Warrior Within: Facing Emotional and Physical Struggles Head-On with George Hayworth

Can pain be transformed into purpose? This episode promises to challenge the conventional understanding of suffering and redemption as we welcome George, the founder of Elite Sentinel Coaching. George's journey from the depths of shame and personal failure to rebuilding his life and marriage is nothing short of inspiring. We discuss how men, often grappling with identity loss, childhood trauma, or marital struggles, can awaken from a life of mediocrity and harness their true potential to become better leaders, husbands, and fathers.

Mental health is critical, yet often overlooked in men. Did you know that 70% of men lack a single close friend? This alarming statistic is at the core of our conversation about men's mental health awareness. Reflecting on personal experiences and societal stigmas, we delve into the importance of connection and the value of brotherhood. We tackle the challenge of transitioning from military to civilian life and how men can balance their drive for validation with genuine self-awareness and connection. This deep dive into mental well-being offers practical insights and actionable advice.

What does it mean to lead and love authentically? This episode explores the four pillars of leadership, emotional courage, skill mastery, and compassion. Join us as we dissect the concept of masculine leadership and build a lasting legacy. George shares his wisdom on stepping out of complacency, fostering real relationships, and focusing on what truly matters. This conversation is your guide to creating a balanced and impactful presence in all areas of life. Connect with George on Instagram and join the brotherhood at the Awakened Man network to start forging your new destiny today.

Key moments in this episode:
04:16 George's Darkest Moments and Turning Points
06:20 Rebuilding Trust and Seeking Help
09:25 The Struggles of Modern Men
12:44 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
18:49 Childhood Trauma and Its Impact
24:34 Recognizing and Overcoming Personal Challenges
26:19 The Four Pillars of Authentic Masculinity
35:37 Building a Legacy: Planning for the Future
39:58 Recommended Reading: Outwitting the Devil
42:43 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

How to reach George:
Web: https://www.theelitesentinel.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089585015354
IG: https://www.instagram.com/george.hayworth/
YT: https://www.youtube.com/@thepresentfathers
X: https://x.com/real_g_hayworth
In: https://www.linkedin.co

Chapters

• 0:00 Transformation Through Pain
• 9:50 Men and Mental Health Awareness
• 19:20 Healing From Childhood Trauma
• 25:35 Rediscovering Masculine Leadership and Love
• 35:36 Building a Lasting Legacy
• 41:24 Authentic Masculine Leadership and Brotherhood
• 44:38 Building a Social Media Platform

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

I often say, our purpose resides in our pain, and pain is something we can never avoid, as it's always there to be a teacher if we're willing to feel and to listen.

Speaker 1: 0:10

And for many of us, this pain comes from losing our identity as we transform or transition from a career that once gave us great meaning to another phase of our life.

Speaker 1: 0:19

And for others, it's going to be dealing with childhood trauma or events of the babbling that we've been trying to rebuild trust, maybe in our marriages, and especially if you've just about blown it up and we can touch on some of that in this episode for sure. But I want you to imagine if you had all of these, and maybe even more, going on in your life, how would you pull yourself out of those ashes and forge yourself into a more powerful man? Today we're going to dive into that, so I want you to stick around and listen to the conversation my guest and I are going to dive into and, before we get into that, into this episode. Everybody knows that today has never been more difficult than it to be a man, and the pain for many of us we feel is real. It's a pain of loneliness and it's a pain of unworthiness, and it's masked because of our anger and our resentment.

Speaker 1: 1:09

It's all because we're uncertain and we're afraid to take that next step, and so you're fed up and tired of where your life's at. I'm going to encourage you to start your hero's quest. It's an opportunity for you to become more, live more and be more than ever before. Just go to memberstheawakenedmannet and start your quest today. With that, let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 3: 1:35

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 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 1: 2:12

Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man. Stay strong, my brother. What are you doing about it? Being a man of integrity requires us to take a long hard look in the mirror and admit where we are failing, where we are thriving, and either of those can be difficult, especially if we haven't started doing the deep work that needs to be done. And this work asks us to pull back the mass that we carry that hides all of our pain, and so to lean into that pain. Then we need to transform it into something so powerful we forge ourselves into new men.

Speaker 1: 2:48

Today, my guest shares with us his incredible journey as we unpack a story that many of us share and can relate to. So allow me to introduce my guest. George is the founder of the Elite Sentinel Coaching, where he forges leaders and builds legacies. And George trains men in authentic masculinity to become the men they were born to be. And through his programs, he gives men tools to be better men, better leaders in their professions, better husbands and better fathers. And George leverages these expertise and leadership through over a decade in military experience, corporate experience and skills like emotional intelligence and conflict resolution, developed through over a decade of therapy and healing, and he's also the founder and the co-host of the Present Fathers podcast and I'm sure we're going to touch on that today as well with a mission to transform men, to turn in turn, to lead their families as well. Welcome to the show, george. How are things, brother?

Speaker 2: 3:49

Man, super good. I am so pumped to be here. I love what your podcast is doing and inspiring men to embark on their hero's journey, because it's sorely needed right? Too many men are just asleep and we need to wake up the awakened man. What a great name.

Speaker 1: 4:07

So I'm pumped to get into this with you, alan, and thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. George, as I was saying in the intro, there we're all on our own hero's quest, and so that is going to be my opening question for you. Tell us about a time in your life when you knew things had to change. What did you do about it? How did that experience shape you into the man you are today and the work you're doing?

Speaker 2: 4:24

Yeah, we're going to get heavy real quick then, because I started out as the villain in my story and so I'm going to engage in some courageous transparency here. For all the men out there, where that really came very obvious that I needed to make some massive change in my life and that I was a villain and not a hero was after I'd left the army. We had moved to Texas. I started in the corporate world. On paper, everything was going my way, but in reality I was not doing well at all. Our marriage was not doing well and most of that was me to blame, not my wife and I got to the point where I was so selfish and so trying to satisfy my own needs that I walked out on our marriage and I committed affairs.

Speaker 2: 5:04

So it's about the most shameful thing any man can ever do, and that's unfortunately part of my story. So after that then I was left with okay, how do I even get my life back together? I hated myself. I was so ashamed of who I had become. I didn't agree with anything I had done. I was raised differently, I have different sets of values, and even though that those things matter to me, I still did these horrible things. So what to do?

Speaker 2: 5:26

Any man at any junction like that in his life only has two options you can either give up and feel sorry for yourself, or you can own it, take accountability for it and start on a new path of healing. And it's not going to be easy, but it's certainly been worth it. And so fast forward to where we are today. My wife and I have now celebrated over 10 years of marriage, our daughter's almost nine years old. Our marriage is at a state where we're happy teenagers again dating in high school. We're just laughing and having a great time and the connection we have is just so amazing. I never thought my life could be like this. So a lot in between there, but that's where I started. So that's that moment where I know I had to make a change, and I'm sure we'll unpack that a little bit more here.

Speaker 1: 6:04

Absolutely, george. I just want to say thank you so much for being courageous to share that story, and it's your story is very similar to mine is that was a turning point in my relationship, as well as my marriage, and so kudos to your wife for having the strength to stick it out for you. And I wonder just how did? How did you feel about when the chips were down and everything was falling apart around you? How did you feel about getting this opportunity to really reveal to yourself the man that was yet to be seen?

Speaker 2: 6:35

I definitely needed a lot of help to do it. I definitely didn't just wake up one day and be a better guy or know what I needed to do. I had the opportunity to go to a place called Onsite. It's a very intensive therapy center here in Tennessee. It's actually one of the pioneers in experiential therapy, is what it's called. They started doing that back in the 60s, I think. But long story short, it was a group You're in a group setting with other people and I had done these things and I knew these things about myself and I had been playing it really close to the chest because I was so afraid of judgment. That ties back to my childhood stuff right.

Speaker 2: 7:04

I wore a mask for every situation I'm in. I played the part, but I didn't believe that I actually belonged to be the part Through that experience. That was the first time I admitted to other human beings what I had done for real. And then afterwards I met with my therapist to work out a plan for, like, how you have to. You got to be honest with your wife. Now that you've done these things, that is probably the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. Having to have that they call it full disclosure having to have that with my wife. I'd rather go deploy again than do that again.

Speaker 2: 7:33

That was because there's just so much on the line when you enter a marriage, you never want it to fail, and then you're the reason that it's going to fail. It's just like everything that a man wants to be. I had become the opposite of and you have to hold it in an open hand and pray that your wife is going to give you grace, and thankfully mine did, and I just want to real quickly tie into. This is where we can turn tragedy to triumph. It's not something George did, but my wife.

Speaker 2: 8:01

Through this painful experience I have experienced grace, the beauty of what grace can do, to a level I don't think I'd ever understand if I didn't have this experience. And although what I did is shameful and terrible, there's also this immense beauty that exists now in our relationship and in our connected story. That is really hard to put into words. It's just this amazing feeling. And for those who are religious I am, but I got to experience what God's grace really means for real in a very visceral way and that's just a very transformative experience. So I hope that answered the question well. But it was a lot of therapy, a lot of honesty and, starting to, you had to take some punches right Because you've wounded her in a very deep way. There's going to be consequences for that. So I had to take it on the chin for quite a while and not make excuses and that it doesn't feel good, but it was necessary. And now it feels amazing because I know that all of that effort was more than worth it.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Yeah, absolutely, and when you're rebuilding that trust. I'm just listening to you talk about that part of your lives and I think about what we went through, and one of the things that I also recognized was that there was no opportunity for taking anything anymore in the marriage for granted. When that kind of leads me into this, my next question for you is that obviously you were starting to discover some things about yourselves, but really, when you're doing all of this work, you must also recognize that there's things that are just inherently wrong with men today, and so let's talk about what you're finding and see if we can compare some notes.

Speaker 2: 9:35

Yeah, what's wrong with men today? I love to use this acronym salty. Most men are salty today. They're stressed, angry, lonely, tired and they're yearning for more man.

Speaker 2: 9:50

I was a very salty guy. That's why I went down this path that I did. I was so isolated and cut off and I got to get mine and I'm going crazy and we do stupid stuff when we're in that state. So I was one of those guys. I know what it feels like to be in that state. There's a lot of reasons for that. Isolation is number one. I really think June is Men's Mental Health Awareness Month. That's the month we're in.

Speaker 2: 10:05

I honestly think men are mostly to blame. There's certainly other fingers to point, but it's not useful. Men need to connect with other men. There's a study out there that shows that 70% of men do not have a single close friend. When I say a close friend like the type of friend you can actually be honest, like I just was with you here on a consistent basis, 70% of men don't have that and we wonder why men are struggling and why men feel stressed out and anxious and alone and frustrated and all these things. Right, men are completely cut off. We are creatures of connection. We're not. Women are emotional, right, they connect emotionally. Men connect emotionally as well, in different ways, but you're designed to have deep brotherhood, deep connection with other men. Nowhere in human history have men been more cut off than they are today.

Speaker 2: 10:49

In the modern world, we work from home, we do everything digitally. You're never honestly sharing. We have social media. Everyone's putting up their best foot forward, their best mask to show the world. No one's honest anymore. Go back a couple thousand years. You had to hunt together. You had to literally feed the pack, the group, and if you didn't, everyone died. So there was a lot on the line of getting to know each other for real, because you really relied on each other in a life and death situation a lot more than we do today. And that distance is killing us because we're not filling one of the greatest purposes we were designed for, and so that's why the most successful men typically aren't more special than anyone else. They don't have better skills or more talent than anyone else, necessarily. They're just surrounded by really good people, and so they're able to operate at their highest level, and so I think it's a long-winded answer here. That's number one reason men are stuck today is just they're cut off.

Speaker 1: 11:44

Yeah, I completely agree with that, and we and I also agree with your point that we do it to ourselves right. And and because we are, we do have this stigma that we have to fight and a lot of times it's in our in a we've created that. It isn't that it. Yes, there's some stigma in society, but we make it more than what it really is, and that's why I think it's so important today and happy to see that this men's work is getting bigger and bigger.

Speaker 1: 12:08

There's lots of different ways to do it, depending on your nature and your style, and I just think that it's critical that, as men, we understand, especially this month, as we start to talk more and more about men's mental health and anxiety and depression and the things that are going on for us, and that if we're not willing to go and share and talk about some things and then really doing the work after that because it's more than just talking and sharing, but it's really being willing, as I said in the intro, to look in the mirror, take a long, hard look and acknowledge what's working and what's not working, and then what can we do to change that. And so one of the things you spent a at a pretty, a really good career there in the military and then you came out of that like you're leading. I was researching and said you were leading between 30 and 300 men.

Speaker 1: 12:55

And so you had I, I, I had this vision that you really want to spend living your purpose, wanting to do something that was really important. But then, when you transition from that and you're a young guy and you're transitioning from that, and now what happens? When your identity is locked into something like that and now you're back in our different civilization, right, there isn't an enemy, so to speak, to fight. How did that transition go for you?

Speaker 2: 13:23

Yeah, not very well. I don't think this is something that only the military causes, right? This? It's not only service members that get into this. I think men.

Speaker 2: 13:30

Naturally, we are so desperate to be validated, to prove that we've arrived right, that we we've amounted to something, which some of that is good. So I don't want people to misunderstand me that drive is a good thing, that is a masculine thing, that is what is within us that actually makes us accomplish things. Right. That is a valuable thing. However, it needs to be tempered, it needs to be measured and understood and, in its place, right, it's not everything.

Speaker 2: 13:56

So if all that we're doing is to pursue this next achievement, this next medal, this next rank, this next promotion, whatever, you're not even living for you, you're living for accolades from other people, right? And so your then identity is no longer you. It's these things, and things can go away. Careers pass, jobs dry up, things change. So, yeah, my identity was very wrapped into the military, right? Because let me go back a little bit to my childhood here I never felt very masculine. I never felt very tough, never. I'm not a very big guy. When I graduated high school, my senior year of wrestling, I wrestled at 130 pounds. So it's five foot eight, 130 pounds just really big dude. So I was looking for that validation to be a tough man, to be powerful, and just with stuff that had happened in my past too, I felt very unpowerful, right.

Speaker 2: 14:43

I felt very weak, vulnerable, in the wrong way, and I was looking for something. I believed in what the military stood for, serving your country and those lofty ideals, but selfishly, I was also looking to prove that, yeah, I'm a tough warrior. You better watch out, don't get it twisted. It worked right. Went to Afghanistan. I got all this validation. I did very well, earned my keep among the soldiers. I was a second lieutenant when I deployed, which is for those who maybe don't know much about the military. Second lieutenants have a lot of tropes or memes about them because you're an idiot, you don't know much yet, you're new to the army, you make lots of mistakes and really you're there to learn. I earned my keep among the team I deployed with and felt well, I'm a man now In some regards. Yes, I'm a man now in some regards. Yes, but in a lot of ways I was still very much a boy. So fast forward to when I decided to leave the military. Ooh, all that power that I thought I had all that stuff that made me better. Gone like that overnight and I told myself I'd thought about it and read the stuff about how you need to transition and blah, blah, blah. And I'm ready for it? Yeah, I'm good, I'm ready for it. Yeah, I'm good, I'm good, I'm good, I was just that's.

Speaker 2: 15:43

That mentality is useless. That that, that oh, I've got it figured out mentality, that's literally the attitude of someone about to make horrible mistakes almost every time. And I lived up to it, man, we made lots of life changes, career change, new baby just arrived, moved to Texas, all that kind of stuff started, a new job. It was a swirl of new things all together wrapped up together, and I did not handle it very well and I had depression's really hard to define, I think, especially in the clinical sense. But I definitely was not me. I struggled, I was just wandering through the months and I definitely did not have that spark that I used to have. And it's really hard to define, really hard to pin, but I was not in a good state. So that kind of led to my spiral, I think.

Speaker 2: 16:23

But back to just all men in general you need to be conscious of you're not a machine, you're not that good, no one is that good. And regardless of whether you're leaving the military or making another kind of career change, it's just something you did and you should pour yourself into it and you should be the best that you can possibly be in those things. But it is not you, it's your profession, it's not you. And so those inner values, that identity we have to build up within ourselves.

Speaker 2: 16:48

And that's again where brotherhood comes into play, because you have men who then are externally saying to you hey brother, I see your passion, or I see how hard you work for your family, or I see how hard you work to stay fit and all these kinds of things right. You get this other sense of validation that isn't tied up in stuff, it's more about who you are as a person. And that's again one of the biggest benefits of surrounding yourself with other strong men who are committed to being better with you, because that identity becomes a lot more self-reliant. Not that we don't need others, but it's an internal identity that we need to have, as opposed to what our profession is.

Speaker 1: 17:23

Yeah, I completely agree. I'm just quickly writing some notes, and just you dropped some great bombs there. Just I was thinking of. One of the notes I wrote down was there's a story about Marcus Aurelius that he used to pay one of his slaves to walk around behind him and tell him exactly what you just said. You're not that good All day long. You're not that good as a reminder to him. You know, to keep ego in check, to keep himself in check, and how often do we have that? We usually surround ourselves with people that may not be willing to tell us, especially if you're in a leadership role, as many of us end up by being, and we have to be aware of when we have that happening to us, and one of the things that I really strive with through my work, both at men's work and in my profession, is to encourage people to step forward and speak out, and what that requires me for us to do, then, is we need to be quiet. Yep.

Speaker 2: 18:16

Right and not correct it.

Speaker 1: 18:18

And that's the even harder work to do, because we think we have the answer, and so I'm grateful that you brought that up. And then the other part note I wrote down here is compassion and accountability, and I think that's what we look for in our work. Our men's work is that you want that brother to hey, man, I got your back but, george, you said you weren't going to do this thing and you're doing this thing. What's going on, man? And then you can have that conversation and dive into sort of figuring out what are these triggers, what's happening, and so you talked about some childhood traumas and that bringing forward. How have those things impacted your life and what have you done now to help break free from some of that work?

Speaker 2: 18:59

Certainly those listening childhood stuff can be very difficult and if you had an upbringing with some rough stuff in it you need to really do some work on it. You're probably not fully and it's definitely affecting who you are as an adult. So for me, honestly, nothing like too crazy. On my podcast I've heard some absolutely insane stories so I definitely can't compare to that in that sense. What happened in my household was it was just very intense. Everything was treated like life or death. You didn't get an A plus on your test, you're in trouble type of thing. Everything was to the max and lots of arguing, lots of yelling, lots of intensity. So we walked on eggshells all the time. I've noticed about myself. Now I constantly ask my wife how she's doing. I saw a reel where it's. That's what kids like alcoholics and stuff do and that's the way they walked on eggshells their whole life. So they're using it as an emotional thermometer to find out where you are, so they know how safe they are. And I was like dang, that hit close. That one hit a little close to the best. Yeah, that was my upbringing Very much walking on eggshells, very defensive, always on guard. You got to always be your best foot forward, Overly intense about things that didn't need to be intense.

Speaker 2: 20:06

Password like my teenage years, my parents are really not doing good. They separated when I was in ninth grade and then so I was like 15, 14. And then they fully divorced the week of my 16th birthday. So that was a joy. What had started happening was, through all this process, my mom started engaging in what's called covert incest or emotional incest, and a lot of people have probably never heard those terms. In essence, at its most fundamental form, it's when a parent starts treating their child as almost an intimate relationship. Like the relationship gets shifted to satisfying the parent's emotional needs instead of the child's, and parent-child relationship should always be for the child, because they are a kid. Even if they're a teenager, they are still your child, they are not someone else. That happened to me a lot.

Speaker 2: 20:57

I'm the oldest. My mom would say things like me, because you're more mature than the other kids, I'm going to tell you about this and this and lots of manipulation, lots of emotional manipulation, and I did not realize how much that had messed me up. So what, in essence? What happens when children undergo those things? Is all of your views about one boundaries gone and then your views of what love and sex and relationships and all these things gets very twisted very quickly and it's very similar to what happens to like victims of sexual abuse physically abused. The way the brain reacts is very similar in both situations and I not I'm not trying to compare like my pain as equivalent. I know lots of people who have been abused and but it's the mental, the way the brain reacts, is the key here. So I'm not trying to be woe is me. I'm just trying to educate people on what really happens there.

Speaker 2: 21:50

That really messed me up. So all of my relationships, all of my thoughts about girls and women and all that kind of stuff was very skewed and in a way it became like an idol for me. Right, If I had a hot girlfriend, then I'm a man now, right, Because I've got this hot girl and blah, blah, blah and just really sick twisted ways of thinking about everything. And I hadn't dealt with any of it. I had no idea that that had really even happened to me, I was just totally ignorant to it. And after me having affairs and full disclosure and my wife said I'm not going to forgive you yet, but we can work on it and I want to try and save our marriage, the therapist was like okay, here's your first lesson, George, and gave me this book called Silently Seduced and that messed me up, man. To realize what had happened to me and to have to sit with it was a really heavy thing and I was definitely in a very depressed place for at least three months after that.

Speaker 2: 22:44

Long story short, I had to really start working through all of that childhood stuff and why I react to things the way I did, why I get so defensive when my wife says something or doesn't say something and just realizing that I'm the most dangerous thing in my household. My anger is the biggest problem in my household and I think a lot of men can relate to that one. I think we talk about being warriors and protectors of our family. Often the number one threat to your wife and kids isn't some robber going to break in the door. It's probably your anger, your short temper.

Speaker 2: 23:18

That's a really hard to swallow pill, but when I finally did and finally started really owning that, our lives got a lot better because I stopped putting them on edge, putting them on eggshells all the time. So it's a lot to cover. I know it's very heavy stuff to unpack, but in essence that's what my childhood stuff really culminated with and it left me never really feeling like a man. So I was desperate to just constantly seek these validations of I'm a man now, and when you never got a healthy upbringing to teach you what that should be, you start looking for it in very unhealthy ways.

Speaker 1: 23:53

Yeah, and George, I just want to say once again I see you, I hear you and I honour your presence for being able to share that kind of story. And you had mentioned the Silently Seduced book. Last year we spent in our group program. We spent the year working on connections and one of the connections we talked about was the mother-son connection and we did it through the book called the Invisible Presence and it's very similar to that idea of being able to decouple from our moms, and especially when that inappropriate relationship starts to happen. And I'm going to tell you that was probably the most intense 30 days that the group has ever had. And even though we may not have had all of the experiences, we had a couple of guys that really hit home for them. And I'm hearing you tell the story and my heart goes out to you because as young boys really that's what we are, although we're being masked as men we don't know how to react right, so our coping mechanisms get built and then, next thing you know, we're challenged with our future relationships.

Speaker 2: 24:59

So kudos to you for recognizing that I treated everything through the lens of a pissed off teenager. Yeah. Not very conducive to having a successful marriage. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 1: 25:10

So that's just phenomenal work, though, brother, to recognize that and to make those changes. And so now you've been successful in business and within and in the army, but you run elite Sentinel coaching. Talk to me, tell us a little bit about that. I know you have some pillars that you work through with guys in that group. So tell me a little bit about your coaching program.

Speaker 2: 25:30

Yeah. So, like the slogan says, we forge leaders and build legacies. So that's a clear distinction. I want to make very clear that there's no such thing as a natural born leader. Leaders are built, they're created through trial and error and a lot of learning, a lot of training. So, in the same way, to become a masculine man, one that people look up to, you don't have to be born with it. The secret is, you already are born with it. You just have to hone it and create it. So that's what we do, is we facilitate that process for men to rise into the man that they are born to be. The course is centered around authentic masculinity lots of leadership training that I've taken from what I've learned through the military, a lot of kind of this therapeutic things that I've learned along the way to my own journey and how to inject that into emotional intelligence and empathy.

Speaker 2: 26:18

So the four pillars you referenced there, those are the four pillars that make a real man, and most of us, just the way we're brought up today, we're good at one or two of them and have absolutely zero presence in the other two, and so we're these off-kilter, unbalanced men. And so I'll list the four pillars real quick and think of, like the image of kind of the Greek Parthenon type structure where it's got those white columns and then the roof on top. If you take one or two of those pillars out, that roof's going to buckle. So in the same way, a man is that structure, or should be that structure. So the first pillar is king, the second one is warrior, the third one is mentor and the last one is lover, and so when we become all four of these things together, we become a tender warrior. And so the king pillar is leadership. Men are born to lead. You're built for leadership.

Speaker 2: 27:07

Now, this doesn't mean it's a title, it's not necessarily a position, because you can lead from being the lowest man in the group with good ideas. You just have to have the courage to say, hey, boss, what if we do it this way? The group with good ideas you just have to have the courage to say, hey, boss, what if we do it this way? I think it'll produce this better outcome for us. That's leadership in action, it's not just a title. Take that to our homes.

Speaker 2: 27:24

You're the head of your household. Do you have vision? Are you casting vision for your family? Are you planning for the future for your family? Are you protecting them? Are you looking out for the things they need to do? Are you taking burdens off of them because you're leading and making decisions? The answer is no to those things. You're pushing it onto your wife. She's not a man, she's not built for that weight, so you're crushing her with it. You need to step into the leader, the king pillar, the warrior pillar. I think this is very misunderstood. Most men think warrior and they think, oh, big, tough, masculine, get physically fit, which, yes, get physically fit, be healthy, set an example, but that's 10% of it, most of it in our modern world is emotional courage, strength of heart, strength of will standing up for your values and beliefs.

Speaker 2: 28:07

Cancel. Culture is all around us. Are you going to speak up for what needs to be defended, or are you going to stay silent because you might lose your job or something? And that's the reality of the world we're in. The warrior today is a very different type of warrior than it was 50, 100 years ago, a couple thousand years ago. Right, the physical threats are generally very seldom. Now you need to be prepared for those moments, but most of our focus should actually go to defending this, the intangible realm.

Speaker 2: 28:31

The next one is the mentor pillar. Right, men should gain mastery over things. Think about how good it feels to gain a new skill. Okay, number one, that's going to fill your cup and make you better to help other people anyway. But then two now you can pay it forward, you can train others, you can serve as a guide to those who are further down the path from where you are today, and it's a very rewarding experience. And if we humble ourselves to step into that role frequently and with empathy, you can transform people's lives. Okay, and so I think that's pretty easy for men to relate to. There's a natural affinity for wanting to help others win, and the mentor pillar is all about that.

Speaker 2: 29:06

And then, finally, the last one is the lover pillar. So all of the strength, all of this leadership, all that kind of stuff, if you don't have love, compassion, understanding, empathy, it's worthless. You're going to have love, compassion, understanding, empathy it's worthless. No one's going to receive what you're offering because there's no gentleness to it. So most situations, even in the military, my compassion is a better tool than getting angry. My empathy is a better tool to build relationship and connection than anything else. And so men need to have this fierce beating heart of love for the people they are responsible for. Maybe it's your family, maybe it's the people you work with. If you're in the military, it's your unit that you're in. If you're on a sports team, it's your team. But that love is the catalyst that transforms all the other. It makes all the others that more powerful. So, although every pillar is equal and should be balanced, love has this extra power to it that enhances all of it together.

Speaker 2: 30:01

But you have to have all the pillars in place, and the tender warrior is the man who can show up as the right thing at the right time for the right person, and often it's not what we expect of walking in with your shoulders drawn back and being this big power of physical presence. It's often the opposite it's a kind gentle word. Kind gentle word, it's a hey, I can see you're not feeling too good. Can I just be here with you for a minute? A lot of these things we weren't trained in because we were told that they're weak. But in reality, the strongest men I know, who are both physically powerful and emotionally powerful, embody all of these ideals that I just spoke about. So that's the core training we focus on and from there we build you into a real leader, because once you get those pillars in place, we can put the foot on the gas and we can get you going and winning in ways that you didn't think you could.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Yeah, I love that. I love the how you've made this, put this together through Moore and Gillette's work, and how you've really shaped this into your own. And it just so happens that this month and in our group program, our focus is on love and the subtitle of it is how to be, how to be, love and receive love.

Speaker 2: 31:07

Yep.

Speaker 1: 31:08

And cause for a lot of men. I think we struggle maybe I'm speaking more for myself, but we struggle with accepting love that somebody gives us praise about something and or you're getting. You have acceptance over something that you've been doing. We tend not to do well at accepting it, so I love that you're focused.

Speaker 2: 31:29

That's one of the reasons for that is most men don't love themselves.

Speaker 1: 31:32

Yes.

Speaker 2: 31:33

It's because you don't love yourself. How can you possibly receive it from someone else?

Speaker 1: 31:37

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:37

And that's that self-worth thing, that self-value. So one of the biggest benefits of my training with men is they get their self-confidence back, their self-belief, Because this stuff is not secret. It's not like George unlocked the keys to masculine leadership. You could go find all this stuff around, but you're going to have to look for it pretty hard, package it all up for you nice and neat, and I'm going to help you along the way. Men, you're born with it. We're just not trained in it anymore. When did you become a man? What was your rite of passage that you knew? Okay, I'm a man now? Is it when you had sex for the first time, your first beer? Did you go to war? What defines manhood anymore? No one knows in our modern Western society. That's a problem. It's a huge problem. There's third world countries right now that do rites of passage with young men. Those young men know that they're a man now they don't have these mental anxiety problems and they're wondering where their next meal is going to come from.

Speaker 2: 32:30

I think we've got something seriously broken in society and to just pretend like it's not. We're only hurting ourselves and our sons and the next generation after them.

Speaker 1: 32:39

Man. I completely agree, and we were asking that question how did we define that tipping point of when we become men? And I would suggest that for many of us, it was those two things right First time we have sex and the first time we can consume alcohol, because that's the distinction and maybe getting a driver's license might be the third piece and it's a sad state in western society that's how we're. We are, have determined that this is what truly means to be a man, and so yeah, it's a, we know we also.

Speaker 2: 33:10

oh, they're just young boys. We can't talk to them about these certain things right, managing your finances or what it means to actually look for a wife and like, somehow that's not stuff we should talk to younger boys about. No, they should certainly start understanding what the clear picture needs to look like when they become an adult, and that's the problem, right so, but I've seen it work the other way. I've seen programs that are working with younger boys ages 11 to 17. And that's all they're talking about is how to start businesses, how to be a good husband and father one day, and how to be a real man and all these values.

Speaker 2: 33:45

Guess what. Those kids are going to crush it when they turn 18 and 19,. Right, because they are going to actually have all the tools. They need a lot of experience still, sure, yeah, but think about what you were like when you were 18 or I certainly never had any of those conversations. I thought being an entrepreneur would be. The stupidest thing you could do is no man, go get a big corporate job where they got all the benefits and everything.

Speaker 2: 34:05

Just the way of thinking that we have today is very it's like a programming and it's destructive. So we need to shift that subconscious programming that we're giving young boys so they can actually be healthy, capable young men.

Speaker 1: 34:19

Absolutely, and I think you know what I really like to mention about values in there, and I think that's really key is that really helping young boys.

Speaker 1: 34:26

And now, today, in our work, we're helping men really get in alignment with their values.

Speaker 1: 34:31

And that's one of the things that are your behaviors, is your language, are you thinking, or is it all in alignment with what you say your values are?

Speaker 1: 34:40

Because if they're not and for many of us that's not the case, right, we say we value family, but we're never home, we don't show up, we're very selfish in how we live life. And so taking an opportunity to teach young boys what it means to be in alignment, and so once they understand what their values are, guess what? Now they can start to talk, they can start to understand what is the type of wife that they would like to have, right, what kind of things is she, what are the attributes that she would possess? And that's where my kids are in their thirties now, and so I didn't know that, I didn't know this stuff and then, and I didn't do a great job as being a dad, and today it's catch up for me. They're in their thirties and it's spending that time now and I'm helping them understand them all, at least with one, but what I really hear you talking about is you're really talking about building legacy.

Speaker 2: 35:33

Yes.

Speaker 1: 35:33

Helping these, helping men really build legacies. Why is legacy so important?

Speaker 2: 35:39

Yeah. So first and foremost, it's the end goal. Right, it's your end state. And so back to the king pillar.

Speaker 2: 35:44

Your job is to plan and have vision for the future. If you can't define for me what your life is going to look like in 30 years right now, you're not leading even five years. If you can't give me a very detailed vision of what you want it to look like, are things going to change? Of course, the leaders plan leaders. Leaders are assessing constantly where they are and how they are going to shift course to get to where they want to be.

Speaker 2: 36:05

If you're not doing those things for your family, then you're certainly not building a legacy and you're just drifting right. So legacy, if you're thinking about it and focusing about it, it's not some selfish desire because you want to have more cars and have people remember your name on a building or something like that. It's quite the opposite. It's about ensuring that the effort you're putting into life is actually making an impact in the lives of other people. And if you're a family man, that first legacy and most important priority is your family. Everything else is secondary. So I don't care if you're the world's most successful.

Speaker 2: 36:37

Let's use Tom Brady Everyone. He calls him the GOAT. All the Super Bowl rings. Okay, what happened to his family? They're divorced. I'm sure his kids have probably seen that their marriage was on shambles for years. I'd argue not much of a legacy. Congrats on all the football. Tom George doesn't really care anymore. I like football, I like to watch the games. But is that really a legacy? I think not. Let's shift that focus. If every man took ownership of the legacy that is going to leave with his family first and the relationship the strength of those relationships, the world's going to look a lot better in a generation.

Speaker 2: 37:09

Now, that's number one. The reason is it's your destination, to it's almost accountability. It forces you to assess and oh crap, I'm not doing the things I need to be doing. And so then it's this pressure in the right way to ensure that what you're working towards is actually of substance.

Speaker 2: 37:25

It's not all about making money. It's not all about having more of this or that right. There's so many valuable things. Maybe you're older in life and you're like you can be a mentor to a young man in some way. Maybe that's a new legacy you get to forge and it's not like a singular thing. I think we have multiple degrees of legacy. We leave right. Some of them are volunteer work. Some of them are our professions, which are not bad things. It just can't come at the expense of our family.

Speaker 2: 37:49

There's probably a lot more on legacy I could really get into, but it's important to understand that you're designed to want to leave a legacy. Where we get this wrong is we think it's about us and it's not. It's about other people. Legacy is not what you leave for people, it's what you leave in them. That's a quote from Peter Strobel and man. I thought that was the best definition of legacy ever. If every man, if every man, thought more about what they're going to leave in people, the values, the lessons, the memories that they're going to leave in people, we're going to make a bigger impact that actually matters, and they may not remember your name, but you're going to transform lives. Maybe you'll never even see the result of it, but it will matter and that's worth fighting for. And to all the guys maybe you don't have a legacy like you, don't like your dad, or don't even know him, or maybe your grandfather or your family legacy is one of shame, guess what.

Speaker 2: 38:39

You get to start today, you get to start writing a new chapter of that book. Heck, you can throw that book out and write a whole new book altogether. It's going to be hard, it's going to be very hard work, but it will matter, and I personally know people who have done that. They came from the most broken situations. They have every reason in the book to not make it and they refused to just let it keep going. And that's where we're at in our society today. Quite frankly, I don't think we can survive another generation of passing the buck. The lies that my generation was told I'm on the older side of the millennial generation was go to college, get a corporate job and everything will be great. Okay, it's the big American lie right, life is not turning out that way. That's why there's so much dysfunction everywhere, because life's about a lot more than your job.

Speaker 1: 39:26

That's for sure.

Speaker 2: 39:26

Getting a college degree and we've totally lost sight of what really matters. And so legacy is that foundational thing. The point of our life, our existence on this earth, is to build a genuine legacy focused on other people.

Speaker 1: 39:42

Man. Love that, Love that definition. You're absolutely right. The note I put down, and big underline, is accountability. It's a great way to hold ourselves accountable and if we really want to live in integrity, then we will follow and build that legacy. And I like Strobel's quote as well. So I'm not sure if you're in between books right now or not, but I just wanted to know what was the last book that you've read and how did it impact your life. Man?

Speaker 2: 40:06

Boy, I've been reading quite a bit. The first one that comes to mind that I finished very recently was Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill. Wow, what a book.

Speaker 2: 40:15

What an incredible book there, and especially where he talks about how most people are just drifting. And I paused that chapter and I looked around and just thought looked at our society, I was like boy, he wrote this a hundred years ago. Look how right it is today. That's the scary thing about that book is it's almost like he wrote it right now it's that's a wake-up call. It was seriously a wake-up call, not. I think it was doing a lot of these things pretty well, but it was a very sharp reminder of how close we teeter on the edge of disaster. Right, and this stuff, some of these mistakes they fall quick. Right, you fall down the hill very fast if you make them. So constant awareness and being alert about these things, constantly seeking feedback to make sure you're staying on the right path that book really drives those points home. Highly recommend that for every man out there. You don't have to believe whether or not he actually talked to the devil.

Speaker 2: 41:08

You can take it with a grain of salt if you don't really believe in all that stuff and just take the lessons in there. Because, seriously, the way that he described the world from the 1920s or whatever, and the way it looks today, it's like whoa. It's almost more accurate now, so it's scary.

Speaker 1: 41:24

I love Napoleon Hill's work, and that's I haven't read that particular book. I have seen it and I'm sure if it's like any of his other work, it'll be phenomenal read. So thank you for sharing that Always interesting.

Speaker 2: 41:40

I really recommend the audio book because they have different voices, play the different parts and then they also interject like outside commentary about the different chapters. It's very well done and I thoroughly enjoyed having the back and forth between the two cool love.

Speaker 1: 41:50

That. That's a great tip. Thank you, listen. And what has been the best advice you've been given and how has it served you? Now you can't go back and say the Strobel quote. You got to do something else now, brother.

Speaker 2: 42:01

Yeah, Best man, just in general. Best advice in general, Just best advice in general. To pick one is very difficult. The one that just comes to mind because I think it applies pretty much anywhere. The exact quote was love your soldiers, do what's right, but if we expand that out a little bit love your people and do what's right.

Speaker 2: 42:20

Hard to go wrong if you're genuinely living up to that statement. And it sounds easy, but sometimes it's very hard to love your people when they're acting up or being out of line. Love is hard to do. Empathy and compassion is hard to do. Doing what's right Often not very simple, but if you use that as your guiding light, definitely keeps you on track to being better.

Speaker 1: 42:40

Love that. That's outstanding, George, of everything that we spoke about today, and maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on. What would you want our takeaway be for our audience?

Speaker 2: 42:51

I think the biggest takeaway I want, for men specifically, is one it's time to wake up. It is not okay to just be drifting, it's not okay to just be going through the motions, because you quite literally have other people depending on you or you're going to one day and you need to step into what you were created for, and that is serving through leadership and strength and love. And the reason we have the world we have today is because there's a lot of men who have hidden in the shadows when they needed to stand in the light, and so that hour is upon us. So it's one it's time for action. And two is to just drop the act, drop the charade. No one actually cares.

Speaker 2: 43:29

The more that I have told my story like this to just anyone, when kind of the right circles, podcasts groups, men's groups, whatever my church, anything like that the more connection I've had, the better my life has gotten. So you'd think that sharing these horrible things would make my life worse. It's actually been quite the opposite. So put the act down, lay down the masks. You're just chewing yourself up inside. You're eating yourself up inside, playing this game, trying to be something for everyone else, and it's unsustainable. You will snap. You will get crushed under that weight. Put it down, brother. Reach out to some guys that you can trust. Start building some real relationship. Seek brotherhood. It is the antidote to most of our problems today for men.

Speaker 1: 44:13

What a great way to wrap up our show today. I really appreciate you being on the show today, george, and spending time with us and really giving us some breadcrumbs for us to be able to figure out what true, strong and healthy masculinity looks like. So if men are interested in getting a hold of you and participating in your programs, what's the best way for them to do that?

Speaker 2: 44:32

Yeah, so it's. Theelitesentinelcom is probably the simplest way to learn about the program and you can certainly get engaged there. I'm on all the social media platforms. It's georgehayworth on Instagram and then it's elite underscore sentinel on Instagram, but we're all around. You can just look it up. The logo is you can see it behind me there. It's the helmet with the cross swords. Hit me up on any of those platforms and we'll get you going.

Speaker 1: 44:54

Right on, I'm going to make sure that information, as well as all your socials, are in today's show notes. So once again, buddy, thank you so much for being on the show. Really enjoyed the conversation.

Speaker 2: 45:02

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3: 45:07

This is an incredible discussion and thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the Awakened man at theawakenedmannet and start forging a new destiny today.