We all want change — but we want to be in control of it.

So how do you control change in a way that works? You initiate it. If you aren’t changing, change will find you and start changing you. If you aren’t changing your body and health for the better, the change of aging and chronic illness will get you.

Here are four easy ways to harness change through using the 4 Ps of change:

Predict

Give up trying to control change, but you can try to predict what will happen. The most useful thing I learned in college was from a psych professor who said, “The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.” You want to know what someone will do, look at what he’s done. Unless some life changing event happens, he will behave the same way. He may say one thing, but he will do the opposite if that’ what he’s always done.

If you don’t like what you ended up doing (it might be the same kind of relationships with women, or the same dead-end jobs), create a life-changing event(s). Don’t let the past predict your future. Deliberately create a catalytic event(s) to shake things up. It might be going on the Paleo Diet to lose 50lbs. It might be doing a series of Rolfing sessions. Or it could be joining a men’s group to learn what you never got to learn. Take new action that is not what you or others would predict, given your circumstances.

Change your prediction through changing behaviors. If you don’t know where to start, take a class in something that has always excited you. Let your positive movement take you into the unpredictable.

Principles

What are your principles — the values you live by? Get honest. Not the ones others told you to live by or the ones you delude yourself into believing you live by. Under stress, what do you back yourself up against?

If you asked five friends who will be straight with you to describe the three principles you live by, and they don’t match yours, or each friend has a different set, you aren’t living life based on principles. It doesn’t mean you’re bad. It just means you don’t have your own back. Without having your own back you will never initiate significant change.

Let go of things that don’t serve you—others’ principles, your own principles, old values that don’t serve you anymore. Do a principle house cleaning. Hang with and model those who have the principles you want. Try them on. Do they fit? If they don’t, move on.

Patterns

What are your patterns? Not the little ones like brushing your teeth or the route you take to work. What are your meta patterns? What patterns do your relationships have, be it your friends or your lovers? How good are you at setting boundaries and saying no? What are your patterns with your resources? Do you squander them, or do you invest them?

You will never produce deep change for yourself or others if you are pissing away your time, money, energy, health, sleep, or love. Big change demands focus and the resources to move mountains. Get honest, we all do it – where do you waste your resources? Having a few outlets to be able to relax is important. But at the end of the day or at the end of the year, where are you?

Getting sober to your patterns and what motivation is behind them can be the most difficult action. It can also be the most liberating. When  draining patterns are replaced by life- affirming patterns, you start to build your energetic bank balance back up. Then you can live off the interest you produce as you build your principle.

Phenomena

Shit happens. So bring it on. Skiing down a steep run when you just started skiing is frightening.  It’s not fun. Skiing down that run with kickass skies, in shape, and as an experienced skier is exhilarating.

The difference between dread, resistance and procrastination, verses excitement, joy and enthusiasm is just being prepared. How do you get prepared? You have experiences.

Living life means being present to live. It’s not being some extreme athlete that has to continually raise the bar to stay interested because he’s so wound up. It’s being relaxed and fully aware of what is occurring so the little sensations are felt. Rather than needing to be hit with a hammer to feel any body sensation, you feel the love from the light touch of your lover.

We grow up in a culture that tells us more is better, harder is better, faster is better. Without even realizing we are conditioned to more, we are addicted to more.

Whether it’s slowing down or relaxing so the experiences of life are felt for what they are, you will need to reorient your experience of phenomena. When you do you get a new kind of control. It’s not a control by force or will. It’s a control from co-creation and collaboration. These interdependent experiences train you to “ski the trees” as we say in our men’s groups. (Cut us a break, we live in ski country.)

When you look at the trees so you won’t run into them, you naturally head towards them. When you look at the spaces between them, you go there. When you shift out of the survival state of sympathetic nervous system dominance (being stuck in the fight-or-flight response), you move from reacting to responding. You are in control. You are much more likely to create what you want.

Change begins with changing your orientation to life and control. Intentionally bringing change on can be scary in the beginning, but it will transform into exhilarating. The depth of change will make you a natural leader. Others will follow you. They will “want what he has.” Go out there and change what you and others predict will happen. Develop your own principles that work. Break the patterns that don’t serve you, develop the ones that do. Change your relationship with what does happen, stop being a victim. Ski the spaces.

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I’m often asked, what is a good men’s group? My standard answer is that it’s not therapy, its men learning what we didn’t get to learn growing up. All that is true, but it doesn’t explain what occurs during the meetings. Nor does it explain how, in six months, a man’s life can be transformed so that his once failing marriage brings joy to both partners.

Before I started my new groups eight years ago, I wanted  a complete redesign of my men’s group structure, so I stepped back and looked at what really changes people. I was looking for what worked in a quick, graceful and sustainable way. It certainly wasn’t telling someone how to be. Nor was it endless hours of analyzing what doesn’t work. Whenever either approach was used on me, not only did it not work, I got pissed and walked away.

Men aren’t broken

We’re not broken. We’re not bad. What we are is floundering: I realized that our problem was that we never had models or teachers on how to win as men. Our “problem” is not a therapeutic problem; it’s a learning issue.

I knew I needed to design a method that built on our innate, yet dormant masculine wisdom. This wisdom doesn’t exist outside us; it lies deep inside of us. We needed to be archeologists digging out buried treasure and ancient wisdom. We needed to take each man deeper into himself.

It turned out going deep was easier and more fun than we expected. Most men crave this form of self-discovery. It’s like going back to the house you grew up in to explore your old attic. You discover old memories in the items stored in the attic. You get to complete and reframe past experiences. You even get to take home a few of your old favorite possessions.

The magic

The core of our work is  a process that takes men deep. I developed the Healing Journey as a guided experience for a man to free himself of what binds him, so he may reconnect to what he lost as he survived his childhood, or even an adult experience. The Healing Journey weaves in many traditions and approaches I learned over the years.

A core to the Healing Journey and much of the work we do in these groups stem from the work of Milton Erickson, MD, a psychiatrist who developed an indirect way to utilize the unconscious mind. My primary teacher in this art was Stephan Gilligan, PhD. Back in the 1980s I began studying Ericksonian Hypnosis because it wasn’t standard hypnosis. It was a way to communicate with the unconscious, so it became an ally in healing and creation.

This video that Stephan recently did not only beautifully explains the work he’s developed over 40 years, it explains much of our work in our groups. He weaves into the video many of the aspects we work with – stress, PTSD, mindfulness, somatic psychology and the body. He does a better job explaining what we do than I could.

If you want to learn how to create a group that takes it members deep into their own resources, witnesses their healing and transformation, and then champions their success – watch the video.

A documentary film on the Sandpoint Men’s Group, About Men, will be released this spring. Here’s a trailer for the film. This documentary was shot over three weeks last summer exploring the inner workings of our group. This film will give you more insight to what we do, as well as the impact of our work on our families and community.

Free to Win sponsors One Day and Two Day men’s groups to introduce our work to more men. What we do is actually easy to learn with some good instruction. As the film will show and any man will tell you, it’s also a lot of fun. Men Corps is our nonprofit offering all the protocols to starting and running a group for free.

We are here to help you also have a powerful group. You deserve to win, with the help of other men. You can do it. With our support you can do it quicker and easier than we did. Go for it.

What are your thoughts or feeling around winning as a man?

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Over the years, we’ve had many men join our groups at the suggestion of their therapist. That’s right: a therapist suggested their patient check out a men’s group rather than enter therapy. That’s because more and more therapists are realizing men aren’t bad or broken. Being a man is not a pathological problem.

Men don’t need to be “treated” for the condition of being a man. In the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, women were subjected to that kind of prejudice—medicated and even hospitalized due to “hysteria.” Unfortunately, the pendulum swung the other way, and now being a perfectly normal man is considered aberrant behavior.

Enough. We men simply need a safe and fun place to learn, practice and get supportive feedback from other men.

An ongoing group, or an immersion into the group experience such as the ones we provide at Free to Win, can easily free up what blocks a man. These micro-communities of men tap into our primordial need for the brotherhood a group of men provides.

These men’s groups can be quicker than therapy at unlocking what binds men. After coming to a couple of meetings, men often report significant shifts in their lives even with only observing other men interact. We learn a lot vicariously; one man may say something that rings true for you, and it gets you thinking and feeling in a new way. A seed is planted, and that seed germinates into a new perspective, a new belief or a new action.

As an observer you see men be vulnerable, but not weak. You watch men take risks to express in ways you’ve never seen men express. Then you see these men honored for their courage to speak their truth.

A man recently expressed how he was afraid his wife would leave him because he wasn’t showing up like she or he wanted him to (“showing up” means participating, being present, communicating, etc.). We all felt his fear as well as his love for his wife. We also felt his panic – he was at a loss of what to do.

As the man spoke the unspeakable he began to relax. He continued to talk about how, as a kid, his father was always gone on trips to return to a house his mother ran. The man didn’t know how to “step up” because he’d never had a role model on how to assert himself. Yet as he spoke, he recalled seeing other men step up in the group, regarding matters outside and inside the group. The men in the group began to form a new model for him of how to show up at home.

Over the course of the next couple of months, through risking and practicing at home, and getting support in the group, he transformed his marriage. What was a heavy situation evolved to be fun and passionate. His risking continued to not only meet with approval from his wife, she became more attracted to him.

The feminization of therapy

10,000 years ago we left the tribe for the farm, then 200 years ago we left the farm for the factory. This progression of more time away from home means less modeling and less teaching of the masculine aspects of emotions for their sons. Women did what they had to do. They stepped in to fill the gap left by men going to work. They did a great job teaching us what they knew.

Over the last 10,000 years, the natural evolution towards the feminine perspective of emotions is the environment psychotherapy grew up in, so it’s to be expected that it has a feminine bias. From that slant, it’s easy to see how as men we would be seen as broken. And how men would resist going to therapy. It’s unlikely a guy will explain it in these terms, but in his gut it won’t feel right.

We often take a man’s resistance to going to therapy as resisting growing. Yes, there is some of that often there. Change frightens all of us. Yet deeper in him, something doesn’t feel right. Men frequently talk about how the therapist didn’t get him or how he felt he or she couldn’t appreciate his perspective. When these same men join a men’s group they will start opening up in ways that surprise them. The feedback the other men give him is usually heard and used.

As women therapists have said to me, often a man just needs to have a model of how to feel and express as a man. He doesn’t need more education around how to be emotional from a feminine prospective. That didn’t work for me. It didn’t work for women I dated. Women want a man, not a masculine version of themselves.

Even though women are good at spotting what is missing emotionally with men, they naturally suggest feminine ways to fix the problem. I learned that in spite of their and my best intentions to do it right. That feminine perspective didn’t work for either of us. I felt as if I were wearing someone else’s clothes. She felt my behavior was disingenuous. She was right, it was.

Most therapists these days are women, and virtually all were trained by women, as described in this New York Times article. A men’s group is men. For men. About men. Men often feel inhibited with a woman therapist. Don’t get me wrong, I have actually encouraged some men to see female therapists or coaches because I felt they needed that perspective. But most men don’t need more education on a femine version of emotionality; they need to be shown what Masculine Emotional Intelligence™ is.

These groups are fun. When men loosen up so does their humor. Men often report laughing harder than they had in decades. When a man finds it’s OK to be emotional in a masculine way, he loosens up. He can laugh at himself and what it is to be a man.

When men get real and sit together they become natural friends. Think back, when you were young and felt free to express yourself you had real friends. Even the men who felt they never had real friends get them from these micro-communities.

In a culture that pathologizes normal behavior and thought, it’s reassuring to see the growth of men’s groups as an open source means of addressing individual needs. Part of the healing that occurs when men realize what they or others might have labeled flawed is actually normal for men. When a man realizes through other men that what he judged as screwed up is natural he relaxes. When he relaxes, the man immediately begins to function at a higher level.

Being a man today is tough. We have centuries of training in how to behave in accordance to a limited social norm. We have a culture that at best gives us mixed messages. Hanna Rosin describes in her new book The End of Men how we are losing our power. As good as our fathers were, they were of little value in guiding us in the masculine arena.

The collective wisdom of a micro-community of men provides what was missing. It’s not magic – it’s masculinity.

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Now that we investigated the upside and downside of Bad Boys for men and women, let’s extract what works from this model of the masculine that fulfills what both men and women need. I’ve written how Manhood 2.0 is the evolving model of what it is to be a man today. This new man has the awareness and sensitivity of a modern man, and the sexual and emotional power of a Bad Boy.

Please realize that we all are learning, which means we will do things that later we may judge as mistakes. Don’t take this or anything I write as a set of rigid rules. At best they are guides to shortening your learning curve.

What might be considered appropriate behavior at 20 could be immature behavior at 40. So when I speak of maturity, see as a relative term.

Here are key traits and ways to be a Bad Boy 2.0.

Develop a deep Purpose

A purpose orients and drives a man out of the immaturity of traditional Bad Boyhood. If you’re a young man, you may not have one yet. That’s ok. The real question is: is he doing what he needs to be doing to discover that purpose? For most men, until their late 20s or early 30s, life is about adventure, which could men exploring being a Bad Boy, hopefully with a growing consciousness of who he is.

Go for polarity

David Deida does an excellent job describing how, for attraction and a successful relationship, a man and a woman need to be different. Bad Boys show us the power of being different from a woman. You can have that too, without the selfishness and immaturity of the traditional Bad Boy.

One way to do this is to communicate. I know that, for many men, the thought of real communication is terrifying. The instinct is to turn and run. Remember: your date or partner is not your therapist, so do both of you a favor and don’t make your emotional wellbeing the only topic of conversation.

Start by telling funny stories about yourself. We all love a man who is self-deprecating and laughs at himself. Start the energy moving by revealing something about yourself. It’s a subtle version of “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” but you this time lead off.

Taking action like a Bad Boy is a sure way to develop polarity. It also shows the woman you are safe and the space is safe. Most women would rather have you take imperfect action than wait for her to start.

Stand your ground

Have a position about what you care about and express it. Be open and collaborate, but know what you feel and want – be willing to take a stance for it. A Bad Boy may take a position just to attract attention to himself. You do it because you care.

Be willing to disagree with her. Bad Boys do it all the time. You do it because you feel passion about what you are speaking about. A little disagreement can foster the polarity. She’s not nor is your relationship brittle. Remember how much directness a Bad Boy creates that ends up turning a woman on.

Don’t just spew out compliments. Nothing turns off a woman more than a shallow compliment. Before you say them, find a place in you that feels them. Then speak them. If it’s not true, find something to say that is. If there is nothing you can say that is a compliment, then either you shouldn’t be dating that woman or you need to start speaking your unspeakable to move some energy so you are back to feeling genuine compliments.

Tease her

This is what Bad Boys do so well. You can do it too. Women love a man with a good sense of humor. Make sure it’s playful. DO NOT use teasing as a way to express your anger. That passive- aggressive behavior will quickly deteriorate any relationship. Find a quirk about her that she feels confident about and tease about it. Invite her to tease you.

Slow dance

Unlike a Bad Boy, go slow at starting a relationship, let the tension and polarity build. Do things together. Go out and play. Move the energy in ways other than sex. Many years ago a sex and relationship expert I trained with told me that women like to lock a man into a relationship with sex. I never thought about that until she mentioned that. We know men like to go for sex to get the release. Both of you go for deepening the relationship.

Don’t try impressing her with your things or what you do. Most women are turned off by that. Impress her with how you listen to her. How you  speak respectfully to her. If you are serious about creating a significant relationship, invest yourself into growing it, not into material items. If she wants only the material, that tells you something.

Once in a relationship go back out on fun, spontaneous dates. Bring that polarity back.

Stop caring so much

A Bad Boy acts like he doesn’t care. Feel how you care and just do what needs to be done. Stop focusing on what others feel, want or think. Focus on your experience in relationship with a woman and others. A man who escapes to always putting others first is a turn-off to women; no one likes a martyr.

Don’t ask for permission! Go for it like a Bad Boy—with awareness. Nothing turns off a woman more than a man who always asks. Take more imperfect action. Feel your feelings as you act. The more you do that, the less fear you will have. Be willing to screw up. Some of my biggest screw-ups led to some of the deepest, most intimate moments with women. I screwed up a lot.

Enjoy chaos

One reason women love Bad Boys is that Bad Boys love chaos. Bad Boys don’t have a rigid plan. They know what they want and expect they will get it. Whatever comes to them, they spin in such a way to close the deal on what they want. Take a lesson out of the Bad Boy playbook: learn to dance with what happens in the moment.

Another form of chaos can develop when a man is transitioning to being a good Bad Boy. The fun, always-on and adventurous man is now more settled into being a man. Some of that transition is the nature maturation for men in their 20s. Some it may be the Bad Boy dying. Whatever it is, talk about it.

Talk about how both of you have changed. Grieve the loss of what you were singularly and as a couple. The more you can feel, own and then release it, the easier the transition will be for both of you. Realize that what is occurring is a good thing, although it might bring some temporary discomfort. See the process as a way to fall in love with a ” “new partner.” It’s a new relationship the two of you get to design.

Be wild. Create some chaos. Talk dirty to your lover. Push the  envelope. Take risks.

Speak your truth

Don’t be politically correct. Speak to a woman as if you are speaking to an old, trusted friend. Again, all conversations don’t need to be therapy sessions. Just be real with your feelings, wants and thoughts.

Look her in the eyes when you speak to her. It’s ok to be nervous. If you accept it, she will have an easier time accepting it. You might want to state the obvious, “I’m nervous.” And move on to deepening the conversation.

Have your own back

Defend yourself by being vulnerable yourself. Rather than the façade of a Bad Boy, let your defense be who you are. Move from being a victim of life to the agent of change for your life. A Bad Boy doesn’t despair about what he’s not getting. He gets up and goes out to take a whack at it.

Have your own back by being healthy. Women are turned on by healthy men. You don’t need to be an Olympic athlete or a swim suit model. You do need to invest in your most important asset: your body.

Conclusion: leave the boy, be the man

Being bad never felt so good

The man who remains a Bad Boy is a man in arrested development. Growing up is easy and powerful when you adapt a few of the Bad Boy traits. Rather than escaping to behave like a Bad Boy, try on some of the behaviors as you observe what happens for you and others. Make the appropriate changes, integrating the evolved Bad Boy qualities that serve you. Experiment and have fun being a good Bad Boy. Behind every Bad Boy behavior are positive qualities leading to effective skills.

My book, Grow Up: A Man’s Guide to Masculine Emotional Intelligence lays out 9 steps to facilitate growing up. As the book points out, we adopt what later can be seen as limiting behavior because in the moment of stress or trauma, that behavior was the best choice. Bad Boy behaviors were adaptations to tough circumstances. What makes growing out of many of the Bad Boy traits difficult is that some of these traits are admired. In spite of others appreciating them, you get to a place where they are self-limiting.

Leave the boy, keep the passion. If you were a Bad Boy, grieve the apparent loss of freedom from being hyper-independent, or admit that you wish your were a Bad Boy. Create a purpose beyond rebelling. Being a perpetual adolescent gets old;let go of it. Being angry at those that want things from you or require you to grow up gets old; let go of it.

If I could let go of the benefits of being a Bad Boy and let go of the mask of being a nice sensitive man to grow up to be more real, so can you. You don’t need to walk away from all the adaptive behaviors you learned. You just need to address what were they concealing. When you can accept what  wasn’t ok to accept during the stress or trauma, you retain the positive attributes of a trait with none of the negative attributes. You become a good Bad Boy and a powerful sensitive man.

You don’t need to be anyone else’s boy.  Be your own man. Leave the rebellion, keep the independence. Be sovereign – be your own man.

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This is third part of a four-part article exploring the traps and the power of Bad Boys for both men and women.

From working with women and having them as friends and partners, I’ve learned that they realize the price of being with a Bad Boy. A Bad Boy can be a lot of fun in the short-term, much like an Italian sports car, but they demand a lot of work to keep running.

As men mature so do women. Women learn that giving up the short-term excitement of a Bad Boy for a man, who is discovering what it is to be a man, creates a deep, enduring love. This man doesn’t run away when you get upset or times get tough, nor is he likely to cheat on you with another woman or another escape.

To better understand how to be one of these mature women, let’s explore the many sides of what a Bad Boy gives a woman.

Father – daughter healing

Without trying to be too Freudian, l learned from women that part of their attraction for Bad Boys started with their fathers. Either the Bad Boy reminds them of their father and his power, or being with a Bad Boy is her rebellion against her family.

I first learned of this when I was a Bad Boy in training while in high school, and I dated a good Catholic girl who attended a parochial girl’s school. Her father warned me to be good. I can remember a subtle smile Patty gave me behind her father’s back. Dating an older guy who wasn’t her family’s standard fare gave Patty great pleasure.

Fixing the Bad Boy

Women love rescuing Bad Boys as much as they love saving stray dogs. There’s something about the challenge for them to reform an incorrigible man. Just think about all the chick flicks that play out this scenario, from Rebel without a Cause to any of today’s obsession with boys so bad, they’re werewolves and vampires!

Men love a challenge. This is where women like taking on challenges. Healing a Bad Boy is like taming a wild animal. You can get them to behave better, but at any time they might be spooked and run off. These women quickly learn that a Bad Boy never changes. Sometimes it’s losing the woman, and then subsequent realization that he really loved her, that begins waking him up. It was one of the things that woke me up. I was tough, though, it took a few experiences to change my direction.

The thrill for adventure

The “good girls” who are tired of being good love the excitement, thrills, and sense of danger Bad Boys give them. Not only do you get to rebel, you get to ride the fun coattails of a Bad Boy’s adventures in exchange for intimacy.

Don’t get me wrong: I am all for men and women having fun and being wild. But there’s a difference in doing it as an unconscious escape and doing it with the intent to have fun. A classic Bad Boy operates in the shadows of awareness and responsibility. When you can move out of the shadows for your fun, it can be even more exciting. You are acknowledging your feelings, wants and possible consequences.

The rebel with a cause

At the core of a woman’s attraction to a Bad Boy is his rebellious nature. He might scare you, but you can’t get enough of him. Let’s look at what a woman gets from a rebel.

Masculinity

With the redefinition of masculinity today, men are more confused than ever. Women want men with real, masculine emotional health, not something that is a feminized version of the masculine. As crude and emotionally dangerous as a Bad Boy can be, he does have a masculine presence.

Bad Boys get women to react, feel and to be out of control.  In some ways, a Bad Boy may be a safe fantasy outlet of being dominated. A Bad Boy is not playing to a societal model of how it should be. He is winging it in response to woman.

Women are attracted to these Bad Boys because they have more testosterone. Instinctually these men appear stronger, more able to provide and protect. They stimulate the primordial mating tendencies in a woman.

Recent research shows that, when ovulating, a woman’s hormones influence who she sees as good possible fathers. These women pick sexier men over clearly more dependable men. This fits with previous research showing during the week of ovulation women become attracted to sexy and rebellious men according to researcher Kristina Durante, of the University of Texas at San Antonio.

The thrill of the hunt

As the “prey,” an assertive woman can allow the Bad Boy to breakdown her hard exterior. She is in charge because she gets to say yes or no. Even though the Bad Boy is overtly in charge, the woman feels her control by being the one who decides when to succumb. With another man, where the romance and relationship is a co-creation, there’s more work for the woman. Here she gets to ride along, deciding when to stop or change directions – who wouldn’t love that?

The thrill of taming the wild man you just met keeps you in the chase. The thought that this Bad Boy is going after you and not another woman fuels your fires. Then there’s the thought that this man met his match. The hunter is now your prey.

Strength

A Bad Boy rebellion can’t be controlled. They aren’t concerned about being nice. Some women like a nice guy at first, says Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr. Nice Guy. But niceness as the default MO is seen as weakness. Eventually most women will become bored with a man who’s nice without power behind it.

Unpredictable

You can’t predict what a Bad Boy will do. Being dependable is a great quality – being consistent to the point of boring will drive you to find a Bad Boy.

Indifferent and confident

Their take-it-or-leave-it attitude drives your desire for more of what he confidently and indifferently doles out. A Bad Boy doesn’t care if the woman likes him or needs him – he’s into the woman for himself.

Exciting and adventurous

A Bad Boy’s edge means great sex, at least in theory. His unpredictable nature represents possible wild sex along with an unpredictable relationship. You don’t need to worry about making decisions; he will come up with something.

Bad Boys are a match for a woman who has a fear of intimacy. There’s no risk of a deep relationship for either. It’s all about the physical attraction.

Feeling of power

Bad Boy’s rebellion can be a powerful model and permission for you to be fully expressed and powerful yourself. We often need permission to show up differently. A Bad Boy can give a woman that.

Being spoken to

Bad Boys know how to talk to a woman. They are fearless and great salesmen. They know how to tease women while giving them permission to go for it. While bartending around the country, I watched the stupidest lines—delivered with confidence–get results. I would walk away shaking my head thinking what was more ridiculous: the line the man used or the woman’s buying it.

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This is second part of a four-part article exploring the traps and the power of Bad Boys for both men and women.

What’s in a Bad Boy – the upside of being bad

A Bad Boy’s outward struggle with men and women mimics his inward struggle. His emotional ADHD makes it difficult to settle down with others, a deeper purpose and himself. He lacks trust of himself, others and life. It as if he always has to be one step ahead of what might be coming after him even if it’s only his own emotions. No matter how successful I’ve seen these men be, certainly once you got to know them, you can sense their loneliness.

As men, our path in life is to reconnect to ourselves and the world around us. Bad Boys’ projected self-reliant mastery hides their human need for connection. A life of being alone is a  hard life. It sucks the life out of you. The stress of it will make you old before your time.

The denial of the primordial need for human intimacy, for a deep connection to a partner, can only be repressed so long before you either give it up or something starts breaking. For men the breakdown will often manifest in their bodies. The healing becomes sustainable when as men we surrender to our feelings and needs.

The upside of being Bad

With all this talk of the downsides of being a Bad Boy, why would anyone want to be one? Beyond appearance of being free, men envying you, and women chasing you, there are a few overlooked benefits. Exploring these qualities is the portal to extracting the good from the bad.

Independence – being out there

The appearance of confidence from being your own man is a huge benefit.  Women adore the untamed masculinity, independence and confidence of a Bad Boy. To women, these qualities are an aphrodisiac; to men they represent the essence of masculine strength.

Not being dependent on a woman when not denying personal needs is a quality few men possess. As men we are told not to need a woman, and as much as we try to be tough, we often cave to their needs WITHOUT asserting our needs and what is behind them. Taking a vulnerable stance of independence as you assert your feeling and desires is something we have no role model for – the Bad Boy is not vulnerable.

Tough men as well as normal guys will often back down from their more vulnerable emotions in front of a woman. The power of her emotions shuts us down. Yet what women are craving is the courage to stand strong, while open, in the wave of their emotions. If their wave knocks you down, you get back up.

Along with emotions are needs. Bad Boys model in their over self-reliance the essence of not being needy. A needy man is a turn-off for women. Strong, healthy men need their partners; unhealthy men are needy with their partners.. They want to hear and feel we need them, but they don’t want to be our surrogate mothers.

I know with myself, and hundreds of men I’ve worked with, that we all have a hidden place of unmet femine love and support. For whatever reason, often benign reasons, our mothers weren’t there for us when we needed them… so we go out looking for women to fill that void. Any healthy woman will run from that offer. (But like us, many women are unlearning what was taught them, so they may give you a shot.)

I know you’re thinking I just gave you a double bind: either you are an arrogant Bad Boy in emotional denial or you are a needy, clinging wimp wanting a woman to take care of you. As with any double bind, the solution is not within the double bind. Don’t buy the cultural door A or door B choice.

Door C is being independent while being vulnerable – the best of the other two choices. You get there by allowing yourself to first accept what you are feeling. The more you accept your experience, the less you will need a woman to fill that void This is more than accepting yourself. As you start to have difficult feelings, such as loneliness, let those feeling run their course. At first they may be overwhelming as you drain a swamp of old emotions and needs. Eventually they will be felt as the passing pain of the moment.

As simple as this act of awareness is, it’s powerful; it’s just difficult for us men to do on our own. In my years of being in the micro-communities of men’s groups, I’ve seen the neediest men get their balls. With the support, challenge and guidance of their brothers, men who would emotionally cower  before learn to stand up to both men and women.

Emotional power – don’t run from your emotions, dive in

As independent as a Bad Boy is, he can’t handle others’ emotions either. His methods of dealing with the power of another emotional expression are to run… or shut it down. With a man, the Bad Boy can shame another man to can get him to perform per the man code, which tells us not to be emotional. For a woman he can overpower her just with his charm, emotional dominance and, in rare cases, physically.

When a man can step into the Bad Boy’s appreciation for thrill, he can see another’s emotions as riding a wave that he doesn’t control. Giving up control for the mystery of the unknown and uncontrollable can be scary. It can also be exhilarating. This might also mean that your partner is not your sole confidant. She has her friends for much of her emotional support—and you need your male friends for some of that. In other words, don’t run to her for all your revelations, support and comfort. You will burn her out. She’s not your mother. You will decrease the male/female polarity, which is critical for a successful relationship.

Your partner isn’t your therapist either. Don’t tell her every little detail of your life. Leave room for mystery, the kind of mystery women love about a Bad Boy.

Masculine Emotional Intelligence™ (MEI) shows us that emotional power for a man in part is the courage to experience others’ emotions. You don’t run, shut down or wimp out; stay present, standing in the middle of what’s occurring. If the emotional attack is strong and about you, know that it’s more than about you. The person is upset about something that upset them in the past. This doesn’t mean you just stand there and take it; it just means you don’t need to react. Feel their emotions as the water of a strong stream;  you are standing in that stream with is the water running past you. Enjoy the realness.

To match your newfound emotional power, you want what every man dreams of: a “Bad Girl.” Being emotionally strong and intelligent, you are safe for a woman. Indirectly you are inviting her uncontrollable side out. You are inviting the unexpected… are you ready for it?

As you take your emotional risk, proving the space is safe, she will take emotional risks, too.. And there’s another upside: emotional expression and risk- taking often precede sexual expression and risk- taking.

You may need to risk speaking unspoken truths for the relationship to grow. Speak to the elephant(s) in the room. Talking about what both of you know, but won’t speak about, says that the relationship’s success is more important than the apparent safety of not speaking. Break the collusion to avoid the difficult areas. Speak from the love you have for her and what you are creating.

Boundaries – take a stand

A Bad Boy is not attached to being liked. If he pisses you off, he doesn’t care. And there is a good chance you may be jealous of his freedom of being fully expressed. Unlike a Bad Boy who just walks away if it’s tough, you have ongoing relationships with people. These relationships do make it harder to take difficult stands. Your stance is not just about asserting yourself but also about deepening the relationship and creating boundaries for it and yourself.

Your emotional power can be an aid in filling your space with yourself. As men we often start our relationships with others—and most particularly with women—feeling emotional deficient. In this emotional void we are lacking any emotional awareness or expression. We don’t have an emotional backbone. When we connect to our emotions and needs, then express them, the weak void is filled. What was once hollow is now strong. In that newfound strength, we have the power to say no.

A Bad Boy takes pleasure in his no’s in part because he knows with women they will want him more. For a mature man his no’s aren’t a game. They are you setting boundaries to your emotional space and what you will do. Women may push you, but you now know what you want and can express it.

If she projects inappropriately onto you, you can stop it. At the same time, you can hold the boundary for the relationship. You can defend your mutual space, even from an emotional over-expression. Any unconscious testing of you shows her that you have your back, her back and the back of the relationship – something no Bad Boy would do.

Passion – for more than her

One thing a Bad Boy has is passion. The fact that it’s often not controlled makes it only more exciting. What a Bad Boy doesn’t have, and you can, is purpose. When purpose drives your life you are passionate about your life. It’s not passion for the next experience. It’s passion for making a difference, being yourself fully expressed. And it’s passion for how all this relates to others.

We like Bad Boys because they are expressive. We trust and are inspired by men with a purpose. The mercurial passion of a Bad Boy is fleeting. The deep passion of a man with a purpose makes things happen. This deeper passion doesn’t drain you; it sustains you to relate to others in a substantial manner.

A woman may want a fling with a Bad Boy. A mature woman wants a relationship with a man with purpose. Feeling the depth of your commitment to something bigger than yourself is a turn-on that no Bad Boy can provide. It much easier for anyone to believe this man will be there when times get tough where the Bad Boy will be the first to leave.

This man doesn’t whine. He has a life that he’s creating that is not dependent on another’s acceptance. Like a Bad Boy, he’s his own man, but his focus is not hedonistic pleasures, it’s his purpose.

Photo by danorbit. via Compfight

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Today President Obama speaks in Chicago about gun violence because the Black Youth Project generated over 45,000 signatures on their petition to have the president come to Chicago.

Having our President speak about gun violence’s largest set of perpetrators and victims is huge. Black boys are traditionally the last to receive political attention. Now that President Obama is championing gun control he has a reason to speak up for black boys.

I’m for all this attention; it’s over due. I would like to see more discussion about the underlying causes. Controlling guns are treating the symptoms. Addressing why boys and young men use guns as their tool of expression is what is needed.

Boys always look for ways to assert their power – they need means to grow into a man. They don’t need it being pulling a trigger of a gun.

Accepting there is a primordial need for young men to discover their masculinity leads us question how can we better direct that urge.

Without guiding them to a mature in a way that serves all, young men will often reach for the biggest stick he can swing. Punishing them after they swings it is not the best use of all resources; include the resource of these young men.

What President Obama should be speaking about

Developing a mentoring system to support boys and young men is not as simple as gun control. Saying we need to take the guns away from these young men is the Band-Aid. Preventing the wound is supporting these boys and young men to develop other forms of expression that address their innate need to assert their manhood.

Our traditional model of masculinity says you are a man when you learn to shut down your emotions and power up your control. Our media as the educators of this model of manhood show us how aggressive men acquiring the most expensive bling are what makes a man. Consciously and more importantly unconsciously these boys and young men strive for success in this model. Then when they succeed we are surprised and upset.

If you want a different result – change the model and the process. Develop a model that directs their masculinity in a way that serves them and their community. Invest in sponsoring these boys and young men to grow up to be men, not live action heroes gone wrong.

This is where it becomes work. To sponsor these boys and young men they need sponsors. Where do you get these sponsors? Where do you get men that are mature themselves? Where do you get men that are driven by a morality that goes beyond material possession and macho arrogance?

To develop these sponsors you need to develop and support a new a model of masculinity. Manhood 2.0 is not a feminized version of masculine. It’s a model of men being emotional in a masculine way, being directed by their own purpose – not Madison Avenue’s and giving back because it feels good.

The good news is there is a wealth of untapped men waiting to step up. They just need to first see that it’s cool to do it. Then they need to know it’s possible and fun. Lastly it needs to be readily available.

When we invest in men to be the men they want to be – we will have the boys and young men we want, and they themselves want. Let’s use the attention President Obama is generating to treat more than the immediate symptom. Let’s begin to address the simple solution of supporting men and boys. Supporting the masculine may not be as sexy as championing gun control, but it will reap deep sustainable rewards.

Organizations such The Challenge Day and Boys to Men are a few examples of what can be done to directly support boys. Showing men a way to win as men through micro-communities for men (men’s groups) addresses the core need, shifting our model of the masculine with men. These solutions aren’t quick fixes, but when applied over a few years amazing results occur.

Boys and men want to succeed. We need to give them a model that works for them, a model that doesn’t use them yet honors them. With a new model and support to win we all will see remarkable results.

Photo by Barack Obama via Compfight 

The post What Is President Obama Missing? appeared first on Owen Marcus.

You know that guy who walks into a room as if he could care less? We all want to be that guy.

Assuming you’re not that guy, I’ll teach you how you can that confident without the downside of the typical Bad Boy.

This is a four-part article exploring the traps and the power of Bad Boys for both men and women.

• What is a Bad Boy – the traits of being bad
• What’s in a Bad Boy – the upside of being bad
• Women and Bad Boys – what do women get
• Bad Boys 2.0 – transforming the bad into good

A journey to being a Bad Boy

I grew up shy, jealous of the guys who got all the attention of the girls and the respect of the other boys. The few times I ventured into attempting to be a Bad Boy, I just embarrassed myself—like the time I spoke to Kim, the most popular girl in sixth grade. After rehearsing my lines and getting up every ounce of courage I had, I approached Kim.

As I was giving myself a pep talk, I began speaking. Suddenly I froze. Making matters worse, a couple of her male friends come by to flirt with her. Seeing my humiliation, Kim started a conversation with me. I felt like the deer in the headlights. I don’t recall what occurred next. All I remember is leaving the encounter shamed, not by Kim but by myself. The hurdle just got higher.

When I was thirteen we moved to a new town, giving me a fresh start. I vowed to be different. I was going to be one of those Bad Boys. Not having a plan other than just taking more risks, I initiated more conversations, sought out friendships and said hi to girls. There was a little progress; in this race I needed to be the hare not the tortoise. But at the pace I was going, high school wouldn’t be much better than elementary school.

I stumbled onto something: with the help of my teenage hormones, I could do just about anything. If need be, I could get in a fight, which I did. I could take on any dare, which I did. I could taunt any other boy to out-risk me, which I did. With this new strategy I was getting noticed. The price was some bruises, staying after school for detentions and groundings – but I was freeing myself.

Being an up and coming juvenile delinquent gave me a foot up with the girls. For the first time, they saw me. Unfortunately it didn’t give me any more courage or skills speaking to them. It was easier to challenge a tough guy than it was to speak to a girl.

Now that I had a rep for being “bad,” I had to step up with the girls… so I had to get dates. I discovered it was easier asking out girls from other towns, so I started there. Then I progressed to younger girls in my town. By my senior year I was going out with a cheerleader and taking crap from her ex-boyfriend, by then  a college student. Unintentionally I created the ultimate Bad Boy scenario: dating a hot chick then fighting for her by standing up to the former school football star. I had made it.

Don’t be impressed. Susie was a great young woman, but I realized it wasn’t about her. It was about my journey to be a Bad Boy and being accepted. I bought the partly line that success as a man was being a Bad Boy. I went from a kid with Asperger’s Syndrome, dyslexia, dyspraxia and a speech impediment, to a Bad Boy in the four years of high school. The win of that journey was huge. The prize was anti-climatic. “Getting the girl” and the respect of my male peers left me feeling something was missing. Later, when I was willing to be honest with myself, I had to admit that my Bad Boy accomplishment was an act. I was still that shy boy on the inside.

I was in a dilemma in college. I had the Bad Boy macho persona and the sensitive, needier part behind the mask. I didn’t know how to be with women. I could “get them,” but as far as developing a relationship with them, I was lost. The Bad Boy persona got their attention. My friends’ advice to solve my problem, an iteration of the Bad Boy paradigm, was no help.

Yet I would see guys who were better Bad Boys get the hot women. These men would mis-treat the women, and the women would put up with it. Other women saw that and lined up to be with the Bad Boys. I couldn’t understand how smart women would put up with that treatment—even abuse.

Seeing the limits of the Bad Boy mask I dived into “being sensitive”—with immediate results. Women would open up to me. They would tell me how other men wouldn’t get them. Feeling smug, I would become more sensitive. There was a level of sincerity… yet it was another act like being a Bad Boy.

Spilt between wanting to out Bad Boy other guys and being the most sensitive guy with women, I struggled in relationships. And honestly, I was pissed that my new found niceness wasn’t as successful as being a bad-ass Bad-Boy. No matter how aware I was as a sensitive man, the Bad Boys always did better.

What’s a Bad Boy?

You know the type, the swaggering, arrogant, macho jerk who treats women like they’re disposable, while they’re waiting in line to climb into his bed. He has no problem putting himself first, particularly with women, while not caring what others think.

His narcissistic personality has little empathy for other’s feelings and needs. The allure for women that he doesn’t care about them only excites them more. Treating women as if they are replaceable parts of his truck has these women either chasing him or trying to save him. The last thing he is is politically correct.

A Bad Boy’s need of a woman is not for an emotional connection, it’s for an emotional and sexual conquest. It’s about having another win, another notch on his belt. His competition is with other men, “getting” women to satisfy his insatiable need for attention. This aggression can be misinterpreted for being assertive. It’s not assertiveness because he’s not asserting a true feeling or need. He’s pushing for what he immediately wants, often with undertones of anger. In spite of his success with women, often a Bad Boy is scared of and angry at them.

A Bad Boy can be frightened by a woman’s vulnerability and emotional honesty, two things he runs from. He can’t control, compete with, or conquer these qualities. Instead he must change the rules of engagement to be about controlling emotions and women, competing with other men along with winning the game of getting a woman to succumb to him. Once he’s accomplishes these tasks, he’s bored – ready for the next woman.

A Bad Boy’s success perpetuates his adolescent need to rebel. Beating other men, winning women and not being responsible reinforce his pattern of badness. Other men grow out of this because either they don’t succeed at being a Bad Boy or they begin to feel the cost they and others are paying.

No matter how good the immediate rewards of being a Bad Boy, maturing men grow to want more intimacy, rather than more women. They realize that life is not all about them. Maturing beyond the pleasures of being a Bad Boy and the cultural double message around how we love and hate these Bad Boys, they must give up the illusion that rebelling is the only path to masculine success.

One way to look at being a Bad Boy is to see a teenager who never grew up. Every man needs to go through some form of being bad to outgrow adolescence. This badness may only be breaking the rules of what it meant to be a boy so he can mature into a man. Over the years when I see a boy or a man who never had a chance to revolt I usually see a repressed man. As much as men can fixate in their adolescence as Bad Boys, there are men who shun any emotional challenge. They are the Nice Guys whom I write about in my new book, Grow UP: A Man’s Guide to Masculine Emotional Intelligence.

Photo by: Brandon Warren via Compfight

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