 Welcome back to the 21 convention 2019 of Orlando, Florida Our next speaker is a returning speaker to the 21 convention Presenting for his first time at the patriarch edition earlier this year in one of the workshops we had He's also a licensed marriage and family therapist therapist based out of Colorado He's been married for over 35 years and you find out more about him at solid man calm Without further ado, please let me welcome to the 21 convention stage Ken Curry I'm here for one reason I'm gonna talk about one thing Your identity probably the most important question a man can ask in his life Is who am I but you'll never be able to answer that question? Unless you answer this question Who is telling my story? You see everybody Everybody in your life your entire life has been telling you who you are Has been telling a certain narrative about who you are about what life is all about and You've believed them and you're here For one purpose as well You've invested your time your money to be able to have the hope That you can walk away from this weekend with a little more strength and a little more confidence But you will never find your confidence If somebody else is Telling your story for me. I've lived pretty much my whole life with pretty much no confidence I've been listening to what everybody else has said. I live what I call an externally Reference life where I'm more concerned about what other people thought of me living for approval Trying to make other people happy living up to their expectations I didn't have a really good solid sense of my own identity and I lived the externally referenced life One of the one of the stories that my wife and I laugh about is and this is going to date me for sure is that back I was a young man in my 30s and I would be absolutely fearful of Going into a video store and picking out a video. I Would be more concerned with what the girl behind the counter would think of me and think about what the video that I picked Then finding a video that I liked and thought would be entertaining so I'd be in a video store and I'd be stuck and I couldn't even move or My wife would send me to the grocery store and I would she'd send me for tortillas or Spaghetti sauce or something like that And I'd go to the grocery store and I'd be frozen Absolutely frozen Do I get corn or do I get flour? Do I get a dozen or two dozen? Do I get the sauce with the sausage or? the mushroom I Couldn't figure out what to get because I had to get it right. I had to figure it out I couldn't get it wrong and I couldn't disappoint I was so much more concerned about what she thought of me Then about actually getting it right or doing something that I wanted. I Had an externally reference life so The question is is who is telling our story who's told our story our entire lives? Let's start with our family of origin Your family of origin is where you start now. Here's what I want you to see it's a system that's been there Way before you even existed and all of a sudden you pop out of your mother's womb Into this system and there you are and now Since you're part of this group they start telling your story They tell you about what life is all about they tell you what men are all about they tell it Tell you who you are They assign you a certain role or tell you certain rules that you have to follow and you start to believe them This is the place it gets really tough because a lot of guys They'll be in a family and they they have to figure out how do I do this and get it right? Because there's a lot of families out there that'll tell you you have to be perfect or you can't be a burden Or you can't have wants or needs or whatever. We all know this. We all have our little Thing that we got going on But the whole idea let's take the whole idea of being perfect and getting it right guess what you're human And you're a kid. You haven't figured it out. You don't know what's going on But yet you have to be able to get it right and you make mistakes And so here you are you're going I'm not perfect. I've been told I have to be perfect, but I'm not and So that's where the roots of I'm not good enough or something's wrong with me begins to take hold inside of you and Then the next thing is school Third graders are brilliant with this. I don't think anybody any one of us escape third grade without some kind of scars It's pretty significant Third graders are brilliant Couple of my friends one of my friends a Kid in the third grade Was messing with him and he goes hey nose to Domus I mean pretty brilliant kid if I figured out who Nostradamus was made a joke out of it, but my friend Every time that he looks at a mirror. He thinks gosh, how's my nose? I mean we're talking as an adult man and some kid in the third grade said this Wonder what's wrong with my nose? Or my other friend Brilliant. It's like mental level brilliant third grade kid The teacher goes All right, here's a test everybody When you when you finish your test go ahead and then turn it in when you're done and And so my friend smart kid He rocks it man. He just kills it Takes it up a couple minutes later boom on the teacher's desk He's getting ready to turn around and this kid at the front row says You're not that smart He goes in sits down Guess what he's done his entire life through high school through college and even as an adult man It's like he would take a test and you've never he would sit in the back and wait for everybody else To put their tests up and then he would turn his in Because he's going am I that smart and he was all even though he's brilliant. He's questioning his intelligence teachers You know, you're never gonna figure this out or you're never gonna make it or See what's a famous one? Kind of I can't even think of it But the whole idea you're you're not gonna you're not gonna make it in life something like that We get these messages and coaches will say something like you're a pussy or something like that and it sticks to us These are the people that are telling our story church Church is a pretty tough one a lot of us have pretty tough stories about church The whole idea of the narrative would be you're a sinner or something's wrong with you for me. It was pretty tough because What I wanted to be able to do was to believe in myself and trust myself But there was this message that my heart was not good and I could not trust it if I trusted my desires or whatever I would just spin out of control and start being a a crazy sinner and do all kinds of crazy stuff That was the narrative that I couldn't trust myself There's other things going on now like for instance You have to have a woman in your life to be able to sanctify you or make move you toward godliness Which Pat said a little bit about that that there is something about being moved toward maturity, but not godliness There's not you don't need a woman in your life for that. I think I think it's There's no mediator between God and man. It's definitely not a woman. Well, there there is one mediator Jesus between God and man. It's not definitely not your woman I'm a follower of Jesus. I like Jesus. I don't think his voice is ever a voice of condemnation. I Think he calls you out quite a bit But it's not a voice of condemnation But a lot of the stuff that's coming out of the church and the narrative that they say about us as men It just about makes me cringe culture Think about all the messages the narrative that comes from culture and if you hear the word masculinity nowadays It's always preceded By toxic That's the story You're an oppressor. You're an abuser You're a rapist. You're a racist. You're all this stuff is the is what's going on With the story that that the culture is saying about men You're just a utility to keep the machine going. So put your head down and don't complain It's the Ray Romano's and the buffoons and all this that men are just buffoons fools That's the narrative Women we go to women to try to get our validation She's gonna complete me. She's going to tell me who I am. She's going to give me my value That's what we do. We find out what their narrative of me and we try to get that I try to I want them to make me feel better about myself by telling me who I am The man is fear the man is fear is almost as good as third graders not quite And they'll say things like You spurgy net big neck beard or What's the You're um You're a mouth-breathing incel lives in your mother's basement Man, I don't know where the mouth breather thing came from but I used to be a mouth breather And my nose got busted up with sports. You as a young man I could never really breathe well and So when they call somebody in mouth breather, I'd go what's wrong with that? And then finally I've got my nose fixed a couple a couple years ago They cleaned it out and the deviated septum on all that No longer mouth breather, but I carry something really kind of deep in my heart for mouth breathers, so But that's what we that's the way they talk right a lot of people on the manuscript. They're telling a story For instance, like they might say what are you a blue pill soy beta cuck? Or or with Pat you purple pill soy beta cuck, you know, that's what that's this is name calling and it's it's a narrative It's telling something about who you are and we listen to this stuff Probably the most most difficult thing in our life where somebody's telling our story are The abusers in our lives You know, all of us have had somebody we've got our Emotional abusers we have physical abuse and we have sexual abuse kind of already talked about how emotional abuse with the name Calling and telling you that you're not good enough and things like that Physical abuse if you were to get beat Smacked around one of the probably one of the most difficult things is you start to believe I deserve it That's what I deserve. That's what I'm a piece of junk. So I deserve this and that's the narrative that starts to be brought on you But probably most difficult is a sexual abuse because it's got this ambivalence on one hand It feels amazing. You've been groomed This this person want it they make you feel wanted they make you feel special and Even the sexual abuse itself sometimes actually Feels pretty amazing and your world is opened up to something that shouldn't be opened up yet But it's fantastic and it's mysterious and it's amazing And so on one hand, there's something amazing about the the abuse process which sucks us in But then on the other hand Bam, you're a piece of garbage You're not good enough I don't like you anymore You better not tell anybody about this and So you don't have a voice Man, that's tough. That's what I'm talking about people tell our story when Projection is part of what this is when somebody takes their own beliefs about themselves and projects that self image onto another person That's what I'm talking about. Let's say the abuser the abuser feels really horrible about themselves because it probably happened to them and They take this horrible internal sense of self and they throw it onto you. So here you are as a kid Believing something about yourself That this person believed about themself That their abuser believed about themselves And it's all projected into you and this is what it is somebody else telling you your story That's totally not true and That's the projection piece and it could be either negative or positive I'm talking about the negative throwing something really horrible a very horrible Self image into you, but it can also be positive and I think that's a lot of why you guys are here Being able to be an individual who actually brings really positive things to the world And we want to be fathers and husbands and men who actually speak blessing and honor to the people around us To be able to say things like you've got this or I love you. I'm proud of you Because out of a mouth out of as a man speaks it comes out of his what's in his heart And if it's negative stuff negative stuff's coming out don't hang out with those people If it's positive things Those are the guys that you want to hang out with Those are the people you want to be with if you find the truth about who you are and Follow the true narrative You will find your soul You will find your heart You'll find your confidence So what is confidence? I put a I call it I have the two cornerstones of confidence First first cornerstone is it's just a category of I'm okay. Just being able to say I'm okay It's just a foundation Just being able to say I'm good enough. I'm okay. It's about my solid identity identity and defeating shame Shame is this thing that destroys us. I think John Bradshaw in his book Back in the 70s or 80s said it best He said he compared guilt and shame Guilt says I made a mistake Shame says I am a mistake Guilt is I made a mistake. It's about my behavior. That's great. That's good. Be guilty for what you did if you make a mistake It's cool Shame is a big problem Shame says I am a mistake Something's wrong with me I'm not okay. I don't measure up. I'm not good enough. I don't deserve shit or I am a piece of shit that's shame and You'll never be able to stay to even say I'm okay if shame is still creeping and crawling inside of your body You got to be able to defeat shame Created solid identity identity and at least be able to say I'm okay The second cornerstone is I've got this. This is about my capability. So there's two things my identity my capability Being able to say I got this is a really powerful part of confidence You can't go through life with confidence if you don't think you're good. You can handle whatever situation comes up This is where initiation comes through Initiation is a process of going through difficult times Discomfort really hard stuff or pain and coming out the other side and going I survived I'm not so damn fragile or I'm not gonna die That's a really powerful thing to be able to know that I can handle it. I got this Tanner was talking about Boxing right and his his monthly advent adventure was that what it was? No, it's it's a with his buddy doing new things right the kind of push the envelope and And he's doing what he's doing is he's creating his own initiation and that's what we need to be able to do Actually engage in difficulty move forward in discomfort do things that are risky and difficult that I don't know that I'm okay with You know, there's tons of things you can do to push yourself into initiation a really strong part of initiation Classically, I know a couple people have talked about it already is the whole idea of a boy Being pulled out of the world of women and into the liminal space that is certain death or potential death And then as the boy pulled away from that It's would scare the hell out of anybody coming out of that comfort into the space where it's total Uncertainty who knows what's gonna happen in this spot But as he grows and it's initiated he comes out of it going I got this I can handle it So those are the two things that this is what's gonna bring you confidence being able to create a solid identity By defeating shame or creating a solid capability through allowing yourself to be initiated Couple of the guys have talked about how it's fun to look at words This is a word that totally describes what I'm talking about the word authority the word authority means somebody has power over you If you look at it you break it up It's author The author that's the person who's telling the story Has power over you So if you think about all those people a woman who rejects you Oh, I'm crushed a third grader tells you something stupid Totally haunts you to this day Or what your abuser saying something really horrible those are all the authors I Either let them have power over me Because that's the thing my own confidence is my birthright. I have it But what we do is we hand it over and give it to other people We allow them to be the author of our life and now They're the authority they have power over us. Let's look at the story of iron John this is a Actually a grim fairy tale So it's really old And it was made made popular by Robert Bly and his book iron John. It's a great read It's a kind of they call it a mytho poetic type of thing. So it's a it's a fun read It's got a lot of really good information Robert Bly does a great job with it I'm just gonna give a snippet of it and kind of something to help us unpack this the whole story thing a little bit So iron John is the story of a prince in an ancient kingdom With king and the queen and a castle and a big huge kingdom and adjacent to the castle is this really vast forest and In the forest is this guy named iron John. He's the wild man. He is strong mysterious and Harry and The problem is is that anybody who goes into the forest never comes back So one day Iron John the wild man is captured and they put him in a cage in the courtyard of the castle and What happens is is that the prince is playing playing with his golden ball And he's bouncing it around and somehow the golden ball bounces into the cage of iron John And the prince goes up to the cage. May I have my ball back? Iron John says only if you release me from the cage The boy says I don't have the key Where's the key? the key Says iron John is under your mother's pillow the prince is Us He's a boy, but most of us as we've listened to the stories that have come into us from external places most of us We're still boys our 20s 30s 40s. Maybe even 50s. We still feel like a boy inside Because we're still asking for our balls back and wondering where the damn key is The queen Who has the pillow she's not even in put this snippet except that she's the one that has the pillow She's all women the queen represents all women in this whole thing and she has a lot of Power in this story The wild man wait hang on a second. So the women so the queen one of a big part of her narrative is That the the wild man is not good As a matter of fact the wild man scares the hell out of her and her narrative is if you set the wild man free All hell is gonna break loose She's gonna lose her son He's gonna become some kind of tyrant. He's gonna hump everything in sight He's gonna end up in a gutter in some nondescript part of town Scares the hell out of her to think that the wild man would come alive in her son She would much rather the son just be a boy for the rest of his life The wild man is our confidence The wild man is who we are when we are alive Now there's another thing I was gonna say about that not coming to me. So that's all right The mother's pillow All right, so the mother's pillow is just a distraction. Now. Here's the thing. It's a pillow Underneath the pillow is the key. It's just a distraction. It's just something that hides the key and the key is Underneath the mother's pillow The pillow represents it's a metaphor for women's sexuality and So it's something that totally distracts us. So imagine Imagine that the prince and he goes into the end of back into the castle He's down the hallway right outside his mother's bedroom and he goes in it's all quiet Goes in he looks in there. All right, there's the bed Crawls or walks on in there's the pillow and he sees the pillow now What he's looking at is the sexuality of women and he sees the form He sees the shape. He sees the beauty. He sees the allure This is what I've been looking for all my life She can complete me. She can fulfill me. She can make me whole. She can tell me who I am And all of a sudden he totally and absolutely forgets about his mission to get the key to set the wild man free And this is what we do. This is actually what I think that a What's it called the midlife crisis a midlife crisis is all of a sudden a guy has been distracted with the pillow and women's sexuality, which is a super shiny object It's distracted me and I lost my mission My mission was to grab the key and set the wild man free But I've spent 20 years of my life over here with the pillow which it distracted me from my mission to get the key and I know the pillow Right, that's what we do and we wake up 20 years later going where the hell am I so imagine the prince 20 years later Standing in his mother's bedroom Gosh, what am I here for? I was here for a reason. Oh, yeah, my mission I was gonna grab the key and set the wild man free so then he goes on over to the pillow No, I can't do that again So he grabs the key and takes off and goes down to the courtyard And he sees the cage The cage are the lies that keep us in bondage The cage that holds the wild man the lies of all those stories That are not true about who you are and about what men are and about what manhood is That's what keeps us in bondage and if we believe it, that's what happens We're in bondage. We are not free so Here's the whole thing. So if the wild man really is set free is all hell gonna break loose of Course But the prince you will be free You will be alive You will live with vigor and vitality and one of my favorite words thumos You will be alive So the narrative is if the if the wild man set free everything's going to be horrible But the truth is everything is going to be awesome the lies The key the key is the truth. It's the true story of who you really are So here's the prince. He has the key He's going over to the wild man's cage and right before he puts the key in That's when good old worm tongue shows up. This isn't in the story. This is part of my story Worm tongue is this voice the inner critic He just about ready to put the key in and worm tongue says why would you want to do that? You know that's going to be pure disaster as soon as you turn the key Your mother is going to be so disappointed You're gonna ruin everything You're gonna be left and abandoned and rejected This is a voice good old worm tongue man. He says all kinds of stuff. He's a bastard The prince this time Doesn't listen goes in unlocks the cage The key is the truth about who you are it unlocks the cage it tells you This is who I really am rather than believing that I'm a piece of shit or that I'm no good or that something's wrong with me I start to find out what my true narrative is Who I really am Here's the secret the key the truth The truth that will set you free is Already inside you the story kind of tells the story of iron iron John says oh the key is over there and This is what most men believe that my the key is actually I have to go through the world of women or the sexuality of women to find the truth about who I am and That's a lie But this is the story goes because this is what most men actually believe But what I'm telling you here this morning is That the key is already inside of you the truth about who you are is already inside of you And if you're ever going to find your confidence You have to be able to find out who is telling your story Challenge the hell out of it and find out the truth about who you really are All right, remember You're never going to find your confidence if someone else is telling your story You want to live a life of confidence Find out who you are and tell Your own story Thank you. So yeah, we've got time for feedback questions You want to line up back back there and whoever wants to ask some questions Feel free Again, thank you so much for that story and for that narrative So question, maybe I'm thinking too deeply about this, but iron John being the confidence Yes, for the purpose of the story. He was already free. So how did he become captured and is that? Is that a parallel to to us men? So in this story, it just I think the hunter somehow captures in my and I think it's kind of an Irrelevant part of the story of how he got captured. I just think the the fact that he is in a cage That's the power of the story Somehow he's in it and I think the narrative the metaphor for us is we're in a cage as well And we are also imprisoned. We are also gosh in bondage, I guess is the word and I'm not sure if that's answering the question It does yeah, but is it yeah, so all right Thank you. Yeah, sure Hi, thanks for your speech. It was very good. My question is What was the what caused you to transition from being externally? Validated to internally and Was it a ten-year process a five-year process? All right, so it so it's been my lifetime and it's been just The transition from being an externally referenced nice guy, so I got I'll give a lot of kudos to Robert Glover No more Mr.. Nice guy I'm actually part of his network and Robert has done some really really hugely influential things in my life I'm really bummed. He didn't make it this week but Yeah, so that's part of my process. So the so the other part of what I've done is I've been on a journey that I've been Really committed to I have been committed to I want internal health I know there's a possibility that I could gain confidence that I can gain a strong identity that I can find out who the hell I am And become the man that I really want to be and you said a ten-year process. So it's been You know easily I'm 58 So gosh we're pushing on six decades of learning about this stuff And so you just have to be confident you have to be committed to being able to say I'm gonna grow I'm gonna become the man that I know that I can be and really challenge the narratives about the stuff that I've been been told my whole life and So a lot of I've done a lot of reading Gosh the guys here have taught. What did they say you got to do a lot of lifting? I've done a hell of a lot of sports and activity in my life, and I think that's been a really big deal for me as well Just to gain some confidence doing the things like pushing the limits and initiating yourself Always moving into discomfort this thing here Speaking up here on stage man. What is it like 98% of people would rather die than speak publicly? You know, it's like this is a very Discomforting thing to get up here and so this is really pushing me into a different place and so doing things that are Uncomfortable and initiating and that's how you make this happen. Thank you. Yeah Yeah, I can that was a great discussion Thank you So I just wanted to circle back around a little bit on on the shame and confidence situation you were speaking about and Why don't you give us some tips on how to deal with some of those shame? I've done some shameful things I know that over the years that I've been dealing with but the simple fact is is maybe give us a few tips on How to deal with that shame to find that confidence? Okay? Yeah, so first is just being able to go Okay, I know what shame is and I know what the messages that have come to me and when you start hearing yourself say You're not good enough or you don't measure up or you're a piece of shit or You know something's wrong with you or any of the any of that language that you start hearing yourself now Now you can start going that shame that is shame talking and and that's a really powerful part of this One of the most important parts of this whole journey for you guys is Observation just paying attention to what's going on inside of me and saying and listening to what's happening and hearing the messages that I'm speaking to myself and so one of the first and probably most important parts of this is just being able to notice when shameful thoughts or shameful ideas come into me or I hear them and Really challenge those challenge them immensely and go is that true? Am I a piece of shit? Am I no good? You know is it always my fault? What whatever it is just the first is really challenging the narrative that is being spoken or being said And there there's a lot of a lot of reading you could do I was talking about John Bradshaw His book is healing the shame that binds you old classic. I mean gosh It's probably pushing 40 years old or something Another one another person who's kind of picked up where he left off Is Bernay Brown? You might have heard some of her stuff about shame It's just learn about it find out about it And just and the big thing that I'm talking about is just challenge it and get your own story back Find out who you really are. That's how we really defeat shame Thanks Ken for for the speech hits home in a lot of ways the question I have for you is At the end of your talk you said we should tell our own story Can you talk about ways that we do that? Do you mean that more kind of symbolically or do you mean that very literally? It's it's probably both symbolically and litter literally It's interesting couple of my guys are here And just before this morning we were talking about what in in my group in the group process we have we Talked about finding your true name, which is another way to say finding your true identity and the whole idea of Telling your own story is coming to a place to where you're able to say this is who I am and I'm able to say I'm a good man. I'm able to say I have a good mind I'm able to say I have a really good heart and that's me telling my story and I'm able to I believe really good things about you. I believe you are good men I believe that when men are set free That really really good things happen It's when we're in bondage to all this stuff that when shaky things and horrible things happen and so what do I really believe and so Finding your true narrative is finding your true name one of the fun Fun clip that we that I use as a metaphor in group about this is the Maximus statement or in gladiator where Commodus comes down to the field and sees gladiator and he's got his mask on and he goes gladiator. What is your name? What's his true identity is what he's asking and he pulls it up like this about the time Commodus is shitting himself When he sees who it really is My name is Maximus Decimus meridius Commanders of the Lord northern legion general to the true emperor Marcus Aurelius Father to a murdered son husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my revenge in this life or the next That's his name That's his narrative and each one of us Can hold that same kind of voice when we say who we really are and It's fun. It's really fun to hear The men speak their their Maximus statement when they say who they really are and we can all do that as well Thanks. Thank you We talked a little you and I talked a little bit about projection last night, and I got the thinking You know projection comes from a dark like a secret place and somebody else, right? Yeah, probably tied to their own shame And I think it definitely tells more about them than it does about yourself, but somehow we internalize it What are your thoughts like how do people detect that negative projection that's coming from others? So you can kind of realize that it's not you. It's actually a projection. Yeah projection I mean, how do you tell the dip, you know? Okay, no, that's great. That's great Gosh, there's so much that's that's talked about and I know Sean talked about this last spring and last fall Sean Smith and his tactical book about women and stuff One of the biggest things he is your intuitive You really have to listen to your intuitive as you move through this stuff And this is a really powerful part of being an internally referenced man Being having an internal validation knowing that I'm good enough having my identity really strong internally And then using the internal resources that I have and trusting that trusting your heart trusting your gut Trusting your ability to discern and I think that's probably the biggest thing is is we as we go We have these abusive things or we have these stories and and we lose our ability to trust our own selves And that's that external reference one of the things like for instance Guys that are really fresh in this process, you know when they're very externally referenced and they're only really worried about what everybody else wants They don't even know what they want and asking the question. What do I want? It's like a mystery I've never asked that question before and so starting to ask the question. What do I want is Starting to listen to my internal resources. What do I desire? What's going on inside of me and so the discernment about what's going on or what somebody else is feeding me? Really comes to you from your intuitive and from your gut from your spirit and Being able to see and discern that. Hey, that's a negative bunch of bullshit That's coming my way that you're throwing into my basket And now I need to block my basket and hold a couple boundaries and say not you can't do that to me Yeah All right gentlemen, thank you very much. I appreciate being here