.jpg)
The Revolutionary Man Podcast
The Revolutionary Man Podcast is for high-performing husbands and fathers ready to lead with purpose. Hosted by Alain Dumonceaux, this show equips men with the tools to reclaim their masculine identity, master work-life balance, and strengthen mental health. Featuring expert interviews and raw solo episodes, each week brings insights to help men lead their families, grow their businesses, and build a lasting legacy. It’s time to stop settling and start rising.
The Revolutionary Man Podcast
Importance of Self-Compassion and Embracing Imperfection with Gabriel DeRita
Let me know your thoughts on the show and what topic you would like me to discuss next.
Ever felt like you're not living your true purpose? If that resonates with you, then this conversation I had with Gabriel Dorita, a purpose alignment coach, is what you need. Gabriel is also a self-proclaimed goal whisperer and mushroom enthusiast who traded his tech career to explore the world as a cyclist. He shared the challenges and self-discoveries that fueled his transformative journey.
We ventured into a discussion about the powerful role psychedelics can play in personal growth and transformation. Gabriel provides significant insights into connecting with reliable information and support sources, setting clear intentions, and understanding the potential risks. He underlines the importance of having a supportive community to share experiences with. He emphasises that while psychedelics can unlock doors to self-improvement, we're still the architects of our own life outcomes.
In the final part of our conversation, we unpacked concepts of authentic relating, masculinity, and owning our experiences. Gabriel presented an enlightening perspective on how adopting the five authentic relating practices can help us forge more meaningful relationships. We also discussed the shaking societal paradigm on masculinity and the necessary strides towards leading fulfilling lives filled with purpose and meaning. This episode is a deep dive into living your life purpose, personal transformation, psychedelics, and authentic relating. Tune in, you won't want to miss it.
To reach Gabe:
Web: https://www.effectiveconnection.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/gabe.derita
IG: https://www.instagram.com/funngabe/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabrielderita/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gabederita
Thanks for listening to the Revolutionary Man Podcast. If you want more information about our programs, use the links below to check us out. It could be the step that changes your life.
👉To join our movement:
⚙️Resource Hub (Free Stuff)
IG - /the.revolutionary.man
FB - /theawakenedman.net
I realized at a certain point that if I didn't hit reset, I would never find out what that bigger thing was that I might be meant to do in this world. I remember there was this one moment I was in the middle of Croatia, on the coast. I was looking out of this beautiful sunset and crying and sitting by myself in my tent because I realized there wasn't anybody within a thousand miles who even knew my name. I don't want to give anybody the idea that that journey was all magic. I mean, there was life-changing magic throughout it, but there was also a lot of challenge as well. I think psychedelics can help.
Speaker 1:I think Michael Pollan's metaphor is like to shake the snow globe loosen up those tracks in our mind and those like patterns of thought and behavior that we're really attached to, and helps us open up the options and create more space of possibility for what we want to achieve and create in our lives. Finding and building the life of a purpose doesn't have to require like a dramatic reset, like I did. It can be as simple as committing to a decision on a daily basis and watching the compound effects of that grow, staying in that space of possibility and creating small changes that don't require you to completely redo your life are oftentimes the most effective things for people. It doesn't require this enormous sacrifice just to get started.
Speaker 2:What does it mean to live your life purpose? You know that is a question we ask here at the Awaken man, but before you can really dive into that question, you really need to know what it is, don't you? There are many ways to go about that and in my opinion the best ones, or the best ways to do that, is for us to do some introspection. The challenge is in my busy mind. It gets in the way and at times it can be pretty frustrating. But that's okay too, because it's all part of the process.
Speaker 2:And today my guest shares his process that he has found to help him and his clients in their journey to living purposeful lives. Before we get into a lot of some of your mind, if you're interested in raising your standards as a father, husband and entrepreneur, then I encourage you to participate in our Band of Brothers group mentorship program. You know we're a group of ordinary guys working towards living extraordinary lives, and you can find all this information at the Awaken man training academy at membersawakenmannet. And with that, let's get on with today's episode.
Speaker 3:The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man podcast. I'm the founder of the Awaken man movement and your host, alan DeMonceau. Before we get into today's topic, let me ask you a couple of questions. Do you know what your life purpose is and, if not, why is it important to have one? You know, having purpose brings meaning into our lives. It is our raison d'etre, our joie de vivre. And now, not having purpose doesn't necessarily mean that our life is going to be meaningless either. It's just that you may not live with as much passion for life as you could if there was purpose behind it. Well, today, my guest is an expert in helping others discover and live their life purpose.
Speaker 2:Allowing me to introduce my guest Gabriel Dorita is a goal whisperer and a mushroom nerd who left his fancy tech job in 2017 to travel the world by bicycle and, in the process, found his calling and coaching. He's a purpose alignment coach and a leadership development facilitator that helps individuals and teams align with what matters most, while making effective connections with self and others. His work is rooted in neuroscience based co-active coaching, authentic relating and mindfulness, with a spoonful of Japanese philosophy on. To top it all off. He's also passionate, as we said, about cycling, foraging wild mushrooms and the transformative power of psychedelics to heal ourselves in the world. Welcome to the show, gabriel. How are things, my friend?
Speaker 1:Thanks, Ellen. I really appreciate you having me on today and excited for our conversation. This is such a rich topic and I was really excited to have this invitation to share.
Speaker 2:Yeah, me too. We talk so much about purpose here at the Awakened man, but before we even get into purpose, one of the things we also the other thing we always talk about is how all of us are on our own hero's journey, or we call it a hero's quest. And while I shared a bit of your story, tell us a little bit about something that inspired you to pursue your purpose and how that experience shaped you into the man you are today and the work that you're doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that experience for me was pretty dramatic. In the end I did end up kind of quitting my job, leaving an eight-year relationship and moving onto a bicycle and traveling solo for like almost two years. But what led me to that was an experience that I now call spiritual inflammation, which I would just describe kind of as like an allergic reaction to my daily life. I knew I could keep doing it forever, I would be fine. I had a fancy tech job, like I said everybody at the time seemed to want. I had a loving partner, big group of friends, but something just didn't feel like it fit.
Speaker 1:I just had this sense of dissatisfaction and dissonance and I was distracting myself a lot working too much, drinking too much, getting into conflict with my partner all the typical symptoms of just something being off, and I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1:And I realized at a certain point that if I didn't hit reset I would never find out what that bigger thing was that I might be meant to do in this world. And so that's kind of what led me to that decision was this growing sense of dissatisfaction and dissonance and trying things over and over to improve in them, just not getting better, and realizing if I didn't make a conscious break, then I would just kind of stay trapped in this place of getting complacent with the dissatisfaction, and I didn't want to see that happen. And I had a promise to myself since I was, you know, in my early twenties, that I would travel extensively. I wanted to see the world. And I was turning 30 that year and I was like all right, cool, I got to. You know, now or never, it's not going to get easier to do it, and so I think that was a part of the puzzle for me as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and what I really appreciate about hearing you tell that story there and I took some notes here spiritually, uh, inflammation, spiritual inflammation.
Speaker 2:What a great way to look at that perspective, to look at our life, about how we can be, you know, allergic to what our life is and just you know we talk about as being sleepwalking through life and the same type of idea right, where we just we're kind of numbed out and doing our and getting up and just living a life and we really don't have any meaning behind it, other than I have bills to pay, Right, and it's supposed to be in a relationship, but doesn't don't really understand either how that serves us. And you were able to finally wake up and now you're out here. I was, as we said in the intro. You said you're really passionate about, about cycling, and so you said you were gone on two years. But were you cycling through that whole two year period? And uh, and where was it more? Or was it the intent, really an opportunity to help that self-discovery for yourself?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the second half of the question is absolutely it was a project of self discovery. But I only was on the bike for about nine months. I really took advantage of the summer in the northern hemisphere and by the time it started to become winter. I ended the trip in Japan and it was like getting to be winter in Japan and I'm like, okay, cool, I'll mail my bike back to California. And then I kind of continued with a backpack through Southeast Asia and Nepal and India, and it's a little bit tougher to ride a bike in the Himalayas than I think I'm capable of. So it was time to leave the two wheels behind. But I did have an intention when I set out to really find out like what is this next chapter? For me, the journey itself wasn't just a bucket list I want to cycle the Dolomites and I want to visit these shrines in Kyoto. It wasn't just about the destination. For me, it was very much a project of inward self discovery too, and I used a Western adaptation of a Japanese concept that you probably are familiar with some men in your group I know called Ikigai. Yeah, this is a really, really popular idea. It doesn't mean the same thing in Japan as it does in the Westernized version of it, but the West has adapted it through this beautiful Venn diagram of what you love, what the world needs, what you're good at and what you can be paid for.
Speaker 1:And when I was in my tech career, I was good at sales and I was well paid for it, but the world's need for another app was questionable and remains so, and I think I also really wasn't in love with what I had to do every day, and so I sought to find people along the journey who seemed, in my eyes, to have it together, to have that joie de vivre, as you said, that sparkle or that sense of purpose, and find out hey, what do you have? What did you do to kind of get your life in that place? And as I was traveling, I was in Bali, indonesia, actually and I met someone who was a life coach at a workshop that I went to, and when she told me what she did, I was like what, no way? Like no, no, that's a thing, and became really committed to the idea of using my skills and the things that I was good at in service of what the world needed and something that I would actually love, and so it didn't actually feel like a big makeover to shift from sales to coaching, because a lot of the same things I was good at applied in a coaching context. I just my final objective wasn't to sell a product, it was to help somebody understand their experience in a deeper way and get more of what they want from their life, and so it was a very intentional project to me when I set out to find out something, you know like my icky guy for myself, and I used that tool as I met people who inspired me to learn about their lives and discover what was out there that I didn't realize could be possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure. And because you know I like how we I was making a note here about just how in the out, in the West, how we take things, these these great concepts and ideas, how from the east, and how we just put our little twist on it and our spin and and it seems to work for us. Yet it doesn't necessarily have the has the true natural meaning that it was first in its first intent. But you utilize that to really position yourself and what I appreciated about what you were saying there is that you were able to look at that, at that, at that Venn diagram, and put things into place that actually made sense. And I wonder, from your experience of as you started to do that journey, there had to have been moments of self doubt and wonder, after you had left that, left your career and started on this journey that how did you, how did you deal with that? How did you overcome those moments?
Speaker 1:There were so many and I'm really glad you asked that question because often when I tell this story people think about. You know, the adventure and the novelty and the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, and I mean it was work before, during and after. You know, getting ready to make that choice was really hard. You know, telling my family, telling my partner at the time, quitting my job, like all that was, was that one of the most emotionally difficult things I had ever done? And then, you know, during the journey, like I remember, there was this one moment I was in the middle of Croatia, on the coast, and I I was looking out of this beautiful sunset and crying and sitting by myself in my tent because I realized there wasn't anybody within 1000 miles who even knew my name and that I was a complete unknown and a stranger and like absolutely on my own, nobody to help me, nobody to like. I could text people on WhatsApp or whatever, but I really think that experience of being in sort of this wilderness of the soul, like really by yourself with your thoughts and your experience, was incredibly difficult and formative. I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was a beautiful part of who I am today, but I don't want to like sugar coat that experience and say that that that eight, nine months, mostly by myself on a bike, was easy. There was a lot of deep soul searching and thinking and not just physically difficult conditions of like you know, hot or dry or wet or you know cold, you know, facing the elements on the bike, but also just being with yourself in that process was very rewarding but but often challenging.
Speaker 1:And then when I came back, there was, I remember, this moment I went straight back to California and I went up, met up with all my old friends from my tech world and went on a weekend in Tahoe. And we're like river floating in Tahoe and white claw had been suddenly invented while I was gone and everybody was drinking that and, like you know, I was just having this moment of like wow, you know, I left this whole world behind and like these people were talking about you know, the mortgages they wanted to get and like all the like, and I'm just like, oh my God, I've made this terrible mistake, I've shot my financial future in the foot. You know, just like I couldn't like the commission, checks were outrageous in that industry and so I realized that I still had the same social circle, but I didn't have the economic ability to compete and stay relevant in that high paced, fast you know world of the San Francisco tech scene and I thought, oh my gosh, have I kind of excluded myself by choice from this group of people, from this future that I want to be a part of. And in the long run that turned out not to be true, because last year I actually made more money as a coach, working for myself, than I ever made in tech, and I think that's because I I'm doing something I love and so I'm committed to it, and so.
Speaker 1:But for that first year or two that would, that result was definitely not set in stone. It was very uncertain and I remember having like a mini panic attack in the car in Tahoe with my friends being like, oh my gosh, I am so far behind. You know what I mean. I spent my life savings on this silly thing and like what have I done? Kind of feeling was was really really intense when I first got back to the US. So I don't I don't want to give anybody the idea that that journey was all magic. I mean there was life changing magic throughout it, but there was also a lot of challenges, bob.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and thank you so much for being authentic and sharing that and because part of the that's why the opening question I ask all my guests is about to talk about their heroes journey and their heroes quest, because the heroes journey as we're, as we all know, right has those moments of when there's lots of self doubt, and it's how we emerge from from that and how we transition through it is really what shapes and makes us, and so a lot of folks sometimes I shouldn't say a lot For me.
Speaker 2:I want to always make sure that everyone understands the, the depth of the journey. It's not all roses and unicorns and everything's great. There are many moments of solitude and self doubt and questioning, and you know you're part of the story about. You know being 5000 miles away from anybody that even knows your name, and sitting there as, on one hand, you're looking at it, going how exhilarating that you're able to do this, and then, the other hand, the, the depth of the loneliness, right, but knowing that you're meant to be there, is still the driving force behind it. It's that purpose that we've, that we're talking about here today, and I think that's there's any rat. If there's any lesson out of that, that's the. That's the one that I got from, from what you were just saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I'd like to add to that, because I realized I didn't fully, fully answer your question, which was how I got through that stuff.
Speaker 1:I described the difficulty, but, like, what really kept me, you know, pulled me through that, I think, at a certain point was I I Realized I had made these choices for myself and that I didn't have to do anything, but that I get to do everything and and that became especially important building my coaching business and creating a Sustainable practice around this work. That I love was that I don't have to do any of this. I get to do this, and this is a privilege and a gift to be in this life and to be to you. To have this mind in this body and this Process of self-inquiry and this ability to make choices and make sacrifices is not it's not a luxury that everybody has, and, and I think that, for me, being really aware of the, the gift of that choice and, and the fact that the things that I was doing were freely chosen, gave me a lot of resilience To deal with the challenges that resulted from those choices.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and and you know the notes I just wrote down here was having to do something and getting to do something and it's a it's a different perspective to approach it. And even even as I've been doing my work here and with the, with the awakened man, there's still. There's still moments and times where there's still that transition phase of getting to reminding myself that I get to do, this is not something that I have to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I remember and I remember talking to To a life coach that that I was training under and he talked about how you know, for the first five years of his practice, when he was building his practice, that he still had his full-time job and he needed that time.
Speaker 2:He needed that buffer to get himself into a position to where now of his, his, his business, is flourishing, he's doing tons of great things that here in in Canada. And I just thought I thought, wow, that's so true, because not everyone will have necessarily the ability to just drop their job and and go do something immediately into a position without without having that that bit of bankroll behind. And you decided to use yours as a A lot of the really child, really opportunity to challenge who you are and find out what really makes Gabriel tick. And I think it's it's important for us to understand there's lots of different ways for us to transition from having to do something To getting to do something, and it all starts first with the mindset and then we have that mindset, then we can start to take the actions and the steps to living a life of purpose.
Speaker 1:Yeah, making those harder choices. You know you don't do anything you don't expect of yourself first. So you kind of need to be able to see that future, to move towards it. And yeah, I didn't have a job to come back to. You know, I didn't have a lease or anything. I and I'm a mortgage, nothing.
Speaker 1:So when I left I was sort of like, okay, fresh start. And when I came back and started my business, I I had a bunch of LinkedIn recruiters reaching out to me for sales jobs. You know I had to say no to that juicy, you know, 250 salary or whatever. But I, I said that, but that was the only choice I had to make was to not go back. Yes, which was hard, but but I didn't have to quit a job to do this. I had already done that part. So starting my business was sort of like I had the space for it. And you know it's hard to say the pandemic was a good thing, but for me at that time it kind of created, in a way, an excuse for me to not have any FOMO. And do you know what FOMO is?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah, everybody know yeah so I have terrible FOMO and for me to have a year start right when I got back to the US in 2019 and then the following year nobody was doing anything, so I just had time to focus and work. I also had a socially acceptable excuse to move back in with my parents, so in many ways the timing of that Did support me in having that kind of crucible, that space to really dive deep and focus on building a skill set and getting training and building out a coaching practice. So I think the timing of that global event probably accelerated things for me by about a year or two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and there are no accidents at all.
Speaker 2:Right, and so, had you know, had you not made the decision prior to that to transition from your, from your, your tech job into Doing the and doing the journey, then it may you may have still just be in a tech role today, but that and I think that's just that things are so synchronous when we take a moment and just go, how I got here today is all that, based on the decisions I've made yesterday and the day before that, and the day before that, a day before that, and when we can look at that and Take a moment and have an appreciation for it, we can really start to enjoy our life.
Speaker 2:And maybe there's moments in in in our lives where we're not thrilled about the decisions we've made, and that's okay too, because at least we're dealing in reality and we're getting ourselves back to a position of understanding that, okay, now I can start to take responsibility for an aspect of my life and make decisions to hire a coach or do whatever you need to do to move forward, because that's really all we're working here to do Is to become better individuals, as as we spend our time on this, this ball of earth that's spinning around, yeah, and now and I want to take a moment to reflect on what you said there, to remind folks to our listening that Finding and building the life of purpose doesn't have to require like a dramatic reset, like I did it can be as simple as Committing to a decision on a daily basis and watching the compound effects of that grow, because that's the what the work I do with clients at.
Speaker 1:You know individuals, teams. I do this with leaders, I do this with organizations, I do this with just private citizens and the common denominator is always like starting with those values and Understanding the small changes that you want to make to build something different In your future, and it really can be incremental. It can start with things that seem small, but even something as simple as a commitment to spending an hour a day outside, you know, or it might lead you to bump into someone, into a park who offers you a job guiding river rafting trips next summer in your town, right, you have no idea. So just staying in that space of possibility and creating small changes that don't require you to Completely redo your life are often times the most effective things for people, because it doesn't it doesn't require this enormous sacrifice just to get started.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and that's so, so true, and thanks for for bringing that point forward, because it is true, it is about the smaller. It can be totally about the smaller decisions and and they are and you've probably made several small decisions up to the big decision in order to finally get you there right. And and even though we're talking about the big one, you're absolutely right it takes, it takes time, and all we need to do is just make you know the 1% idea of change. It's changing small little increments and gets us to the point that we ultimately want to be, and I also talked to in the in the intro about that. They've been involved in using psychedelics as a way to help people grow and transform. What would you tell somebody who is curious about stepping into that?
Speaker 2:into that field and and how do you go about working with folks?
Speaker 1:I would say the first thing that I would get curious about for yourself is you're why? You know what's really driving your curiosity for this. Is it just because it's the hot new thing? Is it some hoping for a silver bullet? You know, like what's the motivation behind this? Because they are Powerful and potentially transformational allies in a growth process, but they also carry a lot of risk.
Speaker 1:You know it's also worth mentioning like a legal risk. You know they're not, they're not regulated, they're not legally accessible in many places, and so really making sure that you understand a kind of a clear reason for wanting to approach them and what your intent would be, I think is a great place to start. And also looking to community to guide you, because in an unregulated space, you know it's hard to vet the quality of care provider or source of material. And so really connecting to your local community Three like a psychedelic society or finding integration circles or people who are locally involved in that space either maybe it's in the advocacy space, maybe there's a decrim nature chapter that's in your area that's trying to work to change the law those are people who will probably have some level of integrity and can help guide you to a place of Safety in this, because I think it's a community based movement right now and and so communities the only way to find out what's going on around you, and it's also a chance to get connected to other people who are in that process For themselves. Because a lot of the work I do is around integration, so I'm not sitting with people in a journey. I'm helping them kind of pre and post, integrate the lessons and set those intentions well, and a lot of support that people need just comes from having someone to talk to who understands what that experience is like. And so if you don't have a lot of people in your immediate community who would understand that desire or that decision to take a psychedelic drug for self growth, it's important you surround yourself with people who are coming from a similar place, and so I can't stress the importance of that community aspect enough, of really Building those relationships, either physically, locally, or you know you find a digital community that can support you.
Speaker 1:I think that's the first place to start and and ask questions, get curious and get a second opinion. Don't just listen to this podcast or, you know, watch fantastic fun guy or something, and suddenly say I know what I want or I know what I need Go out and find a second, third opinion, find out somebody else who's had an experience or is maybe done what you have hoped to do, and and find out what their results were from that process. Really learn from what others have done. I really think is a great place to start, just with a lot of curiosity, a lot of humility and go slow. Don't jump right into it and think, oh, I read this. John Hopkins study said this cures depression, so it's going to cure mine.
Speaker 1:I think people are really excited about psychedelics and I'm glad that they are Want to be a voice of reason and caution around this that they aren't a silver bullet and they oftentimes just help us open the door to our own work, but they're not going to have, they're not going to like walk through the door for us. You know what I mean. They're not going to keep. We are responsible for creating the outcomes in our lives that we want. All psychedelics can help us do is see a different perspective on that, help us understand something in a more fundamental way or through a different lens. But ultimately we need to be the people who carry that wisdom forward and weave it into the fabric of our lives. So the psychedelics are going to do that for you and they're not going to heal the world either. I think you know the Aztecs use psychedelics and they still had blood sacrifices. So it doesn't like Automatically heal a culture when it's integrated psychedelics. I really think it has a lot to do with intent and taking those lessons forward. That makes the difference.
Speaker 2:I completely agree with that and I think it's what's really important with what you're saying here is that it is something that and I know there's I've been doing some other research on on this and Because I have a son that doesn't make healthy choices when it comes to to hard narcotics and I know there's lots of work right now that's out there talking about the how that can, how psychedelics can benefit and those folks into in that space.
Speaker 2:However, even just doing it for ourselves, you know you talk about having intention and having the right environment and and being and having someone around that knows what they're doing back and all that can also guide you through the process. So this isn't something we're talking about here, where, where you can just do something on a weekend, on a whim. That takes some research and it takes some time because, as you said we are. It is an opportunity that a door will get opened and we have to be prepared to, to walk through that door and witness and be and be able to be held in a space and a container that can allow us to do that and so that we can feel, so we can have that feeling of safety as we go through it. Now you marry these two this work with your, with your life, with your life coaching as well, in your coaching business or and helping people find life purpose. What have you found to be the, the catalyst for this work that has really been so transformative?
Speaker 2:in the psychedelic context yeah, well, and how it's worked, how it's been able to you've been able to marry that work, that the psychedelic piece, and helping people with purple or finding their life purpose and living it. How was that? How was that combination working? Yeah, that's a really interesting question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really interesting question. Psychedelics can give us a very different point of view than the one we typically hold with our limited and narrow sort of subjective kind of human ego, which we can't help right it's I don't want to be here like a bash in the ego or we need it to survive but I think psychedelics can help us really zoom out and see a broader context for our lives and ultimately come to a place where we're able to still have strong beliefs but hold them in a lighter way. And I think one of the things that blocks people from finding purpose is a bit of a maybe a narrow version of the story or a rigid Perspective of what the right answer is or what the way of being is that they've married themselves to. That isn't deeply authentic to who they are or maybe just limits their possibilities in some important way. And so I think psychedelics can help. I think Michael Pollan's metaphor is like to shake the snow globe, like it's sort of like like loosens up those tracks in our mind and those like patterns of thought and behavior that we're really attached to, and helps us open up the options and create more space of possibility for what we want to achieve and create in our lives, and so that's what I think the really interesting opportunity is for psychedelics and purpose work is to give people that much broader lens, that much more integrated or connected perspective from which to create a set of goals for themselves in their lives or a way of being that they want to live closer to in the world. So it really think it gives you a chance to hit reset and see something and feel something in a different way than you might have before and really redefine some of that field of possibility that you see for yourself in your life, which can be hard to achieve in any other way.
Speaker 1:I mean it can be done through a lot of you know, like I've heard people say, like one afternoon with mushrooms was like three years of therapy, right, so, like you can. It's accelerating this process of self discovery in some contexts that can really open up a space for greater possibility than you might have seen prior to that experience. And I want to speak to Also something you said before about the kind of context and the container that you're in for that. I think that that can be important too to really understand what type of support you want, whether this is a therapeutic process for you, whether this is a personal growth process for you, whether this is something that has like deep spiritual and religious context, or you're coming at it from more of a like secular or scientific point of view. Find a care provider, find a coach, a facilitator, a therapist, a guide, a shaman that resonates with your perspective, that that's going to really meet you where you are, because they think ritual and ceremony are really important parts of the psychedelic journey. But there are also lots of ways to do this that aren't explicitly shamanic and ritualistic and religious and don't have to be like explicitly medical either. There's lots of ways of approaching these plant and medics and fungal allies that can meet you where you are. So when I give people permission to kind of make it what they need it to be and find somebody who really resonates with you in terms of their approach and also what they help people get from the process, is that what you want to get from the process?
Speaker 1:And I want to add a note about intention too, because this comes up a lot in my work. Intention and integration are sort of what sit before and after the journey. So intention is what you do going into the journey, integration is what you do after. We've talked a little bit about what integration looks like. But intention is just as important as set and setting in these other factors, and it's important that you don't let your intentions become expectations or demands. Right, this isn't a laden's lamp, and so you're not going to come into the journey and make a demand of this. You know process and get that result.
Speaker 1:I think it's much more helpful to think of intentions as a direction of travel rather than a destination you hope to arrive at. So instead of saying something like I want to forgive my father you know what I mean as you drink your cup of mushroom tea, you might say something like I want to explore my relationship with forgiveness. Right, can you keep it open-ended? Can you keep it as a direction, instead of like I require this outcome? You know, instead of saying I want to find out the name for my new coaching program as you drink your ayahuasca, can you say I want to explore my relationship with creativity and what's blocking me from bringing this vital life force into my life? And I think that can be something I see as a misstep, particularly in the personal development space, as they engage with psychedelics, you know, in my kind of masculine right. I'm very goal-oriented and directive and I get that dopamine hit from checking the box you know, it's really easy trap to fall into.
Speaker 1:But psychedelics don't work that way and I've seen people have really difficult experiences because they're like not getting the thing they wanted. One of my teachers and mentors, daniel Schenken, calls it dude. Where's my breakthrough syndrome? And it's good, you're not. Just it may not look the same for you as it does for someone else. So, being really careful about how you set yourself up for the process and making sure that your intentions are clear but they're open-ended, and that you're not making any expectations or demands that you arrive in a certain place in order for you to feel like that experience was successful for you.
Speaker 2:That is such a great tip, and the thought that comes to my mind is about how we talk in our work. We talk about, when we're working with spirit, that we're not worried about the destination so much as to what we aspire to become. Who do we need to become? What are those attributes, what are those pieces? And how does that, how do we show up that way? Because that is ultimately the result, is what the result will be to your goal, because we don't. You may think that this is the direction you want to go, where that's the goal I wanted to hit, but when we allow ourselves to be open, we might, or what we're doing is we're giving ourselves the opportunity to see something that's possibly even better than we could ever imagine. I think that's such a great point. Now you also talk about your work, about authentic relating, so talk to me about the power and the power behind that and what's so unique about it.
Speaker 1:I think what's unique about authentic relating is it's so simple. I mean, I've been in this space now for several years and I counter a lot of frameworks for helping people grow and develop, particularly in relationship and communication. Not just romantic relationship, but really the primary relationship we all have is with ourselves, right? So that's what that's what I think of as relationship, self-awareness, a right action, purpose these are all parts of it. And authentic relating is so helpful because none of the concepts in it are like totally new. All of it. When I introduce it to teams, when I introduce it to individuals, they're all like oh yeah, I can think of an example of that in my life. And those five practices are welcome everything, assume nothing, reveal our experience, own our experience and on our self and other and I think of particularly for men and kind of this moment that masculinity is going through of like a bit of a gut check and an awakening of like whoa, what does it mean to be a man in the world today? So many of these practices can support us with that. Or like welcoming everything is maybe not resisting a difficult experience or needing to jump into fix it mode all right away, or be the savior in all of our relationships, like letting somebody else have a difficult experience with us and learn from it. Assuming nothing is like softening our reliance on our biases and our judgments or the stories we have about somebody else or the judgments we've made about them and really meeting them as they are in the present moment. And revealing our experience doesn't mean we need to tell everybody what we're thinking all the time. It means that we need to be honest with ourselves, with what's arising, and I think, for men in particular, we're really good at like not feeling our stuff and so revealing our experiences is getting like an emotional vocabulary right and a nuanced understanding of what's arising. You know, maybe I am tired today. I need to ask for a little bit more patience from my team. You know what I mean. Or maybe part of me is really upset with what you said and another part of me is really curious about what I might have misunderstood. Can I lean into that part Right?
Speaker 1:And then owning our experience is just recognizing that anything that we're giving or anything that we're blaming, we're giving our power to right. So it's like are you? Are you blaming the economy? Are you blaming the banks? You're blaming Bitcoin? You're blaming your boss, like whatever you're upset with, that you feel like you don't control. You've just handed that thing your power. So how do you take ownership and take that back and really claim responsibility for your response? So I think it's kind of a goofy little turn of phrase, but responsibility is response ability. So that's what ownership is. It's like you need to take responsibility for the response that you have to the world around you.
Speaker 1:And then honoring self and other that final practice is really just where those two meet in relationship. So what do I need and what do you need, and where do those needs meet? And when I teach this, I talk about the platinum rule, right, everybody's heard of the golden rule teach others as you want to be treated. But what we really need to do is treat others as they want to be treated, and so in order to do that, we need to be curious about their experience, we need to drop those assumptions and we need to move forward to that relationship with a more informed perspective of what matters most to that individual Right?
Speaker 1:Because if your apology to me is five gallons of vanilla ice cream and I'm allergic to vanilla that doesn't do much for me. So those five practices, I think are really powerful and profound when you make them kind of a lifestyle, and it's not the five tenets of authentic relating, it's the five practices. So they're meant to be verbs, they're meant to be lived out and I apply them at every level of my work, both with teams and organizations. I run them as trainings and I do it in my one-on-one coaching as well, because it's really just about the art of being human. It doesn't matter if it's a CEO or a frontline manager or a husband or a brother or whatever, it always applies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And what I really appreciate about those five practices is that it puts squarely the onus on ourself and measuring ourselves and where we are in each step of the process. And I think, as in you know and thanks for bringing this to me keep it focused with the men aspect. And we are challenged right now, trying to define what it means to be a man. What does it mean to be Alan, what does it mean to be Gabriel today, and how we fit in the world, because the paradigm of what society would say was masculine is shifting and changing, and some would say it's shifting and changing for the worse, but I think it's shifting and changing for the better.
Speaker 2:You know, I think there's opportunity for all of us to grow and the work that I think is so important for us men to do is to see ourselves as whole and complete and to really do that. The work on the shadow side that lots of you know young ins will want to talk about, and about that, the part of us that we just don't want to deal with, or the part of us that we think we have a story about, that says, well, that's not really masculine. Well, who said that and why isn't it? And how do we, you know, to use your terminology, you know really start to integrate that all aspects of ourselves so we can be whole and complete in all situations? And once we built those skills, we get an opportunity to have a better response to the situations that maybe in the past we weren't, we didn't have the greatest response.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really glad you brought us back to integration, because that's that the Latin root of that word is actually in integra re, which is like to make whole again, and so I really think that's the process that I see men in masculinity going through in the world is we're making ourselves whole again, where we have permission to access all of these parts of ourselves that maybe we were told didn't belong or weren't, you know, appropriate or like that's not manly enough, right, but integration really does mean making whole again, and so I think that's a beautiful place to land with this. Is that that's what all of this work is for, with purpose, with psychedelics, with authentic relating. All of this stuff is to help us be whole in our lives and be able to bring all the resources and the gifts that we have to offer the world to bear.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. You know, and that's and that's the work that we're, that we're both doing, and so I think it's we need more of this type of this type of work to be done, and I think we I see lots of it happening and I'm just grateful to be plugging in some small way, making some some small dent in the universe to help help live lives of purpose and meaning. Now, in your work, at some point there's going to come a time where you know where you're going to be a little bit older and and maybe you know it may be not as have the energy that you have today to continue up. But if you were to look back 20 years from you know, or fast forward maybe 20 years from now, and look back to where you are today, what would that legacy message be for you? What would be the the thing that you would want people to say about the work you're doing and about who you have become?
Speaker 1:Well, that's a really powerful question in terms of, like, the legacy piece? Right, because that's that definitely is. I've heard this called the immortality project. Everybody has this in their lives. For many of us, it's our children, for for many of us, it's our work. So, right, what's the legacy you're leaving behind?
Speaker 1:I was really inspired by this quote by JD McClatchy. He says love is the quality of attention we pay to things, and I really think that just love is the quality of attention we pay to things, and I want, I would want it to feel like I loved my life and that I was in love with my life, and that the people in my life felt that love, whether it was through work or friendship or romance, that they felt the how in love with them I am, through the quality of attention and connection that we had. That, to me, is integrity, is being able to show up with that full, open heart, that being in love with your life and with the present and with the people in the moments that you get to share in this precious time we have on earth. That's what I think I'd want to, to remain when I'm gone, is that lingering sense of love.
Speaker 2:Oh, that is so powerful, gabriel. Wow, I'm just floored by that response. That is amazing. Listen, everything that we spoke about today, and maybe there wasn't something we had an opportunity to touch on. If there was something you'd want our listeners to take away with them, what would that be?
Speaker 1:Go slow. I think, in speaking my experience as a man, it's tough to be gentle on ourselves when we're really seeking big change and like everything we've talked about today is like big stuff right.
Speaker 1:Like quitting your job and traveling on a bike and finding your purpose and meaning. Like it's big fish we're frying here and so being gentle with ourselves and going slow and giving ourselves permission to make mistakes and be messy and really meet ourselves where we are with humility and love and excitement. Right, because I think it is a gift to be in the space of self-discovery and self-inquiry and remembering that, like you don't have to, that you get to, and that means you can go slow and make mistakes along the way and that's all part of the process.
Speaker 2:I just love that. What a great way to wrap up our conversation today. I just want to say thank you once again for spending time with me today and allowing us and giving us permission to allow our lives to be a bit messy as we find our purpose and start to live lives of purpose. If folks are interested in getting in touch with you and participating in your work and the programs you have, what would be the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 1:I do use Instagram to share what I'm doing. I'm on there. I also talk a lot about mushrooms and foraging, which we didn't even touch on. I'm on there at Fun Gabe FUNNGABE. This has got two ends. If you want to subscribe to my newsletter on my website, that's where I share a lot of the things and thinking about and the bigger picture of the work I'm doing in the world. You can learn more about that at my website, which is effectiveconnectioncom.
Speaker 2:Perfect. I'm going to make sure all that information, your socials, your website is all in the show notes, so posting an opportunity to get out and reach out to you. Once again. I just want to say thank you so much for being on the show. I had a wonderful conversation.
Speaker 1:Thanks, Helen.
Speaker 3:Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you're destined to be? Join the Brotherhood that is the Awakened man at TheAwakendMannet and start forging a new destiny today.
