The Male Identity Crisis Nobody Talks About After 40 | S02E10

You did everything right. Built the career, landed the marriage, checked every box on the list. So why does 40 hit like an identity crisis nobody warned you about?

Dennis Procopio (The Bro Coach®) sits down with co-host Charles Ledbetter, who just turned 41 and got hit with the exact thing a lot of successful guys hit around that age. Charles lays it out straight: "I know I got to a point where I wasn't who I wanted to be, but I definitely wasn't who I was anymore." 

Dennis has heard some version of that sentence from hundreds of guys across 25,000+ hours of coaching, guys making six figures and guys making millions, all asking the same question at 3am. That's the identity crisis nobody warns you about, and it doesn't care how much you've built.

This episode gets into the two questions Dennis says every man spends his life answering, no matter how much money he has or doesn't have: who am I, and why am I. 

Dennis and Charles break down the difference between self-worth and self-esteem, unpack why you're a human being and not a human doing, and walk through Dennis's "house of mirrors" thought experiment, a guy surrounded by reflections shaped a little differently, all showing him a different version of himself. They also get into the actual toolset Dennis uses with clients, meditate, validate, avoid judgment, and the three-part mantra that love is what enables choice.

Also: Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, quantum physics, and a full rewrite of Shakespeare's most famous question.

TIMESTAMPS
 0:00 - Cold Open: The Male Identity Crisis After 40
 0:53 - Why Turning 40 Breaks Your Sense of Self
 4:15 - Identity and Purpose: The Two Questions Every Man Answers
 7:36 - We Rise or Fall to What We Believe About Ourselves
 9:18 - The House of Mirrors Thought Experiment
 18:41 - Self-Worth vs. Self-Esteem
 19:54 - Human Being vs. Human Doing
 23:35 - Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds
 45:52 - Love, Fear, and the Choices You Make
 59:22 - Shakespeare's Trick Question, Rewritten
 1:02:29 - How to Be, Not What to Do

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Why the identity crisis after 40 has nothing to do with how much money you've made
• The two questions driving every man: who am I, and why am I
• Why you're a human being, not a human doing, and what that actually changes
• The difference between self-worth and self-esteem, and why it matters
• Dennis's house of mirrors metaphor for untangling ego from identity
• The meditate, validate, avoid judgment toolset Dennis uses in real coaching sessions
• Why the real question was never "to be or not to be," it's how to be

THIS HITS IF YOU'RE

• Turning 40, or past it, and not fully recognizing who's staring back
• Successful on paper but running the whole thing on autopilot
• Done chasing the next goal but not sure what replaces it
• Judging yourself in the mirror more than you'd admit out loud
• Making the "right" choices but still can't say why you're making them
• Asking "who am I?" for the first time in years

TAKE ACTION Free 30-minute strategy session: https://www.manuplifecoaching.com/application

CONNECT Website: https://brocoach.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/manuplifecoaching TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@manuplifecoaching YouTube: https://youtube.com/@manuplifecoaching

ABOUT THE SHOW The Bro Coach® Podcast with Dennis Procopio. Not red-pill garbage. Not therapy. Real coaching for guys who achieved success but missed the point. Dennis has 25,000+ hours working with high-earning men ($150K to $3M+) who look successful but feel stuck.

Transcript

Cold Open: The Male Identity Crisis After 40

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Most men want more, more clarity, more respect, more control over their lives, but few know how to get it. Welcome to the ProCoach Podcast with Dennis Procopio, the founder of Man Up Life Coaching and the man behind thousands of transformed lives. Not red pill, not therapy, just the evolved man's blueprint for strength, presence, and purpose.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

Good morning. I am Dennis Procopio. I'm here with Charles Ledbetter, and this is the Bro Coach Podcast. I am the Bro Coach. That is a nickname that I picked up after 13 plus years of coaching men. And here we talk about all things male. I'm glad you found us. This episode is going to be focused on a topic that we all deal with at some point in our lives.

Why Turning 40 Breaks Your Sense of Self

SPEAKER_03 0:53

The male identity crisis that no one talks about after 40. The male identity crisis that no one talks about after 40. Charles, what the heck is that even mean, bro? What is that?

SPEAKER_02 1:13

That's a great question, Dennis. I'm really glad you asked. What the fuck is we even talking about here? That I just fucking got over 40 and now I'm trying to figure out who the fuck I am, right? Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

That's right. That's what it is. That's what it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

You would have these things settled and whatnot. But a lot of things happen, I think, once we get over 40 in life. A lot of things change, right? We become more established in life. We often have met a significant other. We might be making some money, right? Things, maybe we've got a house now, we've got some responsibilities, things have shifted a little bit. We're done being fuck tards and chasing, you know, money, sex, and booze. And uh things have shifted. And now we're just kind of like, well, who the hell am I now? Like, so and you have this kind of crisis where you're trying to figure out, well, this doesn't look like necessarily what I imagined. It's way better and it's on the track of what I wanted uh or what I genuinely want now, but it's not also uh, you know, the the the experience that I was having the majority of my young life. And so you're caught in this kind of limbo area where you're like, okay, now I have to have to actually make a decision about who I am on a daily basis. I know I got to a point where I wasn't who I wanted to be, but I definitely wasn't who I was anymore. Um, and I was kind of excited about the the prospect when I figured out that I can actually choose on a daily basis who I am now. I get to rewrite the definition of Charles when I wake up every single morning. Um, I don't think I was aware of the role that identity played in every single decision I make and every single outcome taking place in my life. Like I had no clue, right? Um, and all of a sudden at 41, I'm starting to come to a little bit of awareness, like, oh, this is kind of profound. And I'm starting to ask myself a lot more introspective questions. And it's like, well, okay, if I'm not the father, who am I? Right? If I'm not the entrepreneur, you know, mogul, who am I? Right. And these are fucking tough questions to really answer, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:45

Yes, sir. It's I'm really glad that you framed it that way because identity is one of the two things that men ultimately try to shake out in our lifetimes as a way of managing uh existential crisis. Like we start out as kids, and we get told these stories about who we are and what we are, what this

Identity and Purpose: The Two Questions Every Man Answers

SPEAKER_03 4:15

all means. And we have to parse out, you know, what we keep and what we don't, you know. We get told that uh we're living on a ball in the middle of the, you know, infinite space, and that those little dots of light in the sky are these giant gaseous balls that were on fire, but then some of them aren't, but we're still seeing them because the last light from that star hasn't reached us because of light years. But we also get told that when we lose a tooth, we put it under our pillow and some tooth berry sneaks in, gives us some spare change, and is using it to build a castle out of children's teeth in the sky. And it's our job to figure out like what we're gonna believe and what we're not, and the idea that we get to decide what we believe is very scary because that gives us a hand in essentially creating the world that we live in. And if that's not a lot of responsibility, I don't know what it is, which is why I believe that it is instinctive for us uh for Homo sapiens to try to put some sort of wrapper around it, and that's where we get into uh religion and philosophy. I mean absolutely am I right? Yeah, and so 100%. And so the two things that in coaching I have always um put in front of men as sort of their North Star is to say there are two questions that you will spend your life answering, no matter how much money you have, whether or not you have children, whatever your jam is, whether you're living in a mansion or whether you're living under a bridge, you will always be trying to um figure out for yourself who am I and why am I? And who am I is a question of identity, and why am I is a question of purpose. You know, who am I asks literally like who I'm looking around at other people for clues as to like I'm on stage trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Yeah, no, that makes me think of uh a saying that I heard because I I was sitting here listening as you're talking and and contemplating the importance of identity. And it's like, yeah, okay, well, typically we we rise or fall to what we believe about ourselves, right? Like we're gonna if I believe that I'm a man of high character and integrity and honesty and can't fucking lose, you know, I'm gonna act accordingly,

We Rise or Fall to What We Believe About Ourselves

SPEAKER_02 7:36

right? And and situations in my life will materialize that reflect that back to me, right? Vice versa. If I believe I'm a piece of shit, I'm a failure, I never get anything right, that shit's gonna manifest and reflect back to me, right? Whether through my actions creating it or just the belief itself adjusting matter, right? Which is now we've gone philosophical to oh, we're going there. We're going there. But like so the the saying that I heard also that relates to this that popped up after that. It was like actually instead of just we are what we think about ourselves, that we tend to we are what we think others think about us, right? Which is which is funny because we are constantly doing this. You just spoke to it. We're constantly doing this dance of like, okay, do I appear strong to other people? Do people tell me I'm strong, right? Do people tell me I'm courageous, right? Does my wife think I'm does my wife think I'm brave?

unknown 8:43

Right.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

Like and so often that can even be a uh I'm not saying it's right, uh, but it seems to be one of those weird ways of the world that that others' perception really matters to us as men.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

Now I'm gonna jump right in on that and I'm gonna say, imagine this, if you will. I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna create a uh sort of a model for you here. Let's call it a thought experiment.

SPEAKER_06 9:12

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 9:13

Okay, Charles.

The House of Mirrors Thought Experiment

SPEAKER_03 9:18

Um imagine if you will, at uh 7 23 a.m. Pacific time. Uh imagine if you will, and this is specifically speaking to identity, okay? Okay, imagine there's a guy sitting in a house of mirrors, and every single mirror is shaped slightly differently. Which means that every single mirror reflects back a different version of himself. A tall one, a short one, a fat one, a skinny one, a feminine one, a a masculine one, a brown one, a white one, a black one, a you know, you you see where I'm going with this, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_06 10:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

Now when that guy sees all of those differences, that's going to give him anxiety because he's has analysis, literally, analysis paralysis, right? Analysis because his potential identity is being dissected inf infinitely into the many different uh possibilities that he has. It's kind of like Game of Thrones, you know, the the the Hall of Faces or whatever. It's you know, you you because you can be anybody, what significance does the somebody that you're being have in the context of this entire story? It's it's overwhelming. Right now, I'm gonna stay with this with this metaphor. So because all these mirrors are different, when you move, everybody doesn't move and lock locks step with you. Right, there are gonna be necessarily there are gonna be differences. Some people are gonna be upside down and right side up and caddy wompus and all over the place. So it obfuscates for you the truth, and I'm using that term carefully because again, it's just a thought experiment, the truth that they are all reflections of you. So if you start reacting to what they think or what they're doing, there's the trap. Um because you reacting to your own reflection or reflections or making choices, I like that one, but I don't like that one, is going to create a complication because you're essentially saying that you like or that you choose yourself this way or don't choose yourself, reject yourself this way, and that is going to prevent you from having the moment where you realize, oh my gosh, it's all just me. These are all reflections. So one of the things we do in coaching is we try to practice meditation, which in my thought experiment is closing your eyes and not seeing those reflections and not perpetuating narratives you've created about those reflections. So you're not sitting there going, that short guy's freaking pissing me off.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

You're not judging them, essentially.

SPEAKER_03 13:19

That black guy is acting so typical. It's like that's you. That's a very Buddhist concept. That is you. Sure. Right. That I am that is the foundation of Buddhist thinking, right? Yeah. And I'm not here to promote Buddhism, but if you get into it, you know, any religion teaches us to meditate andor to pray until we are one with God, whatever that means for you as a listener, even if you're an agnostic or whatever your thing is. Um, I could I trust me, I could take it like he was talking about, he was starting to get into the quantum rabbit hole here. I similarly could take you into a scientific explanation if you're freaked out by religious legalism and dogma. But one way or another, as a man, especially after 40, because that's just how it seems to go, you get to a point where you realize I have not resolved who I am or why I am, and what you're going to figure out is that why I am determines who I am. Now, I'm gonna yes, yeah. Okay, yeah, you see what I did there? Uh-huh. It was a lot, but I landed it, right? All right.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

Yeah, I have questions.

SPEAKER_03 15:02

I I have answers.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Okay. So I I hear a few of the themes and concepts that are, you know, along that journey, that little path you just took us on, right? And so one of the ones that I heard uh is accepting all the versions or pieces uh of yourself. Right. Like, because I recognize there's a a need for that. I think one of the things that crushes us as men uh is the way we judge ourselves so hard, so harshly, right? And the way we just don't receive or give ourselves validation, right? And the the you you talked about looking at that mirror and going, well, I don't like the guy in that mirror, right? Right. That thing.

SPEAKER_05 15:59

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

Which is a difficult place to learn to love that guy in the mirror because understanding like I am that guy, that guy's a piece of me, right? That guy is a version of me that exists, and I can't hate him without therefore hating me, right? Right. Um, and it becomes this self-destructive belief pattern and decision. And so it's like where does the where does the line get drawn there in self-improvement? You kind of took us all the way to digging into the the why behind the who, right? Right. I'm assuming that we need to go further into that why to understand when is it okay for us to go, okay? Sweet. I can love and accept and you know, forgive myself if necessary for something that I see as perhaps a shortcoming or a liability or undesirable in me, or that I prefer this over that. I see what you're saying. When does it become okay to go, okay, yeah, but I but I do want to change that about myself, but I do want to improve in that area. Maybe I don't want to feel insecure anymore, right? Over whatever ABC, right? Maybe I have a proclivity to cowardice and to giving in to fear when I want to speak up and use my voice, right? So it's like maybe I need to accept the guy that experienced the fear in the first place, but what when what action comes into play, right? And character development.

SPEAKER_03 17:51

Okay, I'm I'm gonna give you an answer to that. By the way, check out that red box around your thing. If that lights up, that means your camera's that your mic is is picking picking your breathing on. Um so what I'm gonna tell you here, first of all, is that um a while a few episodes ago, you and I were talking about the difference between self worth and self-esteem. And we identified that self-worth is when you're intrinsically good, you're good with you.

Self-Worth vs. Self-Esteem

SPEAKER_03 18:41

Um self-esteem is when you're concerned extrinsically with others being good with you, how you look socially, how you come across on paper, etc. Right. And I said that when you focus on self-worth, you're focusing more on um who you're being um than what you're doing. And you you added, you said, yeah, I always say, you know, or not always, but you know, I'm misquoting you, but essentially you came up with the language um that you use in sessions about a human being versus a human doing. We're not a human doing, we're a human being, and that beingness can't be slept on. Like when I say meditate, people have this idea that what I mean is like go sit in the corner for a minute, like it's some sort of uh time out to chill your chill your ass out a little bit.

Human Being vs. Human Doing

SPEAKER_03 19:54

But if we were to really look at what life is or can be, uh those, you know, my my my joke for man up life coaching is come for the abs, stay for the enlightenment. And and the middle part is the journey that you go on, and that's what we're talking about here, this male identity crisis um in men, especially after a certain age. I mean, 40 seems like a sort of an arbitrary number because it can happen at any time. Typically, guys finally slow down and start really thinking about this stuff at 40. But if I can be completely real, I think I kind of got a head start on all of this stuff just because I was in survival mode as a kid, and by 15, I already felt like I was done with all of this. I was tired. So back to your question, which is where do we draw the line um in terms of you know, self-improvement and how do we make choices if we go back and we use being as our as our North Star instead of doing. But when we're making choices, we have to ask ourselves why we're making choices. What do these choices mean? And in terms of being, we're looking to actually remove meaning, which is a tricky concept because meaning is the projection of your own interpretation onto what you're seeing, which disallows you to see it for what it actually is. I know.

SPEAKER_04 22:01

Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey time for some enlightenment bitches.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Um but wait, do I need more caffeine or less? Never mind. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 22:14

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark and say less.

SPEAKER_04 22:19

Touche. I mean, if you're meditating on the back of like a Ducati or something, then maybe. That's hilarious. I know.

SPEAKER_03 22:29

I know how you roll, but I see you. Um but so, but so instead of beginning with the premise, should I choose or reject this thing that I'm seeing, we should be coming into everything with the idea that everything that I'm seeing is something that I already ordered from Amazon. I don't remember ordering it. I drunk dialed that shit, and here I am out on my porch seeing all this shit. And it's all here, and I gotta just accept okay, this is all here because at some point, precognitively, I subconsciously, I ordered this. So the modality that you need to be in is to take control of what you're ordering, because what you're ordering is what's going to

Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds

SPEAKER_03 23:35

show up. And that is where some of my core programming and the principles from it come from. The Zoroastrians, um, who, you know, in Iraq, for example, precede Islam, beautiful religion. And there they precede uh Judaism as well, and both the Abrahamic religions uh borrow from Zoroastrian concepts without giving them their props. But the the basic concept of Zoroastrianism is good thoughts, good words, good deeds. That's critically important. And meditation uh is a critical component as well. Good thoughts. What do good thoughts what does that mean, good thoughts? What is what do we mean by good? Good and bad? No. Good thoughts mean we're accepting everything as it is without judgment. That becomes difficult because you're like, you know, obviously the world is gonna say, hey, they're eating babies on Epstein Island. You good with that? Right? Good thoughts says essentially stuff that's built into prayers, you know, like the Lord's Prayer, for instance. You know, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, right? We recognize that we're in this situation temporarily. This is a bus stop, and we're just hanging out. This isn't permanent, it's just we're passing through this particular weird thing that we call life. We are in this house of mirrors, and our fundamental job while we're here is to just hang out, and good thoughts means I understand at a foundational level that I am an extension of something that is infinitely good, that I accept that I am of goodness and that I am capable of producing goodness in every action. What is goodness? I don't every freaking kindergartner knows the difference. I don't need to define it. If you're pretending you need to define it, then you're just deflecting from your responsibility. You know right from wrong, you know good from bad. You know what good feels like. If your grandma approves it's good, you know what I mean? Um so my fundamental job here is to be thinking good thoughts. Look at that fat fuck. Nope, that's not a good thought. Look at that hoe in that red dress. I'd smash that. That's really not a good thought. Instead, and I use the red dress because that's an allusion to the matrix, right? Um what I'm what we're saying here is I accept everything. I accept that kid with the cleft palette. I accept that guy with a goiter hanging off of his neck, or that woman with uh freaking black hairs growing out of a giant mole on the tip of her nose. I accept that beautiful Instagram model. I accept those guys doing cocaine in the bathroom of the bar in New Orleans. I accept that religious, you know, evangelist who loves the sound of his own voice more than praying and worshiping God. I accept this entire world in entirety, just that's redundant, but I accept this world in uh its entirety as something that I'm experiencing right now. But I am good and I am of good and I emanate goodness, and I let goodness as a vibration influence everything I do. So if I start there, then what does good words mean? Good words means don't say, don't speak things into existence that you don't, you know, if if if you speak things into existence, they will manifest. That's where that Amazon thing came from. Thoughts become things. That that's really just the way it works. We're in a vibrational system and thoughts manifest. So when you say things, I always speak from the place that believes in goodness. That's why I am doing my best not to talk shit about our government, why I'm doing my best not to talk shit about um foreign foreign conflicts and world events. I'm, you know, like again, I keep referring to Jesus, not because I'm a Jesus freak, but because I really like Jesus as a metaphor for this particular thing. While guys are sitting around talking about how how we gotta, you know, overthrow the Romans or whatever. Jesus is up in the mountain praying. Like, that's what's up. For a lot of men, that will mean bend over and take it instead of being a patriot and fighting. But they'll also read out of a book that says we're just passing through this world, like go softly, you know, the meek shall inherit the earth. And they're waiting to get raptured up. So you're simultaneously fighting for your, you know, for your little patch of land in hell while you're waiting to get raptured up out of it. Like that's there's a conflict there.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

Interesting dichotomy.

SPEAKER_03 30:07

You know what I'm saying? And so faith is saying I can shrink myself and move through this war that I'm seeing. And instead of picking a side, I pick peace rather than war. And I can wait until it literally manifests because I am saying good things, I am thinking good things. And I am, as far as good deeds go, like I'm I personally am someone who regularly does good deeds, and I try my hardest not to do bad deeds because I've learned that bad deeds, you know, plant a bad seed, you're gonna get a bad tree that's gonna yield bad fruit, and that's the forest you live in, motherfucker. So so for self-improvement, meditate, validate, avoid judgment, put down narratives that weigh goodness or badness, and just you've worked with Faisal. I mean, Faisal's a my one of my coaches, Coach Faisal, who's over in Bahrain, that's my dude right there. Homie walks that talk.

SPEAKER_05 31:35

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

You see it.

SPEAKER_05 31:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:38

So I don't have to tell you to put a coat on when you're cold. I don't have to tell you to move away from fire if it's if you're hot. What choices you should you be making? Make yourself good through the practice of meditation, through the practice of good thoughts, good words, good deeds, and instinctively you will move toward opportunities for the increase of goodness, and you will accept without judgment the shadows where the light does not currently hit, but you will see the potential for change. You will give love where there's darkness, and you will necessarily move away from anything that that seems not threatening per se, but just vibrationally off, man. Not in alignment with what you desire, not in alignment with not only with what you desire, but with what you truly are, and that's where we're back to the identity crisis. Most people don't understand what they truly are because they don't understand their purpose. Being in a specific way is your purpose.

SPEAKER_04 33:16

You know, so just fucking meditate. You're a good douchebag.

SPEAKER_03 33:26

Um but you you you're my douchebag, bro. But you know what I'm saying. I mean, I think you know what I'm saying. Tell me how that hits for you, how that hits for you.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Absolutely. I think the being knowing your purpose, right, uh makes all the difference in the world. And being able to make a choice, the the word that I keep hearing over and over in my head as you're talking, right, is is a word of empowerment, right? Am I a being that is a passive participant, like just an observer, right? And and this is a curious, so because I'm uh asking myself these kind of important questions as we talk here and as I listen, and I'm like, okay, sweet. So am I a being who's just observing, right? Who's being carried on some wave of energy and you just kind of ride the wave and look around or hey man, stop spinning your wheels.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

If you're serious about leveling up your career, your relationships, and your mindset, it's time to man up. At Man Up Life Coaching, we cut the excuses and build discipline, confidence, and purpose. Book your free strategy session now at Manuplife Coaching.com slash application. Don't fill it out if you're not ready to grind, but if you are, this call could change your life. Man up life coaching. Elite life coaching for men by men.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

Am I a being making choices, right? Or here becomes the fundamental uh crux of the problem for me. It's like, okay, do I have power to affect change or not? Right? Or is it simply the all of life is just one big exercise of acceptance?

SPEAKER_03 35:38

Thy will be done.

SPEAKER_04 35:41

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 35:42

You cannot simultaneously have thy will and my will. Okay. God is not your co-pilot. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

No, no, I do I conceptually I get that, right? In practice, so there's still a choice to surrender to God's will.

SPEAKER_03 36:11

In fact, and I want to be careful because I don't want to lose a portion of my listening audience. We're like, ah, there these guys are doing this God shit. I'm not a God person, I just believe in nature or whatever. I can't tell you how many guys I've uh I've I've had who have been ruined by religion who say, now I just kind of look for I look for my um spiritual fulfillment in nature. And meditation brings us to the reality that inner nature and outer nature are the same nature, and our nature is goodness, and we're back. So it's possible to get so lost in religiosity. Let me give you an example. Let's say um, let's say there is a magic person who is gonna come down from the sky and save us from our misdeeds and teach us some amazing prophet or teacher, but he's invisible because you know, whatever. We we don't have the perceptive apparatus to see him. So I take a Disney themed sheet and I throw it over him. Okay. Now somebody's gonna see one side of it and they're gonna see Mickey Mouse, and another guy's gonna see Goofy, and another guy's gonna see Donald Duck, and the next thing you know, they're all gonna be arguing over the identity of this entity that is here to save us. And the reality is, dude, the sheet that I threw over it was just to help you to see it in your current, you know, perceptive limitation.

unknown 38:01

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 38:02

That's where religion can get in the way. Because we're trying to put a wrapper around a nature that you cannot see literally.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

There's not words good enough to describe.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

That's why we meditate, because meditation allows us to experience what we don't have words to to like look let me give you a quick example. When I was when I was in when I was in school, they taught us these helping verbs. Okay, and the and the verbs were M is R was were B being been, have has had, do, does, did, may, might, must, can, could, will would, shall shit. A relatively short list. And you can still do that.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 38:56

I've got this wacky brain. And uh and so I and so I thought of I well, they told us to memorize it, so I did. Um and uh and uh so I started thinking about these words, and I came back to my teacher and I said, and he knew I was like a little, you know, gifted little queermo nerd. And I came back after class and and uh and I said, Hey, I made an observation about these words, and he's a go boy, here comes Dennis, right? And uh I said, I was noticing that you can't ask a question in the English language without using one of these words or implying them. And I remember him going, Wait, is that true? And he goes to the chalkboard. And he's like, Well, son of a gun, you're right. And I I remember thinking later, um, in reflecting more on those words, when you choose a specific word, you're already predetermining the nature of the answer. Because are you blank blank blank is going to yield a different, you know, type of answer than were you blank blank blank? Just just for instance, and there are givens built into the difference between R and were. There there is a there is a philosophical underpinning right there, R and were. What do you have to accept to accept that there's a difference between R and were? It has to do with time, you know, past, present, and future. And we're just conditioned in school that this is just the that this is just the language that we speak, which then creates neural pathways for this is how we think, which then determines the world that we see, but it also limits the world we see because there are other questions we can't ask because there are words that we don't have, which means we're always predetermining the nature of our answer anytime we ask a question. So, in terms of empowerment, we have the power to create what we see through limitation. But what we don't have the power to do is to know what we don't know, except to surrender the idea of our empowerment through the letting go of our own narratives. So speaking again to identity crisis, when a man at 40, or if he's ahead of the game, like me, I was a not ahead of the game, I don't want to say it like it's a race, but because I come from a traumatic background, I was forced to external circumstances kind of rushed you into that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Absolutely, yeah. So I mean it's not a it's not a moral high ground, it's a like, whoops, yeah, just kind of my story.

SPEAKER_03 42:25

Right, right, right. Again, if you if you are a kid who fucks around and ends up on Epstein Island, you're gonna be facing some serious existential questions that the average eight-year-old, you know, eating a bowl of cereal, you know, thinking about the toy they want, um, is not faced with. But societally, typically by about 40, men, especially if you've achieved a certain level of of success and stability, men start to question who am I and why am I? And to land the plane here and speak to the thing you originally said, I have discovered, or I should say I've accepted, that we always only have one actual choice. This is what your your anxiety comes from what if I make wrong choices, I want to make right choices. And the reality, and I'm using that term in an absolute sense, which is something that you won't hear me do often, because everything the way I see the world, everything is metaphorical. Everything is metaphorical. Um that's That's the world I live in. Everything's a metaphor for everything. Everything is self-referential. And none of it is anchored to anything real. So when we meditate and we allow ourselves to realize, and I'm again I'm using that term in like profoundly. Realize that we really are looking at the you know the the the shadows on the cave wall, so to speak, and we allow ourselves to exist beyond that theater, then the only choice we can actually make is to surrender the illusion of autonomous power and let it um and pour ourselves wholly, not immerse ourselves, but subimmerse ourselves into the unnameable, which is our actual nature. And since it's often equated with love, because love will get you there, love in its highest sense, which is selfless, love right, right, right, right, right. See, I I love watching the light bulb go off. That's why love will get you there, because in its highest sense, it's service that is does not in any way do anything for

Love, Fear, and the Choices You Make

SPEAKER_03 45:52

you. You're not looking for receipts, you're not trying to get anything back, it's the ultimate act of selflessness, love. And so that's why there's a mantra that says it's it's a three-part mantra. One, love is that which enables choice. That right there could be a tenure meditation. Love is that which enables choice, love is always stronger than fear. Always choose on the basis of love. So if you're always choosing on the basis of selflessness, truly, and we're back again to the Buddhist concept, if you're always choosing on the basis of selflessness, you will invariably understand that doing so is your purpose, and therefore your identity will be formed through the repetition of this practice. Dude, I know that's heavy, but I also have a very intelligent audience, so I I always have to remind myself to stop apologizing and trying to dumb it down to go, well, pull my finger, you know. Um but tits, am I right? Um but I mean, but but but how does that land for you, man?

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Yeah, I well, absolutely love's the most powerful uh force in the world, and it seems like we're coming full circle right there. The first of those tenets you just said is love enables choice. And what I think of when I hear that is okay, if I truly love someone, right, my goal is not to restrict their free will. My goal is to empower them and respect their choice, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:09

Well, wait, more than that, hold on, more than that, if you let's go back to the mirror, the house of mirrors. If you true love, if you truly love someone, then necessarily you truly love everyone.

SPEAKER_05 48:20

Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

There's no which means that you truly love yourself in the most profound way.

SPEAKER_02 48:28

Sure, sure. So the the piece of that enables choice. Can you elaborate on that for me? So love enables choice. What does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_03 48:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

Because I think I'm stumbling on that one right now. Like I'm I'm like, okay, well, because again, we're we're in this, in which this is the kind of I love this kind of mental masturbation and this like this this paradoxical dance, because I think it's at the fundamental uh the core of our identity, right? It it's we're we're figuring out how we, as you said, why we are as well as who we are. And I think understanding the love enables choice part, how that relates not only to out there, but also as you just said, then that means loving and accepting us, it's enabling a choice, right? So, like, can you elaborate on that for me?

SPEAKER_03 49:30

Yeah, you know what I'm watching you do? I'm watching you look for the epicenter of infinity.

unknown 49:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:40

Right? You see what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_05 49:44

Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:46

That's what the ego does. Because the ego does not actually want infinity, the ego wants boundaries so that it can be at the center of it. Because it's always the power to define is the power to control in the ego's in the ego's world, in the way the ego sees things. So when I say that love is that, quote unquote, which enables choice, well, what is that? What is what is that? Well, the fact that we're not naming it is the same reason that the Jews use uh G D or G hyphen D for God is the same reason that the Lord's Prayer says, hallowed be thy name. The the word God does not appear in the Lord's Prayer. Because the power to define in the egoist world is the power to control. So we're leaving nameless that which we cannot define, but which we can know. We can know it because the same way fish know water, like you're in it, right?

SPEAKER_02 51:12

And what's interesting is if you look at so it's a difference of experience versus a heady work, you know, understanding of it.

SPEAKER_03 51:22

We're back to being versus doing, right? Any time the the brain starts braining in the middle of meditation, you look and you go, oh, what is the ego trying to do now? What's it up to? It's just like it's just like drug seeking, man. It's like it's constantly trying to establish a stronghold. It's trying to get its fix. What it's always trying to do is it's a power struggle where, you know, uh, if we go to your quantum model, you know, we're trying to be in wavelength, and it's trying to go to particle. So if you think about, for instance, a an atom. When I was a kid, I could go to the Franklin Institute um at 30th in the parkway in Philadelphia, center city, and I could walk in and look at a, you know, a model of how atoms collide and form molecules under a plexiglass box display. And the plastic model for the atom at that time was a fixed nucleus surrounded by perfectly circular orbiting, you know, uh electrons. And our current model for an atom is an undefined nucleus. So it's not, it's literally not drawn, or illustrated rather, surrounded by a probability field of electrons. A probability field, because as the Schrdinger's paradox suggests, you know, within the course of an hour, this electron may or may not be in this particular, you know, may or may not exchange. So that's why I thought it was funny to say that you're looking for the epicenter of infinity, because that's exact as above so below, that's exactly how a model um for an atom can be defined. It's a nucleus that's in there somewhere with electrons that are out there somewhere. And we're and and and that's pretty god dang slippery. And we're trying to build a concrete universe with that as our building block, you know, right, which means that we have to ignore a lot of stuff, right? That's why being able to accept this world as a concrete reality relies on ignorance. Ignorance, right? And so when I say love is that which enables choice, what I'm saying is selflessness allows you to see this world in its entirety as something separate from blank. What is blank? The moment you try to fill in blank, you're creating using the building blocks from the world that you are trying to remove yourself from. So this is this is every this is every dialogue between a person who is teaching and a person who is some sort of an apprentice. You can go into like these Zen koans or whatever, and you can see this dialogue. And usually the master slaps the questioner in the head with a yarrow stock, and he and then he becomes in he's like, oh, now I get it. Uh because he's basically saying you're asking questions, trying to build a model to get away from a world that is a model for actual reality, which you don't understand because you won't shut the fuck up and stop trying to build shit. So love, which is selflessness, in its most grandiose expression, which is infinite, is the nature that we truly are being. So, how as a guy who gets up in the morning, puts his pants on, goes to freaking work or whatever, has to decide whether he's gonna get his kids into baseball or jujitsu or whatever, um, if he's gonna, you know, eat that slim gym and all those preservatives or not. Um, what like how does that guy in these moments of existential crisis start to move in the direction of this kind of being? I didn't say thinking, this kind of being without going full blown crazy person and checking out of life and just going and hanging out in a monastery, or packing it up and saying I'm gonna spend the rest of my days and nights under a bridge in a tent or whatever. How does a guy parallel process so that he's rooted in a higher understanding of what the world isn't while still which is like use the force, so to speak, while while still getting that daily bread and going through the motions of what this particular dream of life calls for. How? The tools again are meditate, validate, avoid judgment, and create uh like you you know the things to do, exercise, why? Because diet, why? Because like by now most people have figured this out. Um create a calendaring system so that you can take a popcorn thought, put it onto your phone, later put that onto your calendar or get some AI assistant to automate that shit. Uh, so that you can get into a flow and just keep get checking boxes and getting that that stuff done. Um practice games of strategy like chess or go or sudoku or whatever to keep that part of your mind sharp because you're gonna need that tool set. Um and in your engagements with other people, right? And in your engagement, what are you thinking?

Shakespeare's Trick Question, Rewritten

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Well, my brain just went to Shakespeare, right? So, like, because we're doing this kind of reductionary process, right? And it just kind of went all the way down to like, okay, well, how do I ask less questions and just exist and just accept, right? And get to this is again, if if the questioning everything is the human doing, right? And then the just acceptance piece and not judging is the human being, right? Like, at what point do we reduce it enough? And it was like Shakespeare came to mind, it was like to be or not to be. Yeah, I knew I knew that's what it was.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:04

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or by opposing end them, right?

SPEAKER_05 1:00:19

The It's a trick question.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:30

It's not a question of to be or not to be because you don't have being is not a choice you get to make. Being is the literally one constant. The question is isn't whether or not to be, the question is how to be. Like Hamlet's famous to be or not to be soliloquy is famous because once again it points to the question of identity. So, you know, I started this saying the male identity crisis that no one talks about after 40. So I'm gonna land this because I do have a session coming up. We always do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, I'm gonna land this by saying the following if you are a man either 40 or above, or someone younger who, because of your circumstances, has um, hold on for a second. Alexa, stop. There's a little reality.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:58

So wrap it up, be alarm.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:00

Spell spell one time backwards, Alexa. Not now. Okay, but I did that to me. I told her to do that. Um if you're a man either 40 or over, or younger, but circumstances have caused you to have an identity crisis because you don't know what any of this means or what any of this is for. You've made all the money, you've got all the stuff, uh, or you haven't made all the money or

How to Be, Not What to Do

SPEAKER_03 1:02:29

gotten all the stuff, but either way, you're trying to parse out what this all means. This is a topic that we discuss a lot at Man Up Life Coaching. It's a it's a topic that we discuss in male culture in general. And my message for you is focus less on what you should be doing and focus on how you should be being. And that is a very, very slippery uh topic, and you may be interested in getting some help on how to be, not through what you should be doing, but what you should not be doing, which is pretty much everything, if your reason for doing it is that you're trying to control a universe that you truly cannot control, but instead you're trying to exist in a universe in an optimal way so that it can do what it does and has been doing as it was in the beginning, that is now and ever shall be. My name is Dennis Procopio. I am the Bro Coach, and we are wrapping another exciting edition of whatever the fuck this podcast is called.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:06

What's it called, Charles? The Bro Coach. The Bro Coach Podcast. All right.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:12

If you like what we're doing here, do me a favor, like, follow, subscribe, and uh help us get our numbers up because we're trying to reach a bunch of guys um who uh maybe lonely, but hey dude, you're not alone. We're here and we'd love to we'd love to chat with you and we'd like talking to you, and we're doing this for you. Okay, Charles. I guess we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna shut it down. Be well, man. Have a good one, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:40

Bye guys.