How To Be A Man: Freedom From Lies

In today's episode of the Manhood Tribes Show, we delve deep into the beliefs that define us as men. We explore the impact of false validation and harmful agreements and how they hold us back from becoming the extraordinary men we are meant to be. 

Host Don Ross walks us through the importance of seeking validation from true sources – our fathers and our Heavenly Father – and explains the concept of agreements that shape our beliefs. 

Tune in to discover powerful insights and practical steps to break free from these lies and embrace real freedom. Plus, don't miss our Manhood Challenge to help you identify and confront the lies that limit you.

00:00 Introduction: Understanding Self-Belief
00:46 Resource Highlight: How Manly Are You? Quiz
01:19 Welcome to the Manhood Tribes Show
02:22 The Three Pillars of Manhood
03:16 Overcoming Life's Obstacles
04:48 Freedom from Lies
06:02 The Importance of Validation
18:14 Breaking Free from Agreements
23:34 Personal Story: Overcoming Loneliness
28:46 Spiritual Freedom and Breaking Lies
31:00 Manhood Challenge: Courage

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

I want you to take a moment to complete this sentence. I'm afraid that what's really true of me is that I am blank. How you fill in that blank says a lot about what you believe about yourself as a man. And if we're going to be the kind of men that we were really meant to be, we're going to have to deal with the beliefs that are defining us. Let's talk about that today on the manhood tribe 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. Alright guys, welcome to the manhood tribe show here. My name is Don Ross. I'm your host here at manhood tribes. And today is going to be an incredible time here on the manhood tribe show as we continue our series on how to be a man. We have been talking about this idea of how to be a man because we started out just by saying that it has gotten really complicated to figure out what it means to be a man in our culture today. Is that even a good thing? Is it something that's needed or even wanted in our world anymore? And here at Manhood Tribes, we want to say it absolutely is. It is good to be a man and the world needs men to be men. But it's gotten really difficult to figure out how exactly we're supposed to do that. What does that even look like? And how can we do it in a way that feels like it's true and authentic to the men that we know we're supposed to be, but also helps meet the deep needs of the culture around us. So there's a lot going on there and we have spent the past several weeks really diving into all of those kinds of things. We've done that by looking at our three big pillars here at manhood tribes. And those things are manhood, camaraderie, and freedom. We've said that if we want to be the kind of men that we were really meant to be, if we want to be the men that God has created us to be, and here at manhood tribes, that's what we call an extraordinary man. If we're going to be the extraordinary men that All of us really crave being, we've got to really have those three components in our lives. Manhood, comradery, and freedom. And so we started out talking about manhood. What does it mean to be a man? And we've used our five marks of manhood to help define that strength, courage, skill. Honor and allegiance. And then we talked about camaraderie, the idea that we are going to have to form lasting bonds with other men through trust and shared experience over time. And now we are talking about this last idea of freedom and really what it means to be able to overcome the major obstacles in our lives so that we are free to be the men that we're supposed to be without being held back by all kinds of other things in our lives. And we as men can tend to get held back by a lot, right? I mean, you know the struggles that are going on in your life right now. Some of them are external to you. It could be that your job is just incredibly difficult and overly burdensome. It could be that your family challenges are really difficult. Your marriage feels like it's on the rocks. Your kids are. Rebelling or just disobedient and you don't know what to do with them. And all of your parenting strategies seem not to work. It could be that you don't have a family and you really wish you did. And you don't understand why you've been unable to get married or to be able to have kids. And that's a source of major frustration with you. It could also be some internal things. And we actually talked about some of this last week, some things where you have found yourself giving yourself over to other things that are taking control of your life. Whether that's substances like alcohol and drugs, or whether that's gambling, or whether that's something sexual like pornography or an affair, all of these kinds of things can really begin to take hold on our lives and hold us back from being the kind of men that we are supposed to be. If we want to become that extraordinary man, we're going to have to learn how to get free in all of those major areas. So today I want to really talk about one area in particular, and we're going to look at it from a couple of different angles. And that's the idea that as men, we need to get free from the lies that we believe. The lies that we believe about ourself, about God, About the way that the world works and how we operate in it. All of those things really can shape our understanding of what it means to be a man and how we function as one. And if we're believing things that aren't true, it's going to hold us back from what we really are meant to be and what we are really meant to accomplish in the world. So we need to get freedom from some lies. But, you know, the thing about lies is that most of us aren't always aware of the lies that we're believing. We're not even necessarily aware of just the things that we're believing, let alone whether those things are truth or whether they are lies. And how do we deal with it if they are that? So we need to look at a couple different categories to help us understand where those lives might be lurking in our life. And when we discover them, what can we actually do about them? Okay. So we're going to look at a couple areas today. The first area that I want us to look at is the idea of validation. Now, validation is a big idea when it comes to being a man. Validation for manhood, as it relates to what we're talking about on this show, is really just the idea that something or someone tells us that we are a man. To use John Eldridge's kind of famous phrase now at this point to tell us that we have what it takes, that we are capable of showing up in the world and arriving as a man who's going to be respected and who's going to have something to offer that can be of benefit. That is a feeling that every man craves. It is something that is deep in our hearts and something that we desperately want not only to be known as, but to actually accomplish for ourselves, to look at our lives and see. I do have what it takes. And here's all the ways that I have demonstrated that. So the danger there for us is that we can be tempted to look to just about anything to tell us that we have what it takes, but not all of those things are good sources for helping us be able to receive that kind of validation. So what do I mean by that? Let me get some, let me get into some specifics. When it comes to validation, we might turn to anything that is going to make us feel manly. Okay. So some of the obvious ideas might be sex. As we start to get into our teenage and young adult years, we look to women and to anything having to do with sexuality as a way of telling us that we are men. That we feel like men and that's because your sexuality is kind of just awakening and that stage in life and it feels like it's maturity. It feels like this makes me a man. This helps me progress to the next stage in my life. If I can make out with this girl or if I can sleep with this girl or if I can notch this number bedpost, you know, whatever it is like as it's referred to today, how high can you get your body count? It's a ridiculous way of thinking about what manhood looks like. And yet, if you go onto YouTube, you will find countless number of manhood influencers, whatever exactly that is, who are telling young men in particular, that that's what manhood is all about. And so of course you can hear the validation in that right there. If you can just get your number of sexual partners high enough, if you can get your sexual experiences varied enough, if you can do enough, enough, enough, whatever it is, if you can accomplish these little goals, these little conquests sexually, you will be a man. And so we look for those things to tell us, to validate us, to make us feel like we are men. We look for it in other places as well. It is a common trope that men look for validation in their work. We go to the workplace to find success, and we look for that success to be the thing that really tells us you have what it takes. You are a man, you can do it. You deserve to be respected. You deserve to be rewarded. And so often where that tends to play out is that when we find that kind of success in the workplace, we might see that there's a lot of other areas in our lives that That we're not accomplishing that same kind of success. Work might really feel like things are going well, but home life and family life can feel like it's a constant struggle. And while people tend to listen to you and respect your opinion and do what you ask of them at work, at home, You just seem like the dog who gets kicked around too much. All you're needed for is the paycheck that you bring and the occasional thing that you fix around the house. Nobody else seems to respect your opinion or to even listen to what they ask you to do. So, of course, men are going to look to the thing that seems to be telling them that they are a man. So we're going to spend naturally more time invested in our work because in that place we feel like we are men, we are being validated and so we start to lose ourselves to our work and we start to abandon all the other places that aren't validating us. And that's where the common divide comes from men between work and family. It's not healthy, but it is really understandable. A man craves validation and when he's getting it from his work, but not getting it from his family, he will tend to spend all his time on his work. Men look for validation in a host of other things as well. It can be material possessions like cars or a bigger bank account or a boat or a rental property or a beach house or a mountain home. Are you, you name it, you know, whatever it is. Some kind of possession or purchase that communicates status or something that I've accomplished that says, I am a man. I have what it takes. Look at what I'm able to do with my money. All of those things feel like they bring validation. Another one that's become more recent is just anything that relates to fitness and fitness. And to a man's body, if we can get our body to look like those fitness models on YouTube and Instagram, then we feel like we have arrived as a man. If my pecs are rippling and my six pack is popping and my biceps are bigger than my neck, then yeah, I feel like I'm a man. I can show off my body and there's something very masculine about that that feels like I have what it takes. Other people are going to look at me and see a man. And so therefore I know. I am a man. I'm looking to my body to tell me that I am a man. And so therefore I'm going to spend a whole lot of time in the gym and I'm going to obsess over what I'm eating and what supplements I'm taking and what workouts I'm supposed to be doing and who I'm following online to be able to help me make the most of that and what kinds of people I'm hanging out with or not hanging out with because they're helping me achieve the body that I want to achieve because my body tells me I am a man. All of that is about validation. It's about feeling like I have what it takes and that I believe that I am a man. The problem with all of that is that all of those things that I have just named are lying to you. They don't actually have the authority and the ability to tell you that you are a man. You're looking to the wrong sources to be able to identify your masculinity. You're looking to the wrong things to tell you that you are a man and that you have what it takes. There are really only two sources of validation that actually can tell you that you are a man. The first. Is a father. A father is really the person who is most in your most likely in your life going to tell you that you are a man and that you're going to be able to believe it and receive it. We are meant to receive from our fathers that we are men, but unfortunately most of us, and when I say most of us, I mean the vast majority of men don't ever hear from our dads that we are men. That we have what it takes, that we belong in the world of men. It is not a message that men very often pass down to their kids. And that's probably because they didn't receive it from their fathers. And so they're still hungering after that question themselves and their insecurity doesn't allow them to be able to affirm it in younger men, especially in their sons. It is so hard to validate another man when you haven't been validated as a man yourself. And so most of us don't get validation from our dads because our dads never got it as well. It is a vicious cycle of weak masculinity that we are living in as a culture right now. So from this place of fatherhood, we have to learn to be able to receive that message that We are men from a different father. We have to learn to look to our heavenly father, the God who has made us, who has created us, who has designed what manhood is meant to be about in the first place, to look to him to say, am I a man? What makes me a man? And to be willing to listen. Your father in heaven longs to validate you as his son. He longs to tell you that you are a man, that he loves you as a man, and he is impressed by the man that you are becoming. He will tell you and allow you to show that you are a man and that you have what it takes. He will put things in your life, ways for you to demonstrate your masculinity, and then ways for him to affirm you and how you are living up to that. He will do all of those things for you if you will ask him and if you will allow him. So we need to learn to look to our heavenly father for a source of validation. He is the best one who can do that. But as men, we also need to look to a second source for validation. And that second source of validation is simply other men around us. We as men learn to accept that we are men because we are men. Other men who we know to be men, except us in their ranks, when we feel like we belong in the company of men, there is a sense of validation that comes along with that. There is a sense that says, if those guys who I know are men think that I'm a man, then I probably must be one. I really must belong in their company in the world of men. And so that means I am a man. If they think I have what it takes, maybe I actually do have what it takes. We need other men around us who can validate us. And not just as a one time thing, not just as a ceremonial, let me tell this guy that he has what it takes kind of thing, but really as an ongoing, let re remind, let me remind you. That you are a man, that you have what it takes, that you can step up to the plate in this very difficult situation in your family or in your work or in some other environment that is testing you and pushing your limits. And you feel like you can't meet that challenge. Let us, this group of men around you, let us remind you that you are a man and that you have what it takes and that we will be here alongside you to help you step up to that plate and accomplish what it is that you're trying to do. You need other men in your life to be able to validate you. If you don't have those two sources. If you don't have a father and a group of other men who are validating you as a man, then you will look to all kinds of other sources to tell you that you are a man. You will be susceptible to the lies of so many other things that are trying to tell you that you are a man. when really all those things are doing is trying to get you to serve them. They're trying to get you weak and at their control and at their disposal so that you will do their bidding instead of actually living out the calling that you are meant to as an extraordinary man. If you don't look for those sources of true validation, you will give in to the sources of false validation. It's just how manhood works. We're all susceptible to it until we come to terms with the fact that that's the way that manhood works. We will fall victim to the lies of places that are offering false validation. So we've got to learn that freedom only comes from those two sources. It comes from having a father in our lives who speaks that truth to us. And it comes from having other men in our lives who speak that truth to us. If we can have those things. Then it will give us the strength to get free from these other places of lies. Okay. So that's the first one. That's the first area that we need to talk about, which is validation. The second area that we need to talk about is a little more complex. It's something that I will call agreements. And again, I'm borrowing that idea from other men who have talked about it in other places as well. But it is kind of a complex idea, especially if you're a man who's not used to thinking in spiritual terms. If you're not used to understanding the world as operating in both physical and spiritual realms, this idea of agreements might be a little difficult for you to grasp. So let me just try to talk it out. Agreements is the idea that when we come to hear or understand some kind of idea about ourselves, or about God, or about the way that the world works, or about really anything big in life, there's a part of us somewhere in the back of our minds that kind of assents to that thing. It says, yeah, I think that is true of me. Or, yeah, I agree, that's what God really is like. Or, living in the world does feel like that. I think that's right. And when we make that kind of assent, when we make that agreement with that idea, it becomes a form of a belief. And that belief starts to have a shaping effect on our lives, to where it becomes true. Even if it isn't true, it starts to feel like it's true. And it starts to have such a control over who we are and the way that we live, that it, it becomes true. It plays out as true in our lives, even if it isn't true. That is called an agreement. It is an insidious form of a lie because it gets a little bit of a hook in us. And over time, that hook drags us so far off course of the men that we were meant to be, and we don't even recognize that the thing that has us off course is actually a lie, because when we look at our lives, we feel like we've got a lot of evidence to say that that thing is true. And so it feels really hard to acknowledge it as a lie in the first place. Okay, so that's a lot of theory. Let me give some practical examples. What do agreements really look like? I started out this episode by asking you the question to sort of fill in the blank. I'm afraid that what's really most true of me is that I am blank. And when you stop to think about that, what are some of the things that you might fill in that blank with? You might have some ideas of things like. I'm a screw up. I'm a failure. I'm all alone. I've got to figure out how to make things work on my own. Things are better off without me. I'm afraid that at the end of the day, I just really don't matter. I'm not worth very much. I'm not good enough. Whatever the world is asking of me, I can't really rise to the challenge. I'm afraid that I can't actually make it in the world. I don't know that I have the skills and the abilities to be the adult, to be the man, to be the husband, father, workplace person, you name it, fill in the blank to do those kinds of things. All of those are examples of false. And negative beliefs, but they are things that rattle around in our minds, often in the way that we call rent free these days, they live in our thoughts without us giving much thought to why those things are there. Why are those beliefs around? And why do we actually think that those things are true? So some of those things show up at very early places in our lives. It might be something about our childhood, maybe about our relationship with our parents, maybe about some difficult experiences we had as a kid. And because of that, we heard those messages early on. And especially as children, it can be really hard to differentiate between between whether or not the thing that we're hearing is truth or a lie. And because it feels true in the moment, based on our circumstances, as children, it's easy for us to give. mental ascent to that thing. And it gets a hook in us early on and it starts to play itself out over time. And as we enter into young adulthood, we either find ourselves making a mess of our lives because of those beliefs or figuring out how to make our life work in spite of those things. I'm just going to have to overcome the fact that I'm a constant screw up and I got to find some kind of a job that allows me to sort of be a mess, or I got to find a relationship that allows me to just fall apart and it'll still be okay. Okay. Those are the kinds of ways that we adapt and adopt those agreements to make them work in our lives. But the point is, we're not supposed to do that. Those agreements are lies. We aren't supposed to buy into them in the first place. We're supposed to be free of them. We are supposed to be free of those lies so that they don't continue to control us. They don't continue to define us and they don't continue to drag us off course of the extraordinary men that we were meant to be. Let me give you an example from my own life of really kind of what this looks like and how this idea of breaking free from those agreements really works. So, As a young boy, one of the things that I came to believe that I didn't even know that I was coming to believe was the idea that I was all alone, and that if I was going to make life work, I was going to have to figure it out for myself. Now, some of the ways that I came to buy into that agreement were simply from what my growing up taught me. Family environment kind of looked like some of it was that I was a very stubborn child. I was strong willed and determined and sometimes defiant when it came to my parents and I wanted to do what I wanted to do. And so because of that, I would often set out to stubbornly oppose my parents in order to get what I wanted and often because of their just sheer exhaustion and parenting me, they would allow me to have it. But it came at the cost of sort of beating them up, of fighting with them on a regular basis to get what I wanted to do. And it put damage and distance in my relationships with my family members. So because of that, I was getting some of the things that I wanted, but it meant that I felt very alone. I felt very much on my own, even in my family who I knew loved me, but for some reason seemed really distant from me. So this idea of kind of learning to be on my own moved into my young adult years where I started to figure out that if I wanted a job where I was going to be successful and I wanted a career path that I was actually going to enjoy. And if I wanted anything out of life, I was going to have to fight for it. I was going to have to assert my will. I was going to have to insist on things going the way that I wanted them to go. And I was going to have to do it on my own. No one was going to hand anything to me. No one was going to offer me anything good that I didn't fight for and achieve for myself. I was going to be on my own. You can imagine just in the way that I'm describing it, that my life, especially in my young adulthood years was difficult. It was painful at times because I felt like in order to get what I needed to get, I had to push people aside. I was constantly wrestling with this tension of wanting to be close to people, but having to push against them in order to get what I wanted. I felt like that was how life worked. And so I was trying to adapt to this belief that I had about the world and about myself. But the problem was, is that those things weren't actually true. People weren't set against me in the ways that I imagined that they were. Many people were actually willing to work with me if I was willing to sort of let my guard down and be less aggressive in the way that I related to them and to the world at large. But I was hesitant to do that because I didn't have a whole lot of evidence in my life that said life will work out just fine. If you do it with other people, I had a decent amount of evidence that said, no, if you work with other people, you're going to have to sacrifice all the things that you want. You won't ever get the things that you want out of life. You'll only get what they want for you. So, it was a very hard road in my 20s and 30s of beginning to figure out that even though I believed that's the way that the world worked, it wasn't actually true. And I needed to break that agreement and to surrender to a different way of living in order to be able to find the goodness that was actually available to me. In order to be able to get free from those lies. Now, I mentioned that there's a strong spiritual element going on here in this world of agreements, and that's absolutely true. Very often, those agreements are whispered to us from spiritual forces who are trying to oppose us and to drag us away from the truth. Destiny that God has created us for from the kind of men that he has intended us to be. And so on the heels of difficult situations or of trauma that happens in our life and anything that we can call sin, our spiritual enemies are very often crouching at the door, waiting to whisper to us. See. I told you that that's how this works. See, you really are a screw up. See, you've gone and blown it all again. See, they're not going to be there for you. You actually are alone. And because in that moment, that lie feels so true. It is easy to give our hearts over to it. It is easy to. To affirm that agreement yet again, and that's where we really have to turn to our heavenly father to say, I don't understand what's going on here, but will you tell me the truth and give me the strength and the courage to believe what is actually true in this moment about me and my about you, about how the world works, and about what I really do need to believe here. So, when you have gotten some handle on what the agreements are that you are seeing in your life, you need to break them spiritually, because they come from a spiritual source. You need to start by breaking them spiritually, so that you can gain spiritual freedom. And then after that, you will learn to begin to live out that freedom in the world around you, whether that's in your relationships or your job environment, or in how you view yourself and the kind of things that you talk to yourself about, all of those kinds of things play out after you've gained some spiritual freedom. And it's not hard to do. It's a simple matter of coming before God and just saying, God, I recognize that this thing I have believed is a lie. And in your power. Through your power, Jesus, I break that agreement with evil spiritual forces. I break the lie that I am a screw up. You fill in the blank with whatever your lie is. I break the lie that I am all alone and that I am on my own to figure out how the world works. I break the lie that I am not good enough, that I am not worthy enough, that I don't matter, that things would be better off without me. I break all of those lies. Amen. In your power, and I asked that you would set me free to believe what is really true. And then I would encourage you to just listen for a moment. Ask God to speak to you and tell you what is really true. Speak to you and present some truth that can fill in those blanks in ways that those agreements once did, but that weren't serving you well. You need new truth. to replace those old lies. And when you can start believing those new truths, you're on your way to finding the freedom that God really has for you. Okay. So those are the two areas of freedom that I wanted to talk about today. Getting free from lies, whether that's from false sources of validation or from controlling sources of agreements. We as men need that kind of freedom in order to be the extraordinary men that he has created us to be. I'm going to close out today's show with a manhood challenge that's going to help us be able to get closer to that freedom. So stay tuned. Alright guys, welcome to another manhood challenge segment here on the manhood tribe show. I'm Don. I'm the host of the manhood tribe show. And these manhood challenges are all about helping you get better at being a man and one of our five marks of manhood, which are strength, courage, skill, leadership. Honor and allegiance. And today's challenge is going to help you out in the area of courage. Now, if you have watched the manhood tribe show, you know that we're talking a little bit about how to get free, that we need freedom in order to become the kind of men that God has meant us to be. And in particular, we need freedom from lies, the lies that we believe and the places that are telling us lies in our lives. So today I want to ask you to muster up the courage to work. On filling in this blank in this sentence. I am afraid that what is really true of me is that I blank. I am a screw up. I am a failure. I am all alone. I am not worth much. I destroy things around me. You fill in the blank, spend some time reflecting on those things and be honest, have the courage to be honest about what feels really scary about you and your life. If you can have the courage to do that, you will start identifying the places in your life where you are not free. Where there are lies in your life that you are believing and that you need them to be replaced by some truth. Now to get some more insight on that, you need to go and listen to our whole episode on freedom from lies so that you can learn what that looks like. But if you'll begin with this manhood challenge, it will help you get on the road to becoming the extraordinary man that you were always meant to be. Thanks for joining. And I look forward to seeing you next time on the manhood tribe show.