Hello, and welcome back to Raising Men.

My name is Sean Dawson.

Now, let me ask you a question to start off today.

What does it actually look like to protect your people?

Now, when you picture a strong man protecting those under his care, what image pops into
your head?

Is it a guy kind of standing at a podium, beating his chest, making sure everybody in the
room

Knows that he's the toughest alpha in the building?

Or is it something quieter?

Is it a man or even a woman who puts their ego in a box, who takes on genuine personal
risk, and who ensures that the people relying on them don't carry an ounce of extra danger

just so that they can get a photo op or brag?

Twitter.

So today I want to tell you a story.

I want to talk about a real live event, something that happened back in November of 2003.

Now, whatever your political leanings are, I want you to put them completely in a drawer
for the next 10 minutes.

I'm not interested in party politics today.

That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm interested in examining character.

And I'm interested in what happens when a leader

Understands the difference between performative strength and genuine protective
masculinity.

So back in the fall of 2003, President George W.

Bush decided that he wanted to go share Thanksgiving dinner with the troops in Baghdad.

Now, put yourself in those shoes for a moment.

He Iraq at the time was an active

Explosive combat zone.

Insurgents were firing short shoulder launched missiles at aircraft landing at Baghdad
International Airport.

Just a couple weeks prior, there had been a DHL airplane that had been attacked,
successfully hit, and basically miraculously made it back to the airport intact.

And the crew survived that attack at that same airport.

And bringing the President of the United States into that environment was, strategically
speaking, it was a nightmare.

And if word leaked, if if a reporter had filed a preview story or if somebody in the White
House wanted to brag about what the commander-in-chief was planning to do, maybe if we had

Twitter back then, even, that airport would have become the biggest target on the planet.

Enemy forces would have reigned everywhere.

Mortar, every rocket, every missile that they had directly onto that airfield.

It would have been indefensible.

Now, the temptation for a politician, or frankly, any other person driven by their own ego
and glory and personal ambition is to announce that grand gesture.

Look, look what I'm doing.

Look at how brave I am.

Look how I'm going be flying into a war zone.

Now, Bush did the exact opposite.

He slipped off of his ranch in Crawford, Texas in the middle of the night.

He wore a baseball cap pulled down low, riding in an unmarked vehicle so that his staff
didn't know who it was.

He boarded Air Force One in total secrecy.

plane flew across the Atlantic with the window shades pulled down and with the interior
lights turned off so it wouldn't be identified in the night sky.

They landed in Baghdad in pitch black darkness, running on silent, invisible protocols.

Why?

Because George W.

Bush understood something crucial about power.

If you expose your people to danger.

Just to prove how brave you are, just to satisfy your own ego.

You're not protecting them.

You're using them.

And he took on the personal physical risk of flying into a combat zone.

And so did everybody else on that plane.

They did it knowingly with their eyes open.

And he minimized the risk to his soldiers by keeping his mouth shut.

He didn't demand applause beforehand.

He didn't bring people on the plane so that they could snap pictures of him in his moment
of glory, because that would have unnecessarily introduced them to risk.

He didn't bring more people than he needed to.

When he walked out from behind the curtain in that mess hall, carrying a platter of
turkey, the 600 young men and women in that room were completely blindsided.

They thought that they were listening to a standard holiday speech from a local command.

Instead, their commander-in-chief showed up, served them food, looked them in the eye,
shook their hands, and he got wheels up before the enemy even realized he'd been on the

continent.

That is a calculated, regulated, protective, healthy version of masculinity.

Now, in our work here at Raising Men, we talk a lot about the distinction between what
psychologist Steven Stosny calls the toddler brain and the adult brain.

And what I like to call is the Conan brain and the Sherlock brain.

Now the Conan brain, we if you've if you're a regular listener to the show, you understand
that the Conan brain is your amygdala.

It's the reactive, emotional, impulsive.

It's loud.

It's the part of a man that operates on pure threat response and ego, part of a man or a
woman.

Conan brain wants to throw its weight around.

Conan brain wants immediate validation, wants to be seen as the big man, and demands that
everybody bow to its authority.

Sherlock brain is your prefrontal cortez.

It's the strategic, thoughtful, regulated, frankly, quiet side of your brain.

Sherlock brain looks at a situation and asks, what's the actual goal here?

How do I achieve maximum good while absorbing the risk myself rather than dumping the risk
onto the people I'm responsible for?

And when a man operates from Conan brain,

His strength is short-lived.

Sometimes it's necessary to do that in certain circumstances.

You know, we evolved with that.

His strength is short-lived and it's brittle.

He's posturing often because he's insecure.

He needs the audience.

He needs the chest thumping.

He needs the adoration of the crowds.

But when a man operates from Sherlock Brain,

His strength and his sense of self-worth, it's grounded.

He can land in the dark.

He can serve a meal.

He can do the work without needing a parade.

Because it's not about the parade.

It's about the work.

Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, he said, waste no more time arguing about what a
good man should be.

Be one.

In other words, virtue isn't about broadcasting your righteousness.

It's about executing your duty.

Think about the crisis facing young men today.

We live in a world where boys are inundated.

With performative masculinity.

They turn on their phones and they see influencers being, you know, flexing their least
supercars, yelling into microphones, insulting people, making fools of themselves, telling

young guys that being a man means dominance, means posturing, means total self-absorption.

And we're teaching our sons that masculinity is a show that you put on for status.

As Will Storr notes in his research,

On status dynamics.

When young men can't find healthy ways to earn prestige through competence and character,
they resort to dominance games.

They try to look tough because they don't know how to be strong.

We need to teach our young men to be strong, not to look tough.

The result of that process is boys.

Who are anxious, who are isolated, who are brittle, boys who think that strength means
making a lot of noise.

But they actually crumble the second real pressure is applied.

We need to raise men.

So how do we translate this Air Force One landing in total darkness at Baghdad down into
our living rooms or our kitchens and our basketball courts?

I've got some thoughts about this.

What's the lesson for our sons?

Well, as usual it starts with how we handle our own power as parents.

Like when your ten-year-old son blows the assignment on the court or your teenager comes
home past curfew, which which of your brains are you operating from?

Are you dropping into Conan brain?

Are you getting loud, flexing your authority, making a massive scene?

Are you making the moment about your anger and your wounded ego and your authority?

Are you creating fear in your boy?

Or do you stay in Sherlock Brain?

Because Sherlock Brain realizes that your job as a parent isn't to win an argument or
intimidate your boy so that he'll be afraid to misstep.

Your job is to facilitate the development of his character.

He's going to develop his own character, but it's your job to give him the environment
that allows him to do it in the most productive way.

To allow him to

Create the most effective character that will thrive in the world that he will graduate
into.

So that means absorbing the emotional volatility in the room so that your kid doesn't have
to drown in it.

And that he can see, that's what I need to be doing.

It means holding firm boundaries.

Right?

Boundaries are an important component.

But you'd need to do it with a calm voice and a steady heart.

You don't need to yell.

You don't need to yell when you actually hold the authority.

It's one of those things like wealth or freedom that you can only get obliquely through
indirect offer.

Authority is one of those things.

So let's address.

One more side of this, which is how do we treat our kids' vulnerable moments?

In the age of social media, I see a lot of parents broadcasting their kids' meltdowns and
their failures, their personal struggles online for clout, for views, or a quick laugh.

And I don't I mean there's there's a lot to that.

And it's but that is the opposite of protection, isn't it?

It's

Exposing your child to public humiliation, potentially, just to feed your own need for
attention.

Is that really what you want to be doing?

If George W.

Bush had broadcasted that trip for attention, he would have put his soldiers, himself, and
the crew of his airplane in harm's way.

When you exploit your child's hard moments for public validation, you're sacrificing their
trust for your ego.

Now, a real parent.

Covers his kids, protects his kids, protects their dignity in public, even when he
corrects their behavior in private.

Real strength is quiet.

It's deliberate, takes on risk, carries the weight.

And most importantly, it lets the results speak for themselves.

If you're truly strong,

You don't need to convince people that of that fact.

So we want to raise boys who are strong without being brittle, we have to model quiet
calculated strength in our day-to-day lives.

And so here are a couple of practical ways that you could practice this with your sons
this week.

First of all, practice a three-second pause.

So the next time your boy pushes your buttons and tests a boundary or creates chaos in the
house, don't react instantly.

That instant reaction is the Conan brain trying to take the wheel.

It feels like the anger that you feel is real, but it's not.

It's a symptom.

So, as we said before, wind the clock.

Give me three seconds.

Step into Sherlock brain before you open your mouth and show your son what a regulated
regulated, dangerous but controlled parent looks like.

When tension rises.

You might do a service project together, find something this weekend that needs to be
done, either in the neighborhood or out in the world, or just even in the house, and do it

without making a big deal about it.

And then lastly, of course, protect his dignity in front of others.

If your son messes up this week, whether whatever, at a ballgame or in front of relatives
or at school, don't obviously don't humiliate him in public to show everybody what a

certain stern disciplinarian you are.

Handle the correction quietly, one-on-one, in a safe space.

Make him feel safe.

Gentlemen, ladies, parents, our boys.

They don't need us to be loud.

They don't need us to posture.

They don't need us to beat our chests.

They need us to show up.

They need us to carry the weight.

They need us to keep the lights off when necessary and serve the meal.

So let's go build men who know that difference.

And remember that you are a great parent.