114 – Emotional Responsibility - a podcast by Alf Herigstad

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EMOTIONAL RESPONSIBILITY…
Hey before I get into the topic today, I want to thank everyone for listening.  Last Wednesday was the biggest day we have ever had here at Being A Better Man;  over 1130 of you listened to the show that day.  The previous record was set back in March with 1102.  Actually listenership has been up every day the last couple weeks and it’s all because of you guys out there listening, so thank you from the bottom of my heart.You might be wondering what I get out of it, why the number of listeners matters to me.  I’m not getting paid for it, this content is completely free after all.  I’ll tell you…what I get out of it is the satisfaction of knowing that there is an army of guys out there walking around every day, looking for opportunities to be a better man.  That’s amazing to me, it satisfies my soul and it keeps me going, and it makes the world a better place..
If you would like to show your financial support for the show however, there is a way you can do it for as little as 8 pennies, 8 cents per show I release, that’s about one dollar per month. To find out more about that go to https://www.patreon.com/Alf_beingabetterman (patreon.com).  I really appreciate your support, it means a great deal to me, thank you.Ok, so the last episode, http://www.beingabettermanpodcast.com/113-best-friends/ (number 113) was called Best Friends…it was kind of a tear jerker.  Not all stories can be happy and funny, some of them need to be sad because thats how life is, and we are talking about life after all right.
It was an emotional story for me too, you could probably tell…I had to take a couple breaks while I was recording it because it conjures up a lot of very real, very powerful emotions for me.  Thats kind of what I want to talk about today.  The difference between sharing authentic emotions in a manly way, as opposed to the unsolicited flagrant display of your weaknesses as a man.  One of these works, and one doesn’t…that’s what I’m going to talk about.As human animals we are all endowed with emotions, they are necessary for our survival just like our intellect, and our physical bodies are, they are part of the equation.  There is a wide range of emotions too; fear, anger, love, hate, joy and sadness to name a few.
Of these…some are thought of to be perfectly fine for a boy or man to display, while others are frowned upon.  I reject that theory, I always have.  To me it always made sense that I was intended to use all the things I was given.  In my way of thinking, to deny an emotion is the same as denying hunger, or thirst, or any other need I might have.As a result, I’m kind of an emotional guy.  I am moved to happiness and joy quite easily, I am also moved to tears pretty quickly.  However, 90% of the time when I am moved to tears it is because I am profoundly happy.  I am touched positively in such a way that my body can’t contain my emotions, like when my children were born for example, and that is when I cry tears of joy.  Likewise, when I experience great, sudden, and tragic loss I might cry…like in last Wednesday’s story, or when my dog Adrienne died last year, but these instances are few and far between…they are the exception.  But they are all authentic, emotional responses.I never cried from physical pain, not even as a child.  I would yell and scream, but I wouldn’t cry.  And it doesn’t make sense to me either, crying from physical pain…because that is a physical thing, and crying is an emotional response.
To me this whole idea that crying in itself is synonymous with weakness is just stupid.  At some point in the development of our culture the idea took hold that men should not show their emotions.  My fathers generation, and his fathers before him lived by this rule, and guess what it got them?  A lower life expectancy than women.  It’s not healthy to bottle all that stuff up and deny portions of your...

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