survive those weekends, right? They don't make it through or they come out with really bad consequences for their lives. It doesn't mean that they weren't worthy of honor because the guys around them were all promoting that.

Don Ross (26:00)
you know, but it doesn't mean they weren't maybe choosing to honor the best things in their lives. So the point here with all of that is though, is that you got to have guys around you in order to be able to have honor. Honor is an inherently relational trait. It's not something that you just have because you do good things. It's something that you earn because you're doing the things that the people around you think are worthy of their respect and their acceptance and approval.

Don Ross (26:27)
That's really where honor comes from. And men, honestly, we crave this. We want to be worthy of the honor of the people around us. And as we move into adulthood, more often than not, we tend to replace that with, how can I get accolades in my workplace? And that kind of becomes our version of honor. But that is really not the same thing because it's lacking that sort of relational depth that honor's really built on. So it's all about relationship, all about peers.

Don Ross (26:51)
all about having good men around you who are gonna push you and challenge you to upholding some really good things to make you a better man.

Shaun (26:57)
Yeah, so it's almost it's like it's a combination of being honorable. So being worthy of being honored and respected by, a tribe, and then the experience of actually having the tribe to honor you. And I'll bet you if we drilled into these responses, that second thing is where I'm not being intentional about that. And I'm not necessarily putting myself in the position.

Don Ross (27:06)
Yeah. Yeah.

Don Ross (27:12)
That's right. That's right.

Shaun (27:25)
Like I probably am worthy of honor in a lot of ways. I am honorable in that sense, but I'm not maximizing my opportunities to experience that.

Don Ross (27:35)
Yeah. Yeah. And,

Don Ross (27:37)
look, Sean, you would be in the company of about 95 % of men in our culture right now. So yeah, you know, that, that is kind of the way that we are living at the moment. And I would call that, sub masculine. Like that's really not how we are designed.

Shaun (27:41)
I would expect that, yeah.

Shaun (27:48)
Yeah, this is the

Shaun (27:49)
nature, a significant portion of the nature of the masculinity crisis we're experiencing right now is men don't have that.

Don Ross (27:58)
Yep, you're absolutely right.

Shaun (27:59)
And yeah, I'm probably in, I don't know, the 90 % tile of people who could or should have it, and I don't. Yeah, interesting. That's fascinating. Talk to me about allegiance.

Don Ross (28:11)
Yeah. So allegiance, if, if honor honor and allegiance are both relational traits. And if honor is kind of the like horizontal relationships, you know, your peers, allegiance is really the vertical aspect of that. It's, it's dealing with how you relate to authority figures. it's dealing to how you relate to sort of your ultimate authority in life, whether that's a, your God or your code or kind of your, moral philosophy. it also just has to do with what things in your life might be mastering you.

Don Ross (28:41)
even though you haven't intended for them to do that. So that could be anything like additives or bad substances, vices in your life that have control over you. It can also be, we looked for you at the question about time and what your schedule is like. So it could be that your schedule is controlling you in some ways that don't actually reflect what you want your values to be. All of that becomes a part of the allegiance conversation to really see, you becoming the man that you actually intend to be?

Shaun (29:07)
Yeah, that's spectacular. Well, I really love this. then so let's just go to the backstage and here's where you kind of define these things. then so what do we do next? I mean, I look at these and I say, boy, and this is funny. It really, this mechanism really gets you going. makes you, it starts to make you feel, I want to improve my score here. And so.

Don Ross (29:30)
Right, right.

Don Ross (29:34)
Yes, uh-huh.

Shaun (29:35)
Like I really want to get these honor

Shaun (29:36)
and allegiance scores up above 20. And you've done, you've taken great pains to make this value neutral. Like, it's not, you know, it's not like an honor of 12 is bad and so you're a bad person, but you still want to get that score up. And so, yeah, so what do I do next?

Don Ross (29:38)
There you go.

Don Ross (29:45)
Right, You wanna make it better, yep, exactly. Yeah, so

Don Ross (29:51)
the back page there just kinda gives you some basic information about manhood tribes and a little bit of, you know, some simple definitions which we've talked through pretty well. But then gives you a kind of a next step. So the easiest next step is just to go there. I've got my YouTube link that you can go check out. I've got some videos that are specifically about each of those five marks. What you can do to be able to grow in each of those things.

Don Ross (30:13)
and maybe even how to design what we call a manhood challenge. What's something simple that you can do to try to improve in each of those areas? And I would just say like, you if honor is your lowest score and the place where you feel like you need to grow the most, go and watch the video about honor and see, you know, what are some things that you might be able to do to design for yourself to kind of take a next step at getting better at honor. That's really the greatest thing about these five marks of manhood, I think, is that...

Don Ross (30:37)
you're not stuck with where you're at at the moment. know, every man can get better at every one of these things. And so in light of that, you can grow and improve as a man. You're not stuck at the level of, you know, masculinity that you are today. You can get better at any of it. So yeah, that would be where I would go as a next step is just to watch some of those videos and see how to design some of your own challenges. And then when you download this quiz, you give your email to us for that and we'll start sending you some information on like ways that you can take some next steps.

Don Ross (31:05)
You can check out my book, How to Be a Man, that gives some more details on all of this. You can kind of get into our orbit at Manhood Tribes and even if you're interested in it, move towards building your own tribe where you've got a group of guys around you who are doing these kinds of things and helping you to improve as a man. So yeah, that's kind of where it goes from here.

Shaun (31:22)
This is spectacular. Don, thank you so much. First of all, thank you for creating this resource and thank you for putting this out in the world and doing what you do. But also thank you for going through it with me and walking me through this journey. This has been an absolute delight and a little bit of a surprise at times, but I'm really glad we got to do this together.

Don Ross (31:43)
Yeah, me too, Sean. I've not done this live with anybody before like this, so this was really fun to get to do. I appreciate you doing it with me. Yeah, me too.

Shaun (31:47)
I'm so glad we did. I'm so glad

Shaun (31:50)
we did. For everybody listening, head over to Manhood Tribes. The links are in the show notes. And give it a shot yourself. I think the results might surprise you, but they certainly will be something that you're glad you did. And remember, you are a great parent.