Owen Marcus - If You Want to Change – Go Deep

Owen Marcus wrote a guest post for the folks at The Mankind Project - it's good stuff. I think this is approach will work well with a lot of men - I'm just not one of those men - but Owen has a lot more experience in this than I do

If You Want to Change – Go Deep

June 28, 2011

by Owen Marcus

I, like the rest of us, would much rather do the minimum than work hard. Why do more than you need to?

Well, there are times when our mental solutions don’t work. In this post on my blog I write about how the mantra of our groups is – “Take the man deeper” produces a level of change unattainable from any mental technique I have ever seen.

We are trained to be smart, to come up with solutions to problems. We compete to come up with the best solution as quickly as possible. Our egos, or at least I will say mine, wants to be the “smartest man in the room.” We admire men who are articulate in their solutions.

This strategy might work well in business, law or many of our professions. It doesn’t work well for sustainable change. Whenever this strategy is in the room we are defensive, as we should be. There is a competition happening, we need to step up – not step down into our feelings.

Knowing that as men we are inherently competitive, I help orchestrate in our groups a subtle competition of who can go the deepest, the quickest. We have all seen it; the man who speaks the unspeakable immediately gets the respect of all the other men. Isn’t it strange, doing the thing we are trained not to do produces the most respect?

How to go deep

I explain in the post that learning how to go deep comes from observing those that have gone there and can go there when needed, in other words, modeling it. In the ‘real world’ we don’t often see this behavior, but in our groups we do. The senior men step up and model the courage it takes to say the unspeakable or to expose oneself when the situation is not safe.

A powerful weekly group is your best support for developing your ability to go deep within yourself and to hold the space for another man to go there.

Owen Marcus, MA a Rolfer, holistic medical clinic owner, men’s group leader and for 30 years has catalyzed deep change for other men. His blog – www.owenmarcus.com addresses a wide range of concerns for men. Owen was a featured speaker at the Ultimate Men’s Summit in June 2011. He completed the New Warrior Training Adventure in October 2007.

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