Last year at one of our “FEARLESS Family” Gatherings of clients who’ve gone through at least one of our intensives, Anthony, now a coach for us, was coming out of apathy as he learned to get more in touch with his emotions.
Anthony found himself getting upset very easily and crying a lot, and he asked me how to know whether he’s moving forward or not.
When guys start this journey, it’s fairly common that – at first – they feel more fear, grief, or anger than before. This is because they’re moving from an all-too-common place of men being taught to numb out, ignore, or deny their emotions. To really move forward in a big way, you’ve got to face all the emotions you’ve been storing down deep so you can move through them and truly let them go.
On Lester Levenson’s emotional scale, your emotions, from heavy to light, go:
Apathy
Grief
Fear
Lust
Anger
Pride
and the highest emotions
Courage
Acceptance
Peace
Or AGFLAP CAP for short.
I always assume that I am moving forward. It’s typical that you are going to bounce up and down the scale. Remember, emotional processing is not a linear path.
When you’re coming out of Apathy – the heaviest emotion – and climbing the scale into Grief, Lust, Anger, and Pride before you hit Courage, Acceptance and Peace, it’s going to take some time.
This is about your relationship with the different areas of your life and what emotions they are carrying.
Having a negative or averse relationship with Apathy, Grief, and Fear make it really difficult to take action. At these levels it’s often hard to date, get a job, or make money. And having a bad attitude about those emotions only makes things worse.
The next level up – Lust, Anger, and Pride – is a lot of pushing or forcing energy.
At the top of the scale – Courage, Acceptance, and Peace – things begin to happen “for you” instead of “to you.” This is the guy who’s happy all the time and flowing. Life just works for him.
As long as you are processing your emotions – and not distracting from them – you are moving forward. Eventually, you will climb up and out of the lower emotions. With time, you will begin releasing faster and faster and start to have a bigger and broader picture of life. Just make sure you don’t stop releasing and start numbing out and distracting again with food, drugs, or caffeine.
Anything that stops you from feeling the emotions you’re going through or gives you that “state pump” above your heavy emotions is a move back towards numbing. Stimulants were a big one for me. I used to love Rockstar energy drinks. I had to do a ton of detoxing to move away from that. And last year, I gave up black coffee for a while because even that little bit of stimulant was hiding some emotions for me.
Just don’t stop in the middle. Keep moving. After you get to a place of peace, yeah, maybe you can return to some of your old habits a little bit and they won’t have a negative hold on you.
The main question to ask yourself is, is your life getting better? Is your energy changing? If you have a real group of friends who cares about your growth – not some group that doesn’t care about you – then they can give you feedback about how you are showing up day-to-day.
If your overall life situation is changing: more opportunities, 1% improvements and growth, the world responding a little differently to you, more synchronicities are happening, etc, you are climbing out of the lower emotions.
You’re gonna go up and down sometimes. Just keep going.
