Being Strong Does Not Mean Suppressing Your Emotions

You know, we all have emotions.

We all, I think... want to be vulnerable to varying levels um with various people in our life i'm big on levels of access so um and i think the soft stuff is kind of the glue that holds the strong stuff together now i've spent a lot of time talking to men about this of uh those that are in a pretty wide range so i'm i'm in my mid 40s now which is funny to say out loud But I have talked to men that are, we'll say from about in their thirties all the way up into their sixties.

And we were by and large taught kind of like when I talked to you about how, you know, the fitness industry and society has all of these, these messages around our worth and, and our, you know, tying it to body image and weight and all that it's it's the same way for men with emotions and basically it's like men don't express emotions we don't and that that's what the the common thing is and then like you know well but but here's the thing we actually do we weren't taught how to do it and we're we're coming a long long way I saw an interview with Warren Moon the other day, talking about how he later in his career, like an incredible career and an incredible story.

Like if you're not familiar, it was a all the smoke episode, you should totally check it out.

But he is talking about how later in his career, he went and talked to a therapist about things.

He now he did say this was like one of the biggest, like one of the best things he's ever done for himself.

He had a lot of stuff to talk about.

But it was interesting because at the time he was quarterback of this team.

He kind of had to like sneak in like a back door to where like at the end of the day to where nobody would.

would would see him because of the, you know, the at the time, I think this was this would have been if it was towards the end of his career, this would have been like mid to late 90s.

If if they knew that the quarterback of the team was talking to a therapist, well, he's just not mentally fit, like how can he handle the pressure.

But the interesting thing about like the pressure, I think the more connected and in tune you are to your emotions, the uh the better off like the more you can actually handle the pressure because some of that pressure gets alleviated some of it gets removed we're always going to have thoughts and feelings and things tugging at us but i mean You know, like this is like this is part of why I think a productive working relationship with a therapist is so important.

You do get tactics and tools that are specific to you to use outside of your sessions.

It's not just talking.

So I think when we're connected to our emotions, we can work through our emotions, channel them and things, let go of them, too.

I think it's one of the strongest things that we can do.

which all of that soft, vulnerable stuff compliments the focus, compliments the follow through, the consistency.