Shattering The Ego And The Manly Man Stereotype

As men we become like a shell when it comes to sharing our emotions because we feel that it is some sort of weakness. To show weakness will make us appear as less of a man and not fulfilling the “manly man stereotype”. Most of the time this is because we feel that if we did let people know about us, we would feel too exposed and that will make us less of a guy.

I believe that not showing emotions and trying to be the generic tough guy about things makes you less of a man. Really it does! Your a human being, you experience pain just as any thing does, we cannot hide this inevitable fact. We have weaknesses and pretending we don’t is a weakness within itself.

We have lived with this faulty way of thinking our whole life, we feel that since women show emotion that is strickly a women thing, no! You are a coward if you cannot cry, you are a coward if you cant truly be yourself and especially a coward for not accepting your true self. I don’t think we are born as emotional rocks, i feel that society has made things this way and we have adopted this overtime.

Now the problem with not showing your emotions and keeping things inside is because things add up, they add up till they explode. When you are keeping all thing inside and “dealing with things yourself” it puts yourself in a dangerous situation, a situation that keeps you hurting yourself and not solving the problem.

The main cause of this emotional detachment is because our ego gets in the way. The ego is the enemy, it separates yourself from people. I know guys that aren’t really this manly man type yet they feel they have to pretend to be, it just looks awkward and silly. Simply don’t be something if it isn’t you.

You simply cant put men into one box. We all enjoy different things, and just because Steve doesn’t like to watch football doesn’t mean hes not a “man”, he just doesn’t enjoy watching it. Steve may enjoy planting and maintaining his garden. Does that make Steve less of a man? NO! Gender has nothing to do with what your passions are or what they should be. Gender just tells what sex you are! Believing that a man has to like the generic manly things is a crock, there is no proof it has no real substance behind it.

One of the problems with not showing your emotions is resorting to things like abusing drinking to make yourself forget about your problems. As men we tend to instead act externally we act internally keeping everything that may be classified as weakness inside ourselves. We know that trying to forget about the problems is the problem, you must attack them in a logical manner and not one that keeps everything inside as they get buried deeper and deeper.

You must drop that ego and show your weakness, show your true face and if its not accepted don’t make it personal just live your life. You can start by letting people know how you feel and not being “too good” to ask for advice. I guarantee you will get something out of an alternate opinion aswell as being able to relate to someone man to man or vice versa. I feel that in the future our identities as men will go towards being more emotional over time and this universal “manly man” mentality will fade.

Create a support group of other men you can trust, be real and let things be known. Doing this will allow other people to catch on to the idea and free their self from this one way road of thinking.

When you don’t open yourself up and let someone her you out, you may feel that your problems are strange and you are the only one feeling them. Once you open up you will be amazed how your not strange because another human being is hearing you out and letting you know that they have experienced this before too. Knowing that your not alone in this is the cure to accepting yourself.

Everything has its time. Now im not wanting you to be an emotional wreck and be just as emotional some drama queens tend to be. But the good thing is you have the freedom to be like that iif you want, im not saying you have to be. Everything is good in small increments, keeping a healthy balance is key. Try to maintain the 50/50 Principle with this making yourself leveled with your inner self as well as your outer self. There is a time to cry and a time to be tough just know that you should show both and use them in moderation.

The other problem we have to deal with is when we stuff our emotions too far down we adopt bad habits. These bad habits are anything you do when your mad or angry that completely avoids the issue. So if you are mad about a girl breaking up with you, you may feel that you want to drink. You want to drink because it makes you temporarily forget about your real life problems. Yes it feels good like I said temporarily, but after that headache nothing has been solved and you don’t have any longterm fulfillment.

To defeat this way of thinking, do things actively that will help you tackle closure or answer some of those questions you’ve been avoiding. Create that support group of open guys that aren’t afraid to talk emotionally. Or even go straight to the person that is causing you this pain, let them know. Sometimes just letting people know things frees us from the bondage of the inner conflicts. If you can do this you can be healed. Defeat the ego, forget the critics, make yourself vulnerable and do as you want without having to think “what will that person think of me”. By doing these things you will be someone to look up to and other men will notice that they don’t have to be manly men all the time.

1. You Aren’t Your Problems, Just A Small Part Of Them
2. 5 Priceless Character Traits We Can Learn From Billy Mays
3. Where Did YOU Go? A Guide To Finding Yourself, Keeping And Never Letting Go Again! Part 2
4. What Is Personal Development, And How Can You Use It to Improve Your Life?
5. Pain Is How We Wage Importance

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Tagged as: ego, manly