Today's message comes from the Renewed Man Boot Camp. Renewed Man is a systematic teaching and coaching series designed to help men grow emotionally, relationally, and spiritually ... developing the essential character quality of "self-mastery." Even though this community is created for men, the principles are universal -- women will benefit from these insights
as well.
We build this teaching around 12 Keys, and this week, we're focusing on key 5: Emotional
Awareness. Here's how we put it:
Emotional Awareness - We understand and deal with our emotions and internal needs.
We don't live at the mercy of our emotions, but neither do we ignore, or try to suppress them.
Here's one of the daily messages from this week's teaching series. I hope this will help you:
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One of the qualities we admire, and seek to cultivate, is TOUGHNESS. But what does it really mean? How do we understand what it means to be "tough," and how do we grow in this quality?
Steve
Magness is a writer and performance coach who has worked with Olympians, professional athletes, and executives and entrepreneurs to help them perform when it matters most. He's thought a lot about the subject of toughness, and thinks we mostly get it wrong.
Magness has spent the last five years studying resilience, and wrote the great book about it called “Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness.” Much of the book is about our mindset — and he focuses on getting us to stop thinking about “toughness” in stoic, unfeeling, aggressive terms. Although he doesn’t use the term itself, “emotional awareness” is at the heart of his approach to developing toughness
and resilience.
Here’s what he says in an interview about the book:
"We have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be tough. We hold on to ideas that better resemble a middle school football coach’s ideal of toughness than reality. We mistake toughness for strength, power, and control. Our definition of toughness has, unfortunately, revolved around a belief that the toughest individuals have thick skin, fear nothing, constrain
emotions, and hide vulnerability. In other words, they are callous.
“It’s time to move to a definition based on navigating discomfort by creating space to take thoughtful action. Toughness is about responding, not reacting. It’s about authentic connection and belonging, not leadership through fear. For far too long, we’ve propped up an external version of toughness based on bluster and machismo while neglecting inner strength based on humility and
equanimity.
Real toughness is quiet and comes deep from within. It’s about making the right choice under stress, uncertainty, and fatigue—this requires emotional control. Real toughness is borne of self-security that is rooted in confidence, but not arrogance. Toughness is about figuring out how to thrive in adversity, and isn’t concerned with posturing.
“If you’re like me and grew up in sports, you learned that feelings are
enemies. Don’t show emotion. Ignore what you feel. We send the same message in the workplace, parenting, and beyond. Our inner world isn’t the enemy. It protects from physical or psychological threat, such as shielding our ego from the bruise of failing a job interview. Feelings and emotions are messengers from our bodies that relay what’s going on. Don’t shun them; decipher their language instead…
“In psychology, the ability to add nuance to emotional
experience is called interoception. Experts in interoception don’t push away sensations, they learn to understand them. Only once we speak their language can we know how to deal with them. To know if that pain is a warning that injury is imminent, or if that feeling of shame is an uninformed feeling that we should scroll on by. Tough individuals are expert at listening to their body.”
NEXT
ACTION
Today’s action step is to reflect on the quotes above from Magness, and think about whether you agree with him, and identify with what he’s saying or not. Where do you need to “navigate discomfort” in your life right now? What would it mean for you to do this? How would it change what you do, and how you relate? This would be good material to reflect on today, and write down your thoughts.
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Would you like to go "all in" and join the Renewed Man Boot Camp? It's a 12 Week Immersion in these principles. You'll get these daily teachings, a weekly video on one of the 12 Keys of Being a Renewed Man, and access to a support group and/or a coaching group that I lead.
Find out more about the Renewed Man Program here.
