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Have you ever failed at anything in your life?

A job, a career, a relationship, a diet, an exercise routine, a test? Anything at all? Be honest...

If you have, congratulations! You're just like every human being alive and every human being in the history of the universe. We all fail eventually, whether it's a monumental failure like a failed business or trivial failure like waking up late for work.

But, you know what the silver lining of failure is? That you actually had the courage to give something a shot and take some responsibility for your life and your decisions.

You failed a business? At least you had the courage to try!
You failed at a relationship? At least you had the courage to open yourself up to love and heartbreak.
You failed at waking up on time for work? At least you're responsible enough to set your alarm to get to work on time and be a valuable employee.
You failed at a diet? At least you had the self-awareness to realize that you needed to make a change.

Failure doesn't define us. So what does define us? How we respond to failure. How we bounce back, learn a lesson, take responsibility, grow and keep moving forward. That's what matters! Because everybody fails, but not everybody has the courage and resilience to keep pushing forward.

Listen in to find out how you can build your resilience against failure by learning to detach yourself from expectations and finding your true identity without the labels of your job, your relationships your possessions or anything else.

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Yes, it is true, we evolved from apes and animals. Yes, it is true, we learned how to behave and think in certain ways in order to survive and thrive and make sure that our genetics carry on when we're gone.

But, it is also true that we are almost in the year 2020! We have evolved as a species and as a culture, but we haven't evolved as much as humans and as individual men. We no longer need to be on the lookout for the dangers that once plagued us. We no longer have a need for the irrational fears that plague us on a daily basis.

There are so many men out there--I used to be one--that feel they still need to solely be that tough, macho, protector, defender, hunter, fighter that we once all were expected and needed to be. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being all these things, but why can't we be more?

Why do we just have to be relegated to what someone decided men are supposed to think, speak and act like? Why can't we evolve just like all forms of life do over time? Why can't we dig deep into who we really are and bring that truth to the forefront instead of living a superficial life?

Join me as I have a conversation with Dr. John Schinnerer about how we can all dig a little deeper, be a little more honest, mindful and vulnerable, and be better men.

Dr. Schinnerer graduated from UC Berkeley with a PhD in educational psychology. His areas of expertise range from high performance, to stress and anger management, to positive psychology, to creating happy and thriving relationships. He wrote the award-winning book "How Can I Be Happy?" He was an expert consultant on the Academy Award-winning Pixar movie "Inside Out". He is the host of the Evolved Caveman podcast.

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You hear the argument quite a bit these days:

"Masculinity is not toxic! What's so toxic about being a man?! We can't teach our little boys that being a man is wrong!"

I hear you, and I don't disagree with you. There is nothing wrong with being masculine or being a man, nothing at all. What's wrong about providing for your family? What's wrong with protecting your family? What's wrong with being tough, brave and figuring stuff out on your own without any help? Nothing. Could we come up with a better term? Probably.

I believe the interpretation of "toxic masculinity" is what is a bit skewed. Those who speak up about it aren't saying that masculinity as a whole is bad... at least I hope they're not. What they are arguing is that teaching our young boys that this is the ONLY way to be a real man is detrimental to their emotional health. By burdening them with these essentially unattainable expectations, we fill them with the sense that if they fall short of our expectations of what a man should be then they're not good enough to call themselves men.

Telling someone they're not good enough just the way they are can do nothing but harm.

Masculinity is not toxic, even females embody some masculine traits... and men embody some female traits. Surprise!

What is toxic is imposing our will and expectations on these young men and sticking them in these "man boxes" that hinder their true growth rather than promote it.

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If you Googled "vulnerability" you may come across definitions as follows: 

"capable of being physically or emotionally wounded"... "open to attack or damage"... "open to moral attack, criticism, temptation, etc."

After reading these definitions, who in their right mind would ever willfully WANT to be vulnerable? As a human being, evolved from animals and other living things, our main goal in life is to survive. To survive so we can procreate and keep populating the world with our offspring. 

When you read a definition like this, your mind may go to an animal in the wild having to fight for it's life, worrying about every sound and every movement because it could be the difference between life and death.

You think about soldiers in war who, with one vulnerable mistake, can be killed if they're not constantly protecting themselves and on the lookout for enemies and danger.

Luckily for us, we're not animals in the wild or soldiers at war that constantly need to be vigilant for the sake of our survival. We're not even cavemen anymore who also needed to worry about every possible threat whether it was a lion, disease, poisonous mushrooms or rival tribe members wanting to kill us in our sleep.

We're living in 2019, most of us in developed parts of the world where we can afford to let our guard down a bit and not constantly have to be on a stressful lookout.

Now, let's look at another definition of vulnerability, this one from Brené Brown:

"Vulnerability is not winning or losing: it's having the courage to show up and be seen where we have no control over the outcome; vulnerability is not weakness, it is our greatest measure of strength."

This is the definition I adhere to.

Being purposely and mindfully vulnerable has not weakened me, on the contrary it has strengthened me and filled me with a sense of courage that I never had before!

How? Because every time I open myself up to fear, failure, ridicule, disagreement, disapproval, shame and other negative outcomes, I come out the other side alive and realize that being vulnerable didn't kill me.

How can you be more vulnerable?

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 Brené Brown describes shame as follows:

"It is the intense feeling that washes over us and makes us feel so flawed that we question whether we are worthy of love, belonging and connection."

In my opinion, that is one of the worst, if not THE worst, feelings any human being can ever feel. We're social creatures, we're meant to bond and connect with others, not live a solitary life in isolation.

Our societies were built on coming together and helping each other out and working together. When you make someone feel like they are unworthy and not good enough, to our primitive minds that can feel like death, or a precursor to death.

Getting kicked out of the group, whether physically or mentally/emotionally, can feel like a death sentence. That is what it feels like to our bodies when we feel shame. We feel like we're not good enough just as we are and if we're not good enough to be part of the group then we're going to be alone, and if we're alone we're certainly going to die without the help and protection of the group.

This notion of "self-made" anything is bullsh*t. Even if you believe you are the most independent person in the world, at the very least your parents came together at some point in time to make your existence possible. If it weren't for them you never would've existed.

As humans, socializing and connecting is in our DNA. When we make each other feel like we're not good enough just as we are, we drive a stake straight into the heart of what it means to be a human being inhabiting this earth.

I've got good news though: you are good enough just the way you are.

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From the moment we come out of the womb, we're taught--whether explicitly or implicitly--what it means to be a man.

We're tough, we fight, we don't cry, we don't ask for help, we don't wear pink, we man up and figure it out and we sure as hell don't talk about our feelings.

It's as if we're programmed to go against what makes us human: feeling our feelings and being able to analyze them and figure out where they may be coming from and why. Why do they do this to us?

Yes, as men, we are biologically made and built to do certain things and handle certain things that typically--but not always--we may excel at more than women. And there's nothing wrong with that!

There's nothing wrong with being tough, brave, being a provider and a protector, being self-reliant or being a leader--these are great traits to have! But just because we may be built for these things doesn't mean we HAVE to live and die by them and it doesn't mean we're less men because we don't fully embody these.

Also, just because we are men, it doesn't mean that we don't feel things and don't have emotions--things that are considered feminine traits. We all embody both masculine and feminine traits, it's part of being human. It just so happens that someone someday decided to label these traits as "masculine" and "feminine". We humans love order and organization and labels.

The problem is, when we say "this is how a man thinks, speaks and acts", we're simultaneously saying "you're not a real man if you think, speak and act differently than this cultural norm and expectation". You're labeled as feminine, gay or a p*ssy.

It's time to blow up this man box we're all put in and start to figure out what masculinity and being a man means to us, as individuals.

My definition of masculinity is being "the man". Not the man they told you to be, but THE MAN you were born to be. Truthfully, authentically. Nothing is more masculine than that.

What's your definition of masculinity?

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What is your biggest fear? None you say?

If you're human, then at the very, very least, you have a fear of death. Even if it's only the subconscious, lizard-brain part of you that knows it, it's there. As with all other living species, our chief aim in life is to survive and procreate to make sure our kind keeps on living, it's built into our DNA.

You see animals living in fear and looking out for danger all the time. But, unlike animals, we have the amazing (but sometimes debilitating) gifs of consciousness, foresight and reasoning. What do these gifts bring with them? The knowing that one day, we are no longer going to be alive.

We humans, we love certainty. I believe a lot of our fears lie in uncertainty: the uncertainty of our future, the uncertainty of whether our spouse will leave us, the uncertainty of knowing if people are talking about us behind our backs, the uncertainty of whether our next decision will be the right one.

We love certainty because it goes hand in hand with our survival. If we know what dangers lie ahead, like the tiger hiding behind that bush over there, we have better odds of surviving and procreating.

You know what the great thing is? The only time you are going to encounter a tiger nowadays is at the zoo, and you will be well protected. You no longer have the need for these irrational fears that your brain comes up with because it's trying to protect you.

These days, your fears can actually lead you to more certainty, not less.

Hit PLAY and find out how you can do so in your life.