5 simple practices to build emotional fitness as a modern man

While we hear much about men’s fitness, many male leaders are unaware of the requirement to understand and build emotional fitness. This is the capacity for a man to build the necessary skills to navigate the challenges that life will throw, such as those found in relationships, parenting, extended family, business/work and social network. These are the skills such as resilience, grit, patience, self-compassion, connection to purpose, self-esteem and presence.

Sadly, most of us are raised in situations that ill-prepare us for the road ahead, and we inadvertently build our ‘house’ on a pack of cards. It only takes one significant event, like relationship breakdown or loss of our identity through the work we do such as a retrenchment, for it all to come crumbling down.

For example, in Australia, the first marriage divorce rate is about 30%, and it’s estimated there are one million single-parent homes without a father figure in them. Boys in these homes miss out on being able to model any sense of positive masculinity from their fathers. Granted,  some of these might be troubled dads and perhaps not ideal models, but the majority are simply men who have, for whatever reason, not been able to navigate the complexities of modem relationships, and their children become collateral damage.

Here are five simple practices that can help men build emotional fitness:

1. Hang out with good men: this doesn’t mean a big night out with the ‘boys’ as this rarely results in any deep or meaningful conversation. Look around your male friends and assess if they’re the type of men you’d want your son to model, for example. Then speak with them about meeting, say, once a month.

   This will start a circle of men who can support each other, while exploring day-to-day issues we all deal with and helping us build emotional fitness.

2. Make time for you: very few men make time for themselves, perhaps time alone on a walk or a weekend away, camping alone, in nature. It’s remarkable how many men try this and find how much more connected and centred they feel afterward.

   Some men feel doing this is selfish, and not sure how to navigate this with their partner, however, sharing that alone time recharges your batteries so you can give to others, is often all that’s needed.

3. Become aware of your inner dialog: many of us have a severe ‘inner critic’, and if we ever voiced the destructive narrative that can plague our thoughts, to someone else, they’d probably be appalled at how we talk with ourselves. We must tame our inner critic and one way is write down what it’s saying, to narrate to ourselves, so that we can objectively assess whether what we’re saying is even true.

   Often, when we externalise such dialog, we begin to recognise the voice and words are not ours, but those of a critical parent, teacher, or other figure of authority who impacted our sense of self-worth.

4. Find a coach or mentor: we might meet a man, sometimes older, who we sense has an air of presence and purpose we’d like in our own self-inventory. You may notice some qualities you’d like to amplify in your own life, such as patience, assertiveness, or healthy boundaries, for example. Interestingly, we often don’t spot these attributes in another if we don’t carry them to some degree in ourselves, otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to recognise them!

   If this is the case, approach the person and ask how they can best support you to be the best version of yourself, where you might feel deficient and what ‘success’ might look like for you. Is it acquiring or improving a skill and what might this help you do? Would it position you for a promotion, for example?

5. Explore expressing vulnerability: while this is something most of us were unable to model due to the lack of vulnerability of those around us, it really is a super-power and a significant foundation of healthy, interpersonal relationships. Like any skill, at first it can feel overwhelming, scary, clunky, even unsafe, yet each time we look for and create such safety, and find a way to express ourselves at this level, just like going to the gym and doing reps, we build our ‘muscle’.

   As we become more comfortable with the discomfort we might feel, this helps us become more accustomed to crucial, difficult and vulnerable conversations, significantly improving our ability to communicate.

While many men might think that emotional fitness is only about managing stress, or perhaps addressing internal upheavals driven by lingering childhood trauma, wounds or shame, it’s more than that. It’s about developing an inner, solid structure that supports a life of clarity, connection, and purpose. It enables us, as men, to be more present, as a partner, parent, leader, and in later life, as a conscious Elder in our community.

Find what works for you, and value your effort to become more emotionally fit as it will change your life for the better.

Written by John Broadbent.