Issue #49: Becoming Competent: Mastering Your Life

Insecurity lies at the heart of life and living for so many Nice Guys. It drives the bus.

And it’s a terrible fucking bus driver.

If you want to feel solid - to be secure - your work is to make secure what is insecure. 

It isn’t to kick that insecure part of you off the bus but to allow him to take a relaxed, more certain seat down the back of the bus. Safe knowing that you have the wheel and are in charge.

Herein lies the theme of your work: become competent at driving the bus.

That invites you to become strong, fit, and capable mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, and relationally.

It means building yourself to become resourceful, resilient, and competent in these vital areas of your life.

It means stepping into self-acceptance and self-respect. Practising it. Building it.

Competence really sits at the heart of so much for men in general, especially Nice Guys.

Competence is what leads to confidence and self-belief.

It is about building evidence and self-trust.

When you become competent in something, you become more secure in it.

When you become more competent in the areas below, you shift your relationship to yourself, your insecurities, and the world. You become more secure in yourself and more secure in the world.

This is it.

Becoming Competent

Let’s explore what you can implement today and how to become competent in these areas.

Mentally:

Mental strength isn’t what we used to think it was - just ignoring things and never showing weakness. Or bottling things up and being ‘stoic’.

Most of the time, that is simply denial and suppression.

Mental strength comes via facing challenges and moving into them despite the likelihood of fear, trepidation, hesitation, discomfort, and feelings of vulnerability and insecurity. It means moving to the other side of them through courageous action.

Growing into a new level and new capabilities because those challenges require you to grow and become stronger, more resourceful, and more resilient.

This looks like feeling the fear of an edge and limitation, noticing the resistance to something and stepping towards it, taking the actions it asks of you and growing into the person capable of it - after you step. Never before.

A mentally competent man can also sit alone with his thoughts and feelings. He can be at peace in his own company.

This can also look like advancing and improving your curiosity, problem-solving ability, and decision-making by practising these things regularly.

A mentally competent man can make better decisions, handle pressure more effectively, know how to discern his fucks and give his energy.

This can happen in any area of your life, including the others below.

He is of more use to himself and to those around him.

Emotionally:

As above, this will happen by facing challenges. However, becoming more emotionally competent also requires you to recognise emotions, tune into them, get the message they send, and respond accordingly from that place.

It isn’t just ‘being emotional’ - that usually is someone who doesn’t have adequate and responsible control of their emotions. And it isn’t just being able to handle anything in life without being emotional. It means being a mature and responsible steward of your emotions.

Do this via journalling, sitting in an emotion and getting curious. Writing about it. Talking about it. Explore an emotion by actually feeling it. Get curious about the emotion.

Learn to place words to the feeling and how to respond appropriately - be guided by the emotion, not ruled by it through suppression or untamed expression.

Find someone you feel safe with and discuss it with them. Explore what comes up, the stories around it, what it feels like, and their experience with it.

Learn to sit with the feeling without reacting to it.

This can happen in some isolated elements of your life and will definitely happen (and need to happen) in your relationships with others.

An emotionally competent man can be empathetic and caring towards others without dishonouring himself, his needs, or his own emotions. He can connect on a deeper level with others and create a depth of experience within himself.

He is calm when needed, loving, angry, happy, and curious - all when appropriate. He can read a room, and he can read himself and act accordingly. He doesn't suppress his emotions or be a slave to them; he is guided by them.

He is also a man who can take himself and life seriously and, in the next moment, not seriously.

He can access playfulness. Play opens us to all sorts of human experiences, and it holds the key to an emotional competency many guys struggle with.

He is of more use to himself and to those around him.

Physically:

Become fitter, stronger, and more resilient physically.

Train your cardiovascular system. Train your musculoskeletal system.

Move resistance. Move your body with purpose and intent.

Build a bigger capacity to recover. Rest.

Build healthy and effective sleep hygiene and patterns.

Improve your ability to handle the demands of life.

A physically competent man is a healthy man. He is putting himself in the best position to live a vibrant life. He is someone who builds mental and emotional fortitude via facing discomfort and continually showing himself he can do difficult and uncomfortable things.

He can pull from the lessons learnt here to be more resilient and capable in other areas.

He is of use to himself and to those around him.

Financially:

So much more than ‘building financial security’, becoming financially competent means expanding your relationship to money.

It means becoming skilled and capable in ways that add or produce value that can receive reciprocal value in monetary terms in return. Improve your ability to earn money.

It also means building your ability to hold onto money, to be a responsible steward for it. And your ability to spend it in suitable and appropriate places, including on things that simply put a giant smile on your face. While being able to account for the responsibilities in your life.

It means being able to invest money in things that bring you meaningful returns. From personal growth, to experiences, relationships, and your future.

A financially competent man puts himself in a position where he can provide for himself and others, ensuring an environment to flourish. Security and survival are assured and where he and those in his care can live with the freedom that comes when the basics are covered.

This doesn't mean he has to be ‘rich’ in the way we have long held this term to be. It means he lives with a richness of freedom and opportunity. He is responsible, resourceful, and financially flexible.

He is of more use to himself and to those around him.

Relationally:

Becoming relationally strong means more than just being in relationships. Anyone can do that. It means being in the practise of improving your ability to relate with others.

It means understanding your role and behaviours in relationships, and understanding your emotional reactions and responses to others. How you are triggered, why you do that, and how to respond more effectively.

It means developing your ability to stay grounded, regulated, and interact with love, compassion, and boundaries.

It means being able to understand the other, or at least curious and regulated enough to try to understand them.

It means being willing to receive feedback without getting defensive or ack out of being wrong. It means being able to give feedback with respect, honesty, kindness, and compassion.

It means understanding how you like to give and receive love and appreciation. Being willing and able to communicate your needs and ask for what you want.

It means knowing your needs and taking majority responsibility for them.

It means being or continually working to become secure within yourself and in intimacy with another.

It means being able to maintain your sovereignty while in relationship with others, and supporting them in maintaining theirs.

A relationally competent man is of more use to himself and to those around him.

Self-Expression: 

For Nice Guys, this is the ultimate work: become competent within yourself.

Become more competent at being yourself.

Despite what others might do, think, say, or how they might interact with you.

Developing true comfort in your skin comes from wearing it around. Taking knocks and learning to remain comfortable there despite the judgements, rejections, and opinions of the outside world.

I call this becoming more competent in self-expression.

A genuinely thick skin.

This man is of more use to himself and to those around him.

This is one that so much of this work is based on. A lot of the above is doable via various strategies and practise. This one is where so much of the work is.

Ultimately, this is the work we do in the EVERYDAY LEGENDS ACADEMY

Me, my team, and the community of solid and competent men in ELA support Nice Guys in becoming more competent and confident in self-expression.

And more competent mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, and relationally.

If you want this for yourself, click here, fill out the form, and start the process of exploring it with me today.

A lot of what I have listed above happens through your individual actions. However, so much of it is facilitated by the support, guidance, challenge, and accountability of others.

This stuff cannot only happen in your isolated actions.

Sure, it’s your work, but the potential in each area is only accessed with others.

Think about who in your life is supporting, guiding, challenging, and holding you accountable for becoming more competent in these areas.

If you don’t have them - FIND or CREATE THEM as soon as possible.