How To Be A Man: Get Naked

In this episode of the Manhood Tribes show, host Don Ross dives into the critical role of vulnerability in forming deeper and lasting bonds among men. 

He explores the concept of 'getting naked', not literally, but in terms of opening up about difficult and often uncomfortable aspects of one's life. By sharing personal stories and struggles, men can build genuine camaraderie and help each other grow. 

The episode emphasizes the necessity of adventure and deep understanding in relationships, and offers a courage challenge to identify and share one's most difficult experiences with trusted friends.

00:00 Facing Uncomfortable Truths
00:45 Introduction to Manhood Tribes
02:00 The Importance of Camaraderie
04:21 The Concept of Getting Naked
07:57 The Role of Vulnerability
16:35 Fatherhood and Its Impact
21:31 Addressing Sexuality
26:37 Manhood Challenge: Embracing Vulnerability

Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly.

Transcript

Don Ross: 0:00

If I ask you the question, what's something about you that you would be most uncomfortable to tell others about. What comes to mind? Whatever that thing actually is. Isn't quite so as important as the fact that something comes to mind. There's something for all of us. That's hard to talk about in our lives and we need to discuss why, because as men. That thing is really important. Let's dive in today on the Manhood Tribes show. Guys want to know how you measure up as a man? I've got a great resource for you. It's called how manly are you? And it's a free quiz that you can take to figure out how you stack up against what it means to be a man. And when you take the quiz, you'll also get some free resources to help you figure out how you can get better as a man in the areas where you would like to grow. So go to manhoodtribes.com/manly to download your free. How manly are you quiz today? That's manhoodtribes.com/manly.

1:18

Okay guys, welcome to the Manhood Tribes show, where we are all about helping you to become an extraordinary man by building a transformational group of men around you. My name is Don Ross. I'm the host here at Manhood Tribes show. And I am super excited to be able to help you out with becoming the kind of man that you were always meant to be now here on the man who tribe's show, we've been talking about this idea of what it means to be a man, how to be a man. And in particular now how to be an extraordinary man here at Manhood Tribess, we do that using our three pillars, which are manhood, camaraderie and freedom. We spent a lot of time talking about that first one of manhood and going over our 5 Marks of Manhood. But now we're in to talking about the idea of camaraderie, which on the last episode we talked about was just the idea of adventuring together to build lasting bonds. Now in order for men to do this, they need some particular things to go on in their relationships so that we create the types of bonds that really are going to be lasting and are going to help us build the kind of camaraderie that really does make for a transformational group of men around us. The first thing that we said that we need is adventure. We need adventure to be part of what we do as men. We need to be sharing in certain kinds of experiences that challenge us, that push us, that test us in our skills. And that just bring us a lot of fun. These kinds of shared experiences, form bonds for men in ways that simply can't be explained in any other way. But. If all that we do as men is just have fun together as a group, even if it's just about adventuring together, that's never really going to get us to the kind of depth in our relationships that we need. I need guys who I do more than just adventure with. I need men who know me, who know my past, know my story, who share life with me, whose lives overlap with mine, not just personally, but with our families. Uh, with the activities that we do with our schedules, I need some things to really overlap so that there are men around me who know me that we're not just sharing in experiences together, but we have some shared understanding of one another. It's not just that we have things that we've done together. But we know each other so well that when we are together, there are things that are kind of unspoken because we have created a bond of understanding one another. I need to know some things about the other men in my tribe that helps me understand what has made them the way that they are. Why are they the type of men that they are so that I can relate to them better and help them become the best version of themselves. Now to describe this. I've created a phrase here at Manhood Tribess that I know you're going to love. It's going to help us get a handle on what it means to develop this kind of relationship with other men. Are you ready? Here? It is. It's just two words and you're going to let it get naked. Okay. Now I don't mean literally, although, I mean, you know, maybe if you want to do that, I'm not going to object. But the point is we're after the kind of relationship where getting naked with one another, not taking off your clothes, but being able to expose what's going on underneath the hood, underneath the surface of your life and help a man get to know all there is to know about you in that way, so that you really can begin to define and develop those shared bonds, those lasting relationships over the course of time. So when it comes to camaraderie, we need adventure, but we also need to get naked. Now, why is this? Why would I choose to put this as a part of what it means to be a man? I mean, let's be honest. This is not how most men relate to each other, especially in our modern Western culture. Uh, this has become a thing that is really foreign in our relationships to one another. Guys don't get naked. We don't talk about the deep things. As a part of our lives, because that kind of becomes like some way of indicating that we might be weak or we might be afraid, or we might be less than what we would like to project to other people that become something that we as men think we're not supposed to do. But in order to really be honest and to become the kind of men that we want to be. I'm going to guarantee you here on the front end that this is something you absolutely will have to learn how to do it is something you absolutely will have to figure out how to cultivate with the other men in your life. Now you don't have to start with the deepest darkest. Most painful, most shameful parts of your story. But you do have to start somewhere that is outside of your current comfort zone. You're going to have to start with the parts of your story that are just a little bit out of reach the things that you maybe don't like talking about, but can at least name with a few people that you trust. And that's where we need to, we need to discuss why, why do you need to do that? Why is this important for developing the kind of camaraderie that we as men need in order to become extraordinary men? One of the reasons is that because as men in particular, this is true of men and women, but especially for us as men. We are often very blind to our own stories. And what I'm mean by that is that. Because we have to live through our own stories. We have to live the highs and the lows, but we especially have to live the mundane, the ordinary, the just day-to-day grind that can tend to wear us down. And because of that, sometimes we don't necessarily see the themes and the threads that are being woven in our story over the course of long periods of time. And yet when we go to tell our story to other people and we are forced to condense it, it becomes really easy for others to pick up on the important themes and the significant threads of our stories that we tend to miss ourselves because we have to live through all of it. We have to live through the insignificant and the significant stuff at the same time. Whereas other people around us have the luxury of kind of just being able to pay attention to the significant stuff in our stories. And because of that, they can help call it out, pointed out and help us to see things about ourselves that we might otherwise miss. All of us tend to be blind to our own stories. But getting naked with other men allows other people to help us discover what really are the significant things that we need to be paying attention to. In addition to just being kind of blind to our stories.

Don Ross: 8:11

We also need other men in our life that we can get naked with because we are going to need them to fight for us. And we're going to need to do the same thing for them. As we come to know one another's stories, well, enough to be able to see the main themes. And the significant parts of another person's story, we're going to need to learn, to be able to fight for them so that they can not simply be defined by those things from their past, but that they can actually start to become that extraordinary man that they really want to be to learn to.

8:45

Grow into the man that God has created them to be. And that they're really meant to be all along. But if they don't get some outside help, if I don't get some outside help from other men. I won't ever be all that I can be. And that's because I'll be stuck living in not only the things from my past, but also just like I talked about the ordinary and the mundane of the present. I will get bogged down in the things that are insignificant about my story in the present and miss out on the things that could be significant in the future, because I'm not dealing with the things that are really big and most important. Other men will help be able to call those things out and to fight for me and to say, Hey. It seems like based on your story, you've got some real hangups in your relationship with your dad. And that's maybe kind of playing out in the way that you relate to your own kids now, or they might say it looks like you have really wrestled with authority figures your entire life. And that seems like it's holding you back from being able to advance in your career. Because you don't relate to your boss as well. If you guys have watched or listened for a while, you know, that that was a part of my story. I needed some tribe members to be able to help call that out and meet. To help me identify some things that I wasn't seeing, but also to fight for me and to say, Hey, not only do we want to point this out for you because you seem to be missing it yourself. But we want to help encourage you, hold you accountable, push you, challenge you and get you to address this area of your life. We want to fight for you so that you can be better than that. We know that that's not who you are meant to be. You're not meant to be the man who struggles with that thing for the rest of your life. Even if it has defined much of your past. It doesn't have to be the thing that continues to define your future. But in order for you to grow away from that and to grow up into a different kind of maturity. You're going to need men who can fight for you and you will have to do the same thing for them. But look that only happens if you have some guys that you can get naked with, it only happens if you have some guys who get to hear all of your story, who get to hear the good and the bad and the ugly who get to hear the things that I talked about at the beginning of this episode, that are the things that you're most afraid of or most ashamed to talk about. Very often, those are the things that are defining you. That are holding you back from being who you absolutely could be. And until you are willing to drop the guard, To drop the defenses to open up and to share some of that vulnerability with some other men that you trust. You want grow into the men, that, to the man that you're capable of being. You've got to be willing to let your guard down. You've got to be willing to get naked. But you do need men that you can do that with who you trust. And this is the thing. Vulnerability is the kind of thing that really does help you develop trust in a relationship. And I know that this runs counterintuitive to the way that we, as men in our culture, tend to think about trust. We tend to think. I need to trust a man in order to be able to open up to him and some of those kinds of ways. And there is some truth to that. You don't need to be foolish about the men that you talked to and the men who you choose to share some of these parts of your life with. And yet at the same time, You won't ever really get to a place where you can trust a man that deeply until you just actually choose to do it. You won't ever really get to that level of trust with another person in your life until you extend trust to them. I know that sometimes we like to say that trust is earned. But in this case, you're going to have to experience the reality that trust can be given. And you need to give some trust away. You need to get naked, even in some places where it's difficult to do so. And you're not totally sure if you, 100% trust these men around you to do everything right. With the things that you're trusting them with now you need to establish some boundaries. You need to establish. Within the context of your group, that what is shared there, doesn't get shared outside of it. And anyone who hears another man's story, doesn't have permission to share that man story. Unless that man says he does. Okay. So you got to establish some boundaries of protection and authenticity and privacy to make sure that all of those things are respected. A tribe needs to be confidential. Men need to be able to share the things that are hard to share without fearing that it's going to get shared outside of that scenario and situation. Okay. All of that is true. But even with those guardrails in place, you still might not be at the place where you could say. But I can open up about that thing in my life with these guys. You might not feel like you could ever get to a place where you could open up about that thing with anybody. But as long as you can't open up about it, you won't ever be free of it. You won't ever be able to grow away from it and to grow into the kind of man you could be. If that thing wasn't controlling you and defining you and shaping the course of your life. That's where vulnerability really does come into play because vulnerability allows you to test trust with other men. It allows you to put your heart in the other men's hands and say, I'm going to trust you with this part of myself. And expect you to hold it in the same confidence that I would do for you. And that's where vulnerability really does have to be a group thing. It has to become something that you honor as a tribe and say, I'm going to be vulnerable with you. And you're going to be vulnerable with me. And we're going to have to trust one another that we're holding each other's. Most important pieces of our stories in confidence within the context of your tribe. You've got to do this. And if you can't. If you can do that. It opens up all kinds of doors for transformation. It opens up all kinds of new pathways that you didn't even know existed because all of a sudden, you don't have to be defined by those things that you've been holding in as secret. And maybe they're not even secret. Maybe you have one or two people in your story who do know some of those things, but they aren't people who are traveling with you. They aren't people who share camaraderie with you, the way that we're talking about it. They aren't people that you're trying to have lasting bonds with the way that you want to do. That with the other men of your tribe. And as you do that, you've got to get to the place where vulnerability becomes the norm. It becomes the thing that you as a tribe honor. And so therefore you just do with one another, you all become worthy of honor because you are being vulnerable and trusting one another with those parts of your stories. You are willing to get naked because you know, it can bring you freedom. We're going to spend a lot of time talking about freedom in the next few episodes, but for now you just have to know that in order to get there, getting naked is a big part of that. You've got to be willing to do it in order to be able to get to those next steps in becoming an extraordinary man. Now over the years, I have been a part of a number of different tribes and men's groups where vulnerability has played a key role and seeing life change, really take place in some guys' lives. And so I want to point out a couple areas where men tend to have the hardest time getting naked and why it's really important for us as guys to be able to actually address these things. Okay. So there's two areas that are really. I really want to talk about. The first is the whole area of fatherhood. And in particular, I mean our relationship to our dads, but fatherhood is a bigger concept of than that. And I'll kind of get into that in a minute. But what I do want to say is that all men have pain surrounding their relationship with their dad. Even if you had the greatest dad in the world, and some of you are fortunate enough to be in that circumstance, there still are going to be some ways in which your dad let you down. Now, if you're not aware of that, of what those things might be, then there's some work to be done for you there, you need your tribe to probably fight for you in some ways that they might be able to hear your story and say, I see you acting in some ways that are difficult for other people that you might not be aware of. And I think that's actually kind of related to some things you learned from your dad, or you learn those things as a way to react to how your dad treated you. All of those things are really important. But we as guys, sometimes don't like talking about that kind of stuff. Sometimes our relationships with our dads were really, really bad. Maybe we didn't have a relationship with our dad at all. Maybe our dad was abusive in some ways, maybe our dad was just present, but was kind of, uh, relationally and emotionally neglectful of us. And he did a lot of harm to us, but not did anything directly. And so those things can be really difficult to talk about because we don't know how to put words to them. But everything about our relationship with our dad is going to define us in one way or another. Our fathers are our most influential and most shaping relationship in our lives. Period. End of sentence. And until we come to grips with the effect that our dads have had on us, we won't be able to move forward into being the best version of a man that we could be. So it's worth spending some time on the difficult parts about your relationship with your dad. The good parts as well. You need to celebrate and enjoy the things that your dad passed onto you that have made you the kind of man that you want to be. But more than likely for most of us. And I mean, the vast majority of us men. There are parts of our relationships with our dads that are hard. They're hard to talk about. They're painful to remember. They bring up things about ourselves that we don't like to confront. We might be like our dad and some ways that we wish that we weren't, or we might have fought so hard to not be like our dad, that we have swung the pendulum to the other side and become some things that we now resent as well. But we are those things because of our dads. We need to address all of it. And we need some other guys around us that we can talk honestly, about what our relationship with our dad was like, because again, we had to live through it. We had to live through all of the moments with our dads, not just the big, significant ones, but all the little ones as well. The years that add up, you will never be able to tell another person a story that lasts for years, but you have experienced your story over the course of years. And so, as you tell your story to someone else, They get to hear the condensed version of it and can help you identify the things that have actually shaped you. Maybe even in some ways that you haven't noticed for yourself. So fatherhood is an especially important thing that you need to get naked about. And you need to do that because also it will affect another aspect of your world as a man, which relates to what we have called ultimate allegiance. We've talked about ultimate allegiance when we talked about the 5 Marks of Manhood. And that really is about how you relate to the ultimate authority in your life. For many of us, that is going to be our God. And whether or not you call God father, as I do, as I know many of you watching do, if you are a Christian. Uh, you probably refer to God as your father. But even if you don't, the way that you relate to God is probably going to take on some fatherly characteristics, even if you don't think of God in that way. Your relationship with your guide or your ultimate authority is going to take on the characteristics of your relationship with your earthly dad. No matter what religion you're a part of, but especially for those of us who choose to follow Jesus. Our God calls himself our father. And the way that we think about him is going to be shaped about the way that we think about our own dads. So how you choose to relate to your dad and handle your relationship with him is going to greatly affect the way that you think about your relationship with God and how you relate to him. So paying attention to your. Relationship with your dad is going to affect so much about who you are as a man it's worth digging into. Okay. Fatherhood. That was the first one I said there were two kind of really big categories that we need to talk about that are hard for tend to be the hardest things for guys to talk about from their stories. Our relationships with our dad as the first. The second as you might've expected is our sexuality. Guys have a hard time talking about sex in any other way. That is just making jokes about it. And look good nature. Joking about sex among guys can be a fun thing. It can actually be a playful way of being able to bond and connect with other guys around you. As long as it's not done in a way that's doing harm to someone else or degrading or putting down someone else in the way that you're talking about it. But I know that this can be a playful thing. It's something that I do too. With my close guy, friends, we joke about and enjoy talking about sex with one another. But we need to move beyond that sex. Isn't just a joke. And for most of us men sex and our sexuality has defined us in some ways that is really, really difficult and often very negative. Many of us have had experiences with sex at young ages that have brought heaps of shame into our lives. Whether that was through exposure to pornography at a really young age. Uh, being involved in some kind of sexual act before you were really emotionally ready to be able to do that. Being sexually connected to another person that has contributed to some really difficult relational dynamics for you over the course of your life, that you wished that you didn't have, but that sexual contact created something for you that you couldn't do anything about. Maybe you've even been the victim of, or someone who has participated in sexual abuse. And everything surrounding that has affected the way that you think about not just sex, but honestly your whole life. Every relationship that you have is affected by that sexual encounter or experience or experiences. All of these things feed into the way that we as men think about sex. And in particular, in our culture right now where we are. So over-sexualized by the media around us, nevermind porn. Although most of us have been significantly affected by porn as well. The the whole world around us right now is over-sexualized and we as men. Are overstimulated by sex in ways that we just don't even really know what to do about it. But all of us probably have sexual experiences that we feel ashamed of and are nervous about talking to other men about. And the groups that I have been a part of over the years that has ranged from everything from. Uh, addictions to pornography, to, uh, early sexual experiences, maybe even with a family member to marriages that were built on lies about sex. Two marriages where sex is no longer occurring. To people who have had sex with members of the same sex when they didn't want to people who've had sex with members of the same sex when they did want to, and then have had to lie about it at other points in times in their lives. There's all kinds of things that I have heard about talked with other men about even some that I have experienced myself. And I've had to find ways. And so have all of these men to be able to get naked about those things that are really, really difficult to share about. But in doing so, like I said before, it opens up pathways that haven't been there before. It opens up doorways to freedom that would never have been there. If we keep those things in the dark. And it allows other men to be able to fight for us in some ways that we never expected. Other people might be able to help us.

Don Ross: 25:06

We want to keep those shameful experiences tucked so far away in the dark that we feel like they can't hurt us. But the reality is, is that back there in that dark corner. They are poisoning our lives in so many different ways. And when we finally begin to bring those things out into the light with some people who we can trust and who can handle our stories. Well, Then we began to find some ways to experience freedom and to realize I don't have to live in fear of that thing that is tucked away in that dark corner anymore. In fact, by bringing it out into the light, I don't have to have fear at all. And in not having fear, I began to realize I don't have to have shame and in not having shame, I start to experience life in a whole different way.

25:50

My relationships are freed up. My future is freed up. The things that I can become all of a sudden take on new shapes and new pathways. And that's what we're after. That's what getting naked is all about. It's not just a funny slogan, although it is that. But it's meant to be funny, to kind of help take the edge off of how serious a topic this actually is. We as men need to get to places where we can trust the men around us to be able to get naked with them so that we can be freed to become the kind of men that we really need to be. And that only happens in the context of this kind of shared camaraderie that we're trying to build. camaraderie has to include fun and adventure, but it also has to include depth. And that only comes through getting naked with other men over time. Okay. I want to take us into a little bit of a man who challenged. That's going to help us take some steps towards becoming the kind of men who can get naked with the other men that we trust around us. So meet me there and our Manhood Challenged segment.

Don Ross: 27:04

Guys welcome to this Manhood Challenge segment here on the Manhood Tribes show. My name is Don Ross. I'm the host of the Manhood Tribes show. And I want to challenge you today. And one of our 5 Marks of Manhood. Those are strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. So today I want to challenge you to grow in the area of courage and what I'm going to ask you to do, relates to what we've been talking about on our Manhood Tribes episode. Where we've talked about the idea of getting naked. We need some men around us who don't need to necessarily see us naked, but need to watch us. Uh, get vulnerable about the difficult things in our story. So, what I want you to do as a courage challenge is to begin to write down what are the one or two things in your story that you would be most afraid or most ashamed to talk about with some other men in your life? What are those things, just write them down and name them. What would be the most difficult things for you to talk about? And then what I want you to do? Is to try to write down two names, two guys, that if you were to share those things, These would be the guys that you would attempt to share them with. That's it. I want you to begin to just name it, write it down, write down those friends. And eventually we're going to talk about how you can develop relationships with those guys that they do become the kinds of friends you can trust that you can get naked with and share those parts of your story. Okay. I hope you take advantage of this Manhood Challenge and I'll look forward to seeing you again, over on the Manhood Tribes show. We'll see you.