Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis presents:

In the latest episode of Elephant’s long-running, award-winning podcast and video series Walk the Talk Show with Waylon Lewis, Waylon meets Dain Heer. They speak about (toxic, unhealthy, unkind and genuine, grounded, grownup) masculinity, unrealistic expectations, parenting—about what it means to be a man in today’s society. 

Dain: What’s true for you will always make you lighter. A lie always makes you heavier. If you buy somebody else’s point of view about something, it’s not a hundred percent true for you. There will always be an element where it doesn’t quite fit.

It’s got a sense of being out of sync.

Children already have an awareness of what’s true for them because children naturally gravitate toward what makes ’em light and happy—until we teach them they need to grow up. From that moment, it’s a non-stop state of judgment.

We need to acknowledge that our kids are not tiny beings with tiny bodies, they’re infinite beings with small bodies. They have a level of awareness and if you approach them as fully sentient, conscious, aware beings, and you treat them like that, and let them know.

Rather than saying, ‘You were wrong for doing this.’ You ask them, ‘Hey, did you like the result you got from that choice?’

They go, ‘No. You know, I said this and then they didn’t like me ’cause they thought I was being mean.’

Child choice creates. It’s not about whether it’s good or bad, it’s what result did it create and what result would you like to create in the future? And what choices do you have that will create the result you would actually like?

Listen to the first half of the conversation:

“The idea that masculinity is based on not a judgment and a conclusion…but millions of judgments and conclusions about what masculinity is…this is what we do in this world: we try to be so reductive in everything. Try to take everything and boil it down to one thing.

[But] there is nothing that is one thing. Everything has far more complexity than we’re acknowledging.

What we have is a bunch of individuals who are their own unique recipe, who have an ability to move the needle or change the conversation—but those people are often drowned out by those that want to fight against, as a justification for not looking at their own shortcomings.” ~ Dain Heer

Or listen to the podcast: 

“How do we bring into existence a place where all of our wounded bits can be acknowledged, and recognize that others have wounds equally as deep, or more deep, than ours?

The greatest gift we can be is the kindness and caring that sees that.

And next, what can we do and create together?” ~ Dain Heer

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