Raising Men (00:02.242)
Welcome back to Raising Men. My name is Sean Dawson, and I want to thank you so much for listening and for your feedback and sharing the show with your friends. We've gotten such great response, and it's it's it's really, really makes me feel good about this entire project. Now, I got a question in real life today that I want to wrestle with you guys live, and it's something that.

I think about a lot because I have several f I have several friends that have dealt with this and it's touched other parts of my family as well. So my friend asked me, he says, what happens if you want to support your kid and support his passions? But the kid seems to have no passions at all other than doing drugs. Now, this friend has a son in high school, and that's the situation he's dealing with.

Now, I'll tell you that this scenario is probably my biggest fear in life. My kids are too young to be dealing with this now. But it's right around the corner. And I think that I'm probably setting the groundwork today for how my son will deal with these challenges in the future. And

I should also make it clear that I am not an expert on this. In fact, I I mean I've I've never dealt directly with it either as an afflicted person. I don't I I don't deal with drugs, I don't do drugs. and I don't have the kind of experience that professionals or even parents who are struggling with their children suffering from this have. So as far as tactic.

You probably should look elsewhere. But I do want to think through a strategic perspective with you. And I this isn't fully vetted. I I don't know how strong this is gonna be, but this is what came what came to mind. Now, first of all, I think that when we were younger, I think me and this friend.

Raising Men (02:28.908)
Right. I I think that the world was really different. I think that it felt like it was filled with opportunity when I was a young boy. It was inspiring. It was, it felt like it was on the upswing. And it felt exhilarating to be a young man. But now maybe this is just old man yelling at cloud stuff, but it feels different.

It feels maybe like the game is rigged, like our culture cares more about making sure that a girl who was born with a penis feels included and gets to play women's softball than it does about a young man literally having nothing to give the world that the world seems to value. Because the world has moved on.

From what they feel they have to offer, maybe. And the world is focused on the advancement of literally anyone else. At least that's the way it feels to them. Because the way that our culture was structured when his dad was young, our culture was unfair to.

The other kids, dads. And so now, out of some perverted sense of justice, it needs to be unfair to him. I think that's probably the way the world looks to a 16-year-old boy these days. Meanwhile, at the same time, their access to the addictive stuff that was totally out of reach to us when we were young.

Is just sitting there, available, within arm's reach. It's tantalizing.

Raising Men (04:34.797)
It's like, you know, imagine you just really, really, really like donuts and you couldn't escape donuts. Donuts were just everywhere. They were constantly piled all over everything. Donuts of every possible shape, every possible color, every possible flavor.

And so whereas maybe me and my friend, we would huddle when we were young, we would huddle with our buddies around a torn Playboy plage or Playboy page that some kid found in the woods one day, right? Our kids, our boys, my friend's son has access to a virtual fire hose of porn a couple of thumbtaps away on the device.

He carries around with him all day, every day. It keeps him connected to his friends, it keeps him connected to his parents, and it keeps him connected to a fire hose of porn.

Raising Men (05:41.196)
I I think about my friend. Like when my friend was younger, he would he and his buddies in high school would sit around smoking ditch weed, right? Pretending that the slightest fuzzy feeling was this profound high. Meanwhile, his boy has a vape pen with effectively limitless amounts of medicinal quality, pure THC, right in his backpack.

And he can access that stuff all by himself, totally alone. No buddies, no struggle, no hoarding around the stuff, no convincing a stranger to buy him a Playboy outside of a 7-Eleven. To the extent that there is a community, it's a community of other frustrated boys in their own little basements, virtually or actually.

They're pissing and moaning about all the same stuff. So they turn

to people they that resonate with them. They turn to Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, or Elon Musk, or Donald Trump, who are the only people in their lives.

That empathize or that seem to empathize, right? Who who voice their pain and their frustration, who tell them that it's good to be who they are, that it will be okay, that that help is on the way. They can get rich buying crypto or SpaceX stock. And they don't need to, you know, they don't need to work necessarily. And they see on Instagram these people leading these lives.

Raising Men (07:33.101)
believes that they aspire to.

But like the Iranians that flocked to the streets earlier this year and were shot down by their government, that sentiment, that sentiment that help is on the way, just like all the plat other platitudes that they've always heard, turned out to be a lie. It turned out to be a grift. Crypto took a dive. Trump, in their perspective, turned out to be exactly the grifting huckster that those idiot socialists on the left.

Thought it was.

Copel isn't on the way. He can't get rich sitting in his basement playing video games.

Raising Men (08:18.593)
No, I I think that it's a profoundly difficult time to be a young man.

Maybe not more difficult than it was to be a young black man in the sixties. Maybe not more difficult than it was to live in the medieval ages, but difficult nonetheless, and difficult in a different way.

Raising Men (08:50.763)
And it's not just. They don't deserve it.

Raising Men (08:56.525)
So what can we do about it? The culture definitely isn't going to change on a time scale that will help us. And I think that the problem lies, or that the answer lies in the problem somewhat. At least for a specific boy, our culture has has turned its back on young men in exactly the way that I described. But at the same time, it

Needs healthy young men to thrive. Our culture thirsts for healthy young men. And so the opportunities are vast for a young man who has his stuff together. It's it's like when you when you meet, you know, a 30-year-old person who

Has grown up in disadvantaged circumstances, who's really put together, right? You just long for them to thrive. You want them to win. The cultural forces arrayed against this person are so vast that you long for him to succeed or her because you want to believe that you're in a world where that's how things work. You want to help make that world happen. And so you want to help.

However you can, and I think that young men have that kind of opportunity today, if they have the right mindset.

So what that mean? What is the right mindset? They have to have a vision for their lives. They have to have an identity wrapped in something bigger and greater than themselves. They have to have a vision for their lives that inspires them to get up every day.

Raising Men (10:54.484)
and do the little things that it takes to get to the top of the mountain. They need to have that picture.

of what it means to be where they want to be, to be at the top of that mountain, to give them the strength to take their next step uphill instead of downhill.

Raising Men (11:21.49)
Frankly, they have to create that vision for themselves. It can't be imposed by their parents or their school or their coach or their friends. It needs to be rooted in inspiration, not shame. It needs to be intrinsic and not extrinsic.

Raising Men (11:44.917)
You know, I I I need to give a lot more thought to what that looks like in practice, and I'd be really interested to hear your comments on this and and and what you think. But I do want to share with you an exercise that has helped me in my life greatly. It was invented by a guy named Lanny Bashin, who was an Olympic and world championship target shooter.

And target shooting is one of these sports, it's it's a weird sport. It's it's totally different than most other sports in in the in the sense that it is a closed motor skill, which means it's like shooting a free throw. There is nothing that is affecting whether you succeed or not, just you. And you actually succeed the the in order to succeed in this sport.

You have to move less. The less you move, the more successful you can be. Down to the point where if you have to be, in order to perform at the highest level of this sport, you have to like actually take your shots between heartbeats, because your heart will affect the position of the barrel enough to make you lose compared to a guy who has that under control.

Raising Men (13:14.838)
So Bashan's origin story is that he choked in the 1972 Olympics. He was physically the most prepared that he'd ever been in his entire life. He was in great shape. He had his heartbeat down below 60 beats a minute. So he had plenty of time to take the shot and he knew how to do that.

Raising Men (13:38.612)
And he thought when he got to the final match that he was a shoe in to win because he was up against a guy who had gotten the silver in the in the Olympics before.

And who was under this tremendous pressure to win and he felt like Basham thought that he would choke, that this other guy would choke. But instead, and but by the way, Basham consists consistently beat this guy in practice.

So Bashon thought that this guy would choke, but instead, Basham was the one whose mind failed him. He lost that day. But he resolved to make a study of mental performance so that it would never happen to him again. And what happened was that his heart started racing. He started having anxiety, and his heart resulted in.

Him not being able to shoot accurately. And and he ended up in silver instead of gold. Now, I don't know. I would if I got silver medal in any in any Olympic sport, I feel pretty good about myself. And I think he felt pretty good about himself too. But he knew that that wasn't the best performance he could have given. He knew that he had a gold medal performance inside of him, but his mind.

His mind failed him. And isn't that always the way it is? Isn't it our mind that controls how we react to things, how we interact with the world, how we respond to the challenges, and whether we succeed or failed. It's all in our minds. And so Basham wrote a book on this effort. And I have that book right here.

Raising Men (15:36.01)
it's called With Winning in Mind. And one of the central tools, you should buy the book, and I'll put a link in the show notes. But one of the central tools in this book, he's got more, but something he calls the directive affirmation. And this is a statement in a specific format that you write out and you read it to yourself at least six times per day. And it contains your goal, like I want to weigh 215 pounds or

Maybe I want to have the highest rated masculinity podcast in the world. Has a time limit. so a specific date and time that that thing is supposed to be true. The personal pay value for reaching the goal, why do you want it? What does your life look like when you have it? Why do you even care?

And then the plan to achieve the goal. And these are all arranged in a particular structure where you write as if the goal had been achieved. And looks like this: it's like on December 31st, 2026, I weigh 215 pounds. I feel and I look great. My wife reinforces how good I look, and I have the energy to romp around with my kids. I eat a high protein, a high protein, low-fat, low-carb diet. I stop eating.

Before I fool and I exercise excellent portion control. I exercise daily and get my heart rate up into the cardio zone at least three times a week for 30 minutes. I read and rehearse this affirmation daily. I weigh 215 pounds. That's an example of a directive affirmation. And then you put that note in places where.

You will encounter it organically at least six times per week, like on your bathroom mirror or on the dashboard of your car. And every time you encounter it, you take the 30 seconds it takes to read it in full each time.

Raising Men (17:34.923)
I'm telling you, you need to read the book.

But here's what I'll tell ya.

This little exercise, creating this card and reading it six times a day, is so much harder than you imagine it would be. It's crazy. But literally every time I've ever done this, for big goals or small, it has worked. Every single time, it has worked.

So for me, it's just an amazing tool to exercise and create change in your life. So give it a try. Read the book and give it a try.

I'll leave you with one other thing, and that's a much more concise way to put this whole thing. And it's by Sister Hazel, which in one of my favorite songs. And they say, If you want to be someone else, change your mind. You are a great parent.