 But man, what we have to realize is the true value of humanity is that exchange, it is empathy, right? That is the highest value and the only value that matters. That is the thing that will give you meaning. When you have empathy, you have exchange. Okay, and that's what it means. And I would encourage you also to watch Greg Swan's podcast because he has a lot to say about this and he's going to talk later on today. But when you exchange with somebody good or bad, anger, hatred, somebody who reacts and feeds back naturally to you, they have a real reaction, that thing that we're all afraid of because we all want to fit in this image, because we see happiness and sexuality and socializing separate from ourselves, that when we can be real and get a real feedback from it, we can start to build fulfillment. We can start to build our real value. We can start to know who we are. We can stop needing to rely on this false image of like, there was never a fucking king, man. That's such a new idea. There was never a warrior. I was actually thinking about this when I was talking about it the other day with my group, but this is so stupid and minuscule, but I was swimming with my friends when I was like 17 or... No, no, like 16 and we broke into this property and we're cliff diving. And they got fucked up and smashed against the rocks and I grew up in Hawaii as a really good swimmer. I went in and I just got him out of the water. And then we hiked back and they were all fucked up and it was like, oh shit, I was scared. So that's what everybody does. That's what anybody would have done if you could swim, you wouldn't do it. We don't need this image in order to be an expression of ourselves. That did nothing for my self-worth. What that did was that built a bond of exchange and empathy with my buddies, man. You know, what it did when a woman really left me and broke up with me. You know, and I felt loss and sadness. That gave me a real human experience to be able to function to... And I don't want to be cliche, but have the relationships have today. Because it made me see the reality of it. It made me see that I had to discipline myself to be myself. We have exchange, we have connection. When we have connection, we have fulfillment. How we use our bodies, how we use our minds, how we use our emotions, how we're sexual, how we're social. Man, they all follow a very simple natural course. And so what I want to talk to you guys about today is, man, think about how you can connect right now. It is the most powerful fucking thing. In the recipe for every aspect of some form of mental recovery. I don't care where you come from. You know, whether that is you have some serious hardcore psychological issues your bipolar, you got addiction, you suffered some trauma, you got PTSD, and you can't function. Whoops. You got to connect. Connection is in there. You've got to emote. You've got to share. You've got to tell your story. What happens when it gets into post-traumatic stress disorder? You know what lessens it? It's when you can express. You know, one of the most amazing things about it is it's something like 95% of people who experience it had to have trauma in their childhood, something that they couldn't express, something to attach to it. But if they didn't have that, the people with the same experience, you know, they were affected, whatever it was, if it was war or some traumatic event, they did not have the same experience. And what decompresses that is the ability to talk, the ability to sit around. And what did James Steele say? When we're kids we play, we talk, we interact, we have fun, we have social hour. And when we're adults, we sit around and our social interaction is very mellow. It's very simple. You know, what are we doing when we're exaggerating it? What are we doing when we're, in order to be sexual, we're living this like bizarre fucking template of life to men just to come from this deficit that we have, you know, from this myth that we've lived within that has given us a lack of resources. Why aren't we being ourselves? And why are we trying to manufacture all the forces of nature within us? Anyway, thank you guys so much. Man, this is an awesome thing. This is what I did for you guys. Check this out. If you want the notes on the speech, I wrote it like a couple of days ago. It's like 8,000 words. I'm putting a download on thesexuallife.com slash myth. And then also what you will get, it's going to change as time goes, but there's a free product. It's like 67 bucks that we sell it for. It's an audio series. Look, you know, I love working with people. I love interacting with people. But here's the deal. I don't want to work with you if you don't like what I'm talking about or how I teach, right? It just doesn't work. It sucks, man. It sucks when somebody signs up for your course and you get like 500 bucks, 1,000 bucks, whatever it is. And they don't show up. That's pointless, you know. We have a group of guys that interact a lot. You know, we really care about each other. We're international. We talk. We support each other. You know, some of them are here. And it's just a cool thing. And when we can do that, it's awesome. You know, in fact, the thing that I'm giving you is the Better Man's Guide, as well as a bunch of PDFs. They're interviews with me, but they were made by all the people in those groups because I wasn't making any products. So it's kind of a cool thing. There's some PDFs there. It's about $200 worth of stuff. Definitely downloaded. Check out the notes. It's a good expression of stuff. Let's open it up for questions. I believe Nick Sparks has a question. So, you know, you talk about yourself how difficult it is when you're growing up in this culture to live true to these values that you're speaking of when you've had your entire life been told the opposite. And you speak about creating a culture that upholds these values, shifting from kind of these superficial values that we propagated to these new means. My question to you is how do you think we can go about creating a culture where exchange, where this connection is kind of the ideal value, or can we? Can we overcome everything else that's coming at us? So here's, like, so I have my opinions on that. And first off, number one, no victimization, man. Everybody's had crazy stuff happen. And my hangnail hurts just as bad as your broken leg. You know, I mean, it's like there's no, you can't weigh scales on. You got to deal with your shit. You got to explore your identity and then filter it back into society. And then you can find out what your nature is. But we, number one thing is with that is we've got to communicate. I encourage everybody to be a part of a men's group. I mean, the only way I teach is through a men's group, man. I mean, that's what it is. Like, and that's just because I need one. So, you know, that's what I kind of made my job. So I think that that's important. We talk, we communicate. That could be big. That could be small. It's better face to face. But I personally think stop making it about changing the world. Man, all I can do is have one interaction with somebody in front of me. You know, even when it comes to seduction, like, you got to be alpha. You got to have social proof, man, fuck that. You know, you got to be real with the person in front of you. You have to have a connection sexually with her or socially with whoever and make that have meaning. If that has meaning, then that's how we were really meant to live. Some books, though, you know what initially sparked my interest on this. A guy actually sought out and interviewed Daniel Quinn Ishmael. He wrote a whole series about this stuff. That's kind of the layman's version. But if you want to get into it, you know, there's the Richard Dawkins. There's also Wilhelm Reich, who wrote about sexuality and society and all this crazy, insane stuff. And he was kind of a crazy person himself. And there's a really good anthropological book called Saharazia, which is by a Reichian dude. But, man, hopefully it answered your question, but I would say make it simple. Keep it one-on-one. That's my version of it, you know? Wow, really great stuff. In a culture of anti-fulfillment, you know, everywhere I go every day, you know, these other images being presented as fulfillment and happiness, I really identify with what you're saying. Can you give me some simple ways to just keep resetting to stay on course? Man, so what we do in our groups at the highest level, so if there's guys that are getting laid a lot, if you have major social anxiety, you're going to have to start off at a different point. But from zero, like zero, zero, zero, like serious fucking problems too, somebody who is living in a superlative lifestyle, you know, far more like extravagant than anything I've ever lived, the baseline is always to say hello. Say hello to five people a day. And really, it's say hello to five people a day. I know that's like some quantified thing, but again, you know, nature doesn't need science. Man needs, you know, some sort of science or method to find truth in nature. But that's to have one meaningful connection. You know, and so if we say hello to five people a day, that's key. If you can't say hello, then you start off with different things like eye contact, getting out of the house, you know, smiling, getting a smile back, you know, trying to get an interaction in exchange with somebody. But man, it all comes down. Seriously, like there's guys who you're just like, holy shit, but they will tell you, you know, say hello. That is the hands down thing. You know, human to human, very simple interactions. And to really have meaning in that. Don't expect anything from it. Cool? You talked about how you had such a full sex life, but we're really not enjoying any of it. And I wanted to know what happened to cause the shift in you from believing you didn't enjoy sex to having a truly fulfilling sex life. And was it a particular point or experience or more of a process? That's hard to say because like there's no turning point. There's never a turning point. So anytime when like you talk to somebody who's experienced like some intense stuff, you're like, so what happened? You know, when did you think it was okay to prostitute yourself? When did you think it was okay to whatever like some intense thing? And it just happens. Like you're hungry. There's food in a dumpster. You eat it. And then that becomes the norm. You don't worry about it because you understand it. You get it. You, I mean just whatever. But so when it's sexual, it's like it's happening. I have the urge for sex. I want to fuck. I want to bone. My dick gets hard. I used to say that. My biggest curse is my dick gets hard. And it wouldn't not because that's always a great excuse. And then you learn the whole art of faking an orgasm and all that sort of shit. And I'm done. Sorry. You run. But there's some interesting stuff to that. You got to listen to Bang Radio for those episodes. But hey, so, but the thing is, is you don't really know when that happens. There's no distinct switch, right? Just all of a sudden you're like, fuck, I don't like this. This sucks. I knew that it was supposed to feel good. This is like, this is not the worst sex with the hottest chicks. Not because the hottest chicks had the worst sex, but it was the situation and all that sort of stuff. So it just started happening and you're like, fuck, this sucks. Did I ever like it? God, when I was 23, 24, 25 and having sex, like that was just a weird reaction. You know, that wasn't real. And then coming out of that, I had to learn to feel. And like I said, man, talking to a lot of the porn guys was a huge deal for me. All right, all right, all right. Yeah. Just one thing from, I haven't been around this a long time, known you for a long time. Why is it that the same guys that circulate around the community can't socialize, can't make friends, but you send them to a jujitsu school or something like that. They start socializing, making friends. And then in our lairs, they have no problem doing it there. I mean, I think the intention of women, man, let me just say, dude, this guy is a part of my groups. This guy's known me for eight years and you're on at least two calls a week. I mean, we interact quite a bit, but I haven't seen you in a while, but we've known each other for a long time. So that's just, I think that's a very cool thing like that. It's just, it's not about like, it's about talking to guys and decompressing. But man, you know, I don't know. You know, why is it that when we're doing this like, kind of like, okay, when we talk about jujitsu, I think jujitsu can be truth. It's an expression of your body. I mean, like I, you know, it's like, it's just so real, you know, or any martial art. It could be anything, right? But you're feeling with somebody else and you're totally influenced by them and it's expression and it's an awesome thing. And I think when that happens, like it loosens everybody up. You know, puts somebody in a natural state of socializing and feeling somebody else. And when it's about pickup, it's coming from without, man. Or when it comes from like, I have to do this. I have to perform. I have to give this speech. I have to be good. All that sort of shit. You know, that's like the coolest thing about my fulfillment and relationship now is like, I can fuck up and still have self-worth. But think about the insecurity that that comes from. But in order to find that, I had to have an interaction with somebody that had meaning. You know, so it's kind of crazy. So I think when people get in that natural expression of empathy, you know, it loosens them up. But when we're in a supposed to or an identity or an image or in a natural state of how we're really supposed to interact, that's just really far from it, there will never be a connection. You know, it just won't happen. Final question. Final question. Hi, Steve. Thanks for the speech. Really good. I had a question. You just covered it about like you were having that transition period. And then you said what helped was all the porn stars that helped you. Yeah, so go ahead and finish. I'm sorry. I think most people won't have porn stars in their life. What? No, but honestly, though, you're stuck at that point where you don't know what the road is. You've had those porn stars to help you. What would your tip be to those people? So, yeah, there's the whole fake it till you make it thing. You got to find a point of reference and you do have to do that, but you need to know that you have to find an expression of yourself in there. You know, it's funny, because if you watch the 2009 speech of the 21 convention, that was like a big transition I was going through and I was talking to my friend who is a porn star and he's had some crazy stuff happen and actually it's a funny story because a couple of years ago, Marie and I were at some pickup conference and we were hanging out with all these pickup dudes and then we hung out with my other porn star friend right afterwards and it was like the most normal people in comparison to the guys at the conference. It definitely was not a 21 convention. I'll tell you that. But look, what they told me, that was what was important. Now at the time, back then, this was really taxing on me. At the time, the people that I knew in the industry are not the people in this room. There's a big difference and I want to make that distinction. Everybody that stood on the stage is on a different level of representation. An expression that is different than mine, but respectable, in a way that I listened to. But at the time, that was not happening. In 2006, 7, 8, 9, the people that were around me, no matter how hard I looked, did not have that message. It was like, ah, fuck more chicks. They were going through the same thing as me, but not being honest about it. And it sucked and what I did was as soon as I had an email account that was attached to a big company, although I later realized I didn't really need this, I did what Ed Drew said is I emailed one of my favorite pornographers and he got back to me. We taught a bunch of workshops together and it was crazy. He taught me a lot actually about sex and about the actual process of, because sex when a woman and man, or you could even say any human being, when they're close to one another, you start to communicate in a different level. It may not be sexually, but it's more intimately. So getting physical can happen because it's natural. I don't want to make it like it's a series of steps that we'll magnetically get, but it can happen. He just told me, he's like, all these guys that you introduced me to hate women. Steve, I have hated women. This is a crazy story. I'm not saying who it is, but his mom stabbed him in the eye and he has a fake eye. It's actually a really good fake eye, but his mom abused him. And basically he hated chicks and you could see that that came out in his porn and he still actually makes porn to this day, you know, his grandparents change him and he went through this kind of boogie night scenario of interacting with people, and that's the person that I could listen to. That's the person that I could understand. That was the first person that was having sex on a level far beyond mine actually, but with a level of anger and resentment that I had that I could hear. That's all we have for questions. Give it up for Steve Maeda. Hey, thanks, guys.