Josh Hatcher of Manlihood.com talks about the most important piece of furniture you own.
The Kitchen Table.
Eating dinner with your family is one of the most important things you can do. It’s no always easy to do in today’s world – but it’s important to make it a priority as often as possible. Even eating around your kitchen table with friends has a tremendous value!
Manlihood ManCast Podcast for Men from Josh Hatcher of Manlihood.com
Josh Hatcher of Manlihood.com speaks with author and journalist Chuck Holton about manhood, his experiences with the Free Burma Rangers, and how to overcome fear.
Sometimes – you just need to get alone. Our personal growth and development and progress aren’t always about doing, and about the hustle. This is hard for men to realize sometimes – that what we really need – is sometimes a little time alone in the woods.
From the time we are young, we get this wrong impression that finding and winning a great woman will give us satisfaction. Don’t get me wrong – my wife has certainly brought much satisfaction and joy to me life – but there was a point at which I realized that I was expecting her to fill a hole inside my heart that no mortal can fill.
To HONOR is to value something rightly. If we value something in the wrong way – it is actually a dishonor. I was dishonoring my wife by valuing her in a way she could not fulfill.
We often expect the wrong things out of our partners. What are we looking for? Where can we find it?
When I started Manlihood, I started it as much for myself as much as for everyone else. I don’t just want to help create resources for personal development for men, I want to personally develop myself as well.
A while back, my buddy Brian called me out. He told me that I was committing slow suicide.
What?
Yeah. Not quick and traumatic. Not fast and painless.
But by continuing to engage in a destructive lifestyle of eating crap food and not taking care of myself, I was committing slow suicide.
In this episode of the Manlihood Mancast, Josh Hatcher tells us 5 relationships tips to save you a world of heartache.
Quick relationship tips that will save you a world of heartache.
1. She is not your whole world.
I know we like to say that because it sounds poetic, and it kind of feels like it. But don’t let her be your whole world. Make sure you have some good friends, and that you MAINTAIN those friendships (particularly with other men who build you up). Make sure you have some things that you can do without her. If you wrap your whole identity around her, you’re going to be in trouble if you encounter any problems.
2. You will have problems.
You’re either committed to work through them, or you are not. Make up your mind on the matter now.
3. Each of you is sovereign
Even though there is certainly an element of “submission” to each other involved in marriage – she submits to you – you lay down your life for her (just read ephesians) — it’s especially important to understand that each of you is sovereign. She has a right to her feelings and frustrations, as much as you do. You can’t get butthurt if she sees things from a different perspective, or if she prefers miracle whip to mayo. (I know – that’s probably a dealbreaker) Recognizing and acknowledging her sovereignty, as well as your own will allow you both to understand your value.
4. She doesn’t owe you anything.
You bought her dinner? She doesn’t have to sleep with you. You went to work for 16 hours? She doesn’t OWE you clean dishes. YES. It’s helpful for you to have arrangements and clear expectations of each other. But don’t think for a minute that love is transactional. You can’t purchase or earn affection. No one is indebted to give love to the other. Love is given as a free gift, or it’s not love at all.
5. You teach people how you want them to treat you.
If you tolerate disrespect, and if you give disrespect, you’ll get disrespect. You must set clear expectations of the behavior and communication you want to receive from them, and patiently correct them when they deliver something different.
Complaining, insults, intentionally hurtful words create a spiraling effect. One of you offers them up, the other retaliates.
Don’t expect her to show respect if you don’t. And if she doesn’t – rather than retaliate- calmly correct it and get to the root of why she’s feeling that way. Do it humbly. You very well might be the root of it. You don’t have to tolerate verbally abusive and hurtful language. But if there are patterns established, it will take patience to change those patterns.
Lou Costa Shares his take on Motivation and Mindset
I’m Bleeding Me.
I’m sprinting, full bore down a local sidewalk on this fog cloaked Saturday morning while thick steam pushes off my head and out from under my drawn hood. The potent mix of this chilly day break and sweat soaked knit cap is causing blinding condensation on my coke bottle thick prescription Persol sunglasses.
The streaked lenses are rendering me damn near as useless with them, as without.
One stem of my jet black shades is held together with a caked glob of “Krazy” branded super glue. I imagine the factory adhesive that used to hold this frame together has slowly been worn away from the constant bombardment of my own workout “shmelting.” Toxically eroding the once finely crafted plastic, the lubricated slickness of my skin is now causing me to relentlessly adjust these damned scratched spectacles on my wind beaten face.
Granted It is I, who has insisted completion of this torture, but that doesn’t make this last speed interval any less maddening as I claw at these damned glasses.
The Cold Gear sweatshirt I am wearing was bought from an UnderArmour Factory outlet for 29.99 – 7 years ago. Smeared snot from my sick 3 year old’s very curious and wipe-y hands sticks off the Camo Logo. I look down and notice a large crusty, rock hard boog swath across my chest. I am oddly proud and slightly disgusted at the same time.
The pungent smelling neck of this battle tested garment has long been stretched and cut appropriately to allow the trapped heat of my un-showered body to rise directly into my flared nostrils.
I cannot say I am opposed to my own personal brand of executive man musk.
This, my favorite hoodie comes adorned with sodium stained watermarks that have successfully tracked the output from my previous week’s training sessions simultaneously outing my lacking laundry habit as well. The faded and stained white analysis of these left over effort rings are as telling as any FitBit or popular workout device could possibly report back post workout.
ALWAYS … WORK HARDER!
is the message I take from the ripe sweat rings clinging to this stank and mucus stained garb. That same analysis is what ALL the hi-tech algorithm of today’s fitness trackers’ SHOULD have suggested to you in the first place.
Sadly, they haven’t.
A couple walking their medium sized wiener dog just casually switched to the other side of the track. After watching me barrel around the corner they must have deduced that my laboring frame beating down this frozen course rather asthmatically gasping for each stinging breath is NOT something they REALLY wanted to deal with this early in the morning.
I get their point.
Metallica’s “Bleeding Me” is blaring into my slightly deaf left ear while barely buzzing out of the the recently broken right ear piece. Some sort of blue, itchy plastic is now exposed where the sleek contoured covering used to sit comfortably inside of my inner ear canal. The constant irritating scraping from this strange material is annoying but the broken bud still succeeds in muting the outside world from James Hetfield’s soulful growls.
So how can I REALLY complain?
I won’t replace the broken product because I am a serial DESTROYER of all listening devices. The now yellowish apple cord of this particular pair caught on the corner of my beaten red Cardillo belt last week while I was deadlifting in my damp water soaked basement. The right bud ripped harshly to the floor as I felt the accumulation of blood start to pool inside, muddying the sound of my smooth streaming #LouLife Spotify playlist and bothering me for the rest of the training session.
These things happen from time to time.
So, I suspect a new perfectly white pair of headphones would befall a similar fate as the last 3 have anyway. F— it, until they are completely destroyed I ORDER them to soldier on dutifully.
I am bent over, hands on knees and body laboring post sprint work. Waiting for my temples to stop pounding and my equilibrium to recalibrate, I sometimes wonder if this will be the time I actually just slump over in a large taco-loving mass and things simply fade to black. Could this be the day?
Sometimes I wonder If that permanent scenario would actually be worse than the feeling of this physical pain.
Shuddering. Dripping. Freezing. Blinded. I stand and start to slowly walk forward. Eh, I guess we shall live on today, I think. Too bad 🙂
My heartbeat POUNDS out of my chest but I am controlling its slowed rate recovery by a few deeply forced breaths of January air. Inside my body, these breaths pierce every piece of tissue they come into contact with. The expended CO2 I bellow out deep from my lungs heaves clouds of warmed exhale back into the frigid atmosphere.
The natural sinew emitting from my mouth resembles a locomotive’s timed puff-clouds fading back into the morning’s moisture. These almost embarrassingly but beautifully plumed smoke signals reveal the actual effort it has taken to move this large vessel of mine at such mediocre speeds.
My heart stops wrenching in my chest after a few seconds of paced walking and the metronome control I’ve mastered over it through years of strength training kicks in.
The realization that my feet are becoming numb from the snow and ice mixture that have accumulated from nature’s obstacles along this route has crept into my conscious from the break in action. I think for a second I should’ve worn thicker socks but decide quickly that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
I pull my 2009 iPod out of my pocket with cracked and dried hands, thickened from the continued abuse I insist they suffer through. Today it is the elements I wish for them to endure. Tomorrow it will be repeatedly picking up a moldy soaked 200lb sandbag and flinging it over a pre-set bar until my back screams to stop. The day after tomorrow they will be made to grip a freezing steel 2-inch-handled sledgehammer as I smash it into a beaten old tractor tire until I am satisfied.
For now, these achy digits simply hit repeat on Metallica’s 8 minute and 18 second masterpiece that will drive me forward to a warm kitchen on the final trip home to cook Dad’s special “cheese egg” breakfast for my family. After a few failed attempts from the slightly outdated water-laden touch screen I manage to succeed JUST as the symphony’s chords hit and RIGHT before anger engulfs my thought process.Pausing for a moment I take one last huge gasp of air and sneer at the last amount of suffering that I am about to inflict on my system.
Then… I simply take off running at full speed with no second thought. Spraying slush off the ends of my muddied Nikes I disappear into the dark fog. My legs have started shaking uncontrollably on the journey home to the point I CANNOT sprint the incline of my neighborhood’s sidewalks any longer. Forced to finish in low 4wheel drive, I gear down to smash the last 40 yards of pavement with a fast and deliberate march.
If you want to, listen closely and you will understand through the buzzing music emitting from blue torn plastic into my scabbed over ear.
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