 What's going on, you guys? Welcome to the Single Guide channel. As you can tell, we have a little bit of a different format today. I have a very special guest on the channel. We have John from Bulldog Mindset. John, can you introduce yourself to everybody? Sure. Yeah. What's up, Lloyd? Thanks for having me. So I'm John Sonmez from Bulldog Mindset. I basically teach men how to be men. This is something that a lot of people are like, is that really something that you need to do today? But it really is because what I found is that so many men don't know how to be men today. And a lot of what I teach is basically getting rid of the victim mindset. So many people have this victim mindset. So my channel is dedicated to all the areas of improving yourself as a man to take responsibility for your life, starting with the mindset. And then the fitness side, getting jacked, getting in shape, in the six pack abs, the financial side, getting your business going, investing, improving your career. And then the dating side, being a guy that is able to speak with women, speak with people in general, have good social skills and really up your value as a man. Yeah, absolutely. And you mentioned something that was very interesting. We've talked a lot about this. And I'm sure there's some of my audience who watches your channel, sure some of your audience watches my channel. What do you think is the reason why a lot of guys fall into this victim mindset, especially in today's day and age? Yeah, you know, what I've seen is a major shift in the way that victimhood presents itself, right? So it used to be, you know, in fact, a good example of this is Arnold Schwarzenegger, right? There was this video I saw about like two years ago where I think it was about two years ago. He was in South Africa. He was doing some sporting event there that he was putting on. And this guy flies out of nowhere and jump kicks him in the back, right? Now, Arnold is old. I mean, he's still Arnold, but you watch it on video. And it was a nice hit. I mean, it really hit him hard, right? And you know, this is not the Arnold from the bodybuilding days. He's an older man, right? So what happens after that is I think the next day I saw it on the news or I saw some clip or something that he said on Twitter. And basically they're playing the clip and then they asked Arnold, they're like, so what are you going to do? Are you going to sue this guy? You know, what do you, are you going to press charges? Did that hurt? You know, they're asking him all these questions and he was like, oh, did somebody kick me? I didn't notice. I just thought someone bumped into me, right? And I was like, this is it. Because Arnold, and this is how things used to be. It used to be, I don't want to be the victim, right? It used to be like, you know, if you got beat up in school, if you got bullied, you go home and you tell your parents, oh, nothing happened. I fell, right? Because you don't want to admit that you became a victim. But yeah, so many guys today, right? We see victimhood being lifted up as a badge of honor. It's like who can out victim? It's like the victim Olympics. And whoever is the greatest victim is the one who whoever wants to be like they want to prove that they're greatest victim. And that is the opposite of masculinity. So because that's being promoted in society, because we have such a feminist society today, men aren't learning how to be men. And so when when men don't learn how to be men, and they become emotional, become more like the feminine, more like women, they end up embracing this victimhood as a way to as a way to make it not their fault. It's right. I hear so many guys that are complaining about, gosh, you know, women this or they're so, you know, with Instagram and all this, they get so much attention, they get so much validation, or they say, Oh, well, you know, it's so hard to with the jobs today, like it's not like the boomer generation. And it's just, it's victim, victim, victim. And the whole reason why guys tend to say this and why we see this is because they don't want to acknowledge and take responsibility. They don't want to admit that that their life, their circumstances are their own fault. Because if they admitted that, then that would mean they would have to do something about it. Right, right, absolutely. I mean, you said a lot of things that I cannot, you know, repeat enough. So what we're going to do in this video, I know we're kind of like almost halfway through it, is we're going to give you guys some actual tips so you can stop being in this category. One of the things I'm sure you can agree with this, John, is that like, we kind of live in a society now where men are mostly brought up by women, you know, you have a lot of fathers that aren't there. Maybe they're away for work, maybe they left. You have school teachers who are almost 95% women. I mean, I remember when I was in school, I can only remember one male teacher I had had up until the age of maybe 16 or 17 until my senior year of high school. Really, my formative years were all formed by instructions and trying to appeal to older women, trying to not get in trouble. And unfortunately, I feel like they're rewarding the wrong things, or maybe sometimes the right things for certain circumstances, but not the right things in order to make a man a man. What would you say are some of the ways that guys can undo some of this programming, some of the things that they've been kind of indoctrinated in their formative years? Yeah, so there's a big thing. What, what I always talk about is that that you actually have to become a man, right? So women are born men are made, right? And so it used to be back in the day that there was initiation process, right, that we'd go through these rights, you know, young boys would get sent out maybe 14 or 15 into the woods for like two weeks, and they'd have to like see some hallucination or kill some stuff or they'd have to survive. And then they'd come back and they come back as a man. And we're not doing that today. So what I always tell guys today is that there's, there's two steps, two things that you really have to do to, to self initiate to become a man that that's required in that process. The first one is to metaphorically kill your father. Okay, what I mean by this is that you have to kill the value systems. And even if you didn't have a father, then society represents your father, right? Or you've got some kind of substitute for that. But you have to step up, decide that you are the king now, and stop, stop taking on the value systems of your father, because we grew up and we let society, we let our father tell us what is right or wrong and determine our values. And then we seek approval, we seek approval from that father figure, even if we hadn't had one in society, we're looking for that fog father figure to tell us that we did a good job. What you have to do is you have to metaphorically kill your father, you have to say, look, your value system, it's not mine anymore. I am a man, I decided my own value system, I decide what is good, what is right in my life. And I am the one who I don't need approval from anyone else. Right. And again, a lot of guys are seeking external validation, approval from women is a big one. Right. And that's why they're not having success in game and with women. And so when you step up and you say, look, the only person who matters as far as their opinion is mine, that's it. That's when you, you've started that process of becoming a man initiation process. The second thing that you have to do is you have to take full responsibility for your life, basically to say that I'm going to do whatever I want in life. And I will fully accept the consequences for my actions. It's stepping up and it's saying, it's not being timid. It's not being afraid. It's not fearing rejection. It's saying, look, I'm just going to do it. I'm going to do whatever I want to do. And then whatever happens, I'm fully going to accept whatever consequences that brings. When you do those two things, and I know we don't have a huge amount of time. So I'm kind of compressing this here. But when a man does those two things, that's when he really becomes a man. If you haven't done those things, you're not really going to be a man. You're not going to feel like a man because you're going to be letting society and other people dictate how you feel and what is good for you. You're constantly using other people as a mirror to look at yourself and to say, oh, what do I look like? Well, let me look and see what other people say. And that that's who I am. Instead of what you should be doing as a man is instead of absorbing, you should be projecting. You should be projecting who you are. That's what we talk about masculine presence. One of the most attractive traits that women find in a man is to be present in that masculine presence that comes from you projecting out into the world who you are. Absolutely. You know, you've touched on so many awesome things. The lack of male rituals we have to adulthood, I think is a huge one. The fact that most men don't actually go for what they want. Too often with my coaching clients, they'll be like, hey, you know, I got to this certain step with a girl. What am I supposed to do next? And I'm like, homie, what do you want to do next? Let's ask that question. Let's start in that room and see where we go from there. And too many guys are not asking themselves that question. You're absolutely right. They're they're trying to appease maybe what the woman wants. And that's exactly what she doesn't want. She doesn't want a guy who is trying to fit, try to morph themselves into some creature that is exactly what she's looking for. She wants them to be a man. And really, that's exactly what you said, which is projecting themselves into other people. There's going to be some people that don't vibe with you. And that's all part of life and part of being a man is that not everyone's going to like you. And that's okay. And so you touched on a lot of really good things. So if you could give one, you guys one thing to do after they sign off on this video, what would it be one practical tip? Maybe something easy. You got something off the top of your head. Great. If you don't know big deal. So what I would say is this, I have this exercise that I give to a lot of my coaching clients. I call it looking in the mirror. Right. So what I want you to do is I want you to take off all your clothes and stand naked in the mirror. Okay. And I want you to not justify anything. Just see yourself as objectively as possible. Right. We see ourselves subjectively. We make up excuses for why we're shy, why we behave this way, why, oh, is this woman must, she must be bad. That's why. But I want you to look at yourself, start off physically. Right. And I want you to look at all your traits, kind of write these down. Don't judge yourself. But, but look and say, okay, do you have some love handles? Are you a little bit fat? Are you what do you have a big nose? Right. I've got a big nose. Right. So, you know, one eye smaller than the other, you know, you write down all of these things. Okay. And again, you're not judging yourself, but the goal here is to see reality clearly, because that's one of the most valuable skills that you can have if you want to advance in life. And so you do that. Okay. And then, and then the next thing that you do is now you take in an account of yourself, your character, not just your physical appearance. We start with the physical, right? So you can accept those things. And then your character, are you actually, you know, a lot of guys, they think they're good with women, but they're lying to themselves. So stop lying to yourself instead. Say, look, gosh, you know, I'm actually pretty damn scared. I'm not, I'm not very courageous. Okay, that's okay. We're not judging you, but write it down for yourself. Right. And you're good attributes too. But be honest with yourself, be brutally honest with yourself. Where are the areas that you need to improve? Who are you actually? How do you come across? Do you come across as a confident, you know, high value man? Or are you not coming across that way? If you're not, that's fine, but write it down and why and really take a full account of yourself because that's the starting place because here's the thing. So many guys, we're so used to BSing ourselves to telling ourselves, you know, justifications for, you know, and I'm sure you know this as a coach yourself that the biggest obstacle that blocks guys from moving forward is that lies that they keep on telling themselves because they want to be this guy, but they're not him and they keep on pretending to be that guy. So, you know, the biggest thing about this is if you're trying to get somewhere on a map, let's say that you're trying to, you're trying to get to New York City. Well, if you don't know where you are right now, it doesn't matter how good of directions I give you, you can't get there. You have to know where you are because where you are is going to determine where you need to go. And so that's what I would say is just do that exercise, that will help you immensely in your life. And then you'll have a place to go. Then you'll know clearly what your path is and what you need to work on. Absolutely dude. That was well said. You know, being honest with yourself, that's part of who we are. And you know, I have my flaws too. I talk about them openly on this channel and you do too. And you know, the longer you ignore the bad parts of yourself and lie to yourself about the good parts, the longer it is for you're going to be to be able to make progress. So, dude, John, this was an awesome meeting. I would like to keep these a little short just so people can digest. You dropped a lot of knowledge bombs. I want people to kind of like think on them for a while. If people want to reach you, if you want to get in contact with you, where's the best way to reach you? If you want them to check out your YouTube channel, where would you like people to go from here? Sure. Yeah. The best thing to do is just go to BulldogMindset.com. And then when you go there, there's going to be a little pop-up that's going to say, do you want to take the Bulldog quiz? Of course you do because you want to know what your Bulldog score is. So it's 10 question quiz. Just take that quiz and I'll give you a score from 0 to 100. Tell you where you are objectively. And then from there, you'll get some emails from me telling you how to raise your score and some videos from me, all kinds of stuff. I'll get you into the Bulldog world. That sounds great. Well, I'm sure many of our viewers will look forward to taking that quiz. Thank you so much for being on this program, John. And hopefully we'll talk to you soon, man. You know, I'm going to be in San Diego. So hopefully I'll be able to see you there. Awesome. Awesome. Thanks again, Lloyd.