To Be a Man Quotes

“So let’s consider other factors or qualities that ought to—but generally don’t—count for much in making a male a “real” man, factors that many men keep in the shadows: vulnerability, empathy, emotional transparency and literacy, the capacity for relational intimacy—all qualities more commonly associated with being female than male.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“In the healthy expression of anger, we resort neither to getting aggressive nor to shaming, we don’t lose touch with our caring for the other, and we take responsibility for what we’re doing while we’re angry. Healthy anger is vulnerable, however forceful it might be, and doesn’t make a problem out of its vulnerability.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“As I’ve stated, for many men the solution to shame is to move into aggression. Getting aggressive when we feel shame rapidly obscures our shame, seemingly supplanting it. Our focus on the target of our aggression, be it another person or a situation that incenses us, literally occupies us, dominating our internal reality. There isn’t much room for anything else. And aggressiveness is very familiar to us. For example, our partner may have an entirely valid criticism of our behavior, but we instantly retaliate with a sarcastic retort. Compared with shame, aggression is hugely empowering: we are not lashing out in the context of failure, but in the context of going after whomever (or whatever) we deem deserving of our anger.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Shame is the painfully self-conscious sense of our behavior—or self—being exposed as defective, with the immediate result that we are halted in our tracks, for better or for worse.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Emotional illiteracy has much of its rooting in the historical devaluation of emotion relative to cognition. Thinking clearly is often associated with a muting of our emotions. But rationality and emotion work best when they work together.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Shame is probably our most hidden and misunderstood emotion. It’s also the one most likely to motivate men to stay away from the help they need—and need to admit they need—which can range from psychotherapy to addiction programs. Performance anxiety is driven by shame; so is the drive to overachieve; so is the pressure to man up. Shame is behind the scenes much more often than you might think.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“their task and sacred labor is not to stop fighting, but to fight for each other and for their relationship. Theirs is an often humbling task that does not require them to hang their heads or dilute their energy, but rather—after calming down enough—to compassionately face their mutual wounds together, identifying what old patterns had surfaced during their argument, and discussing, as a team, how they might handle future similar situations more skillfully.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“A man who can truly father himself is no longer at the mercy of unhealthy fathering, whether from his own father, other men, or the authoritarian dictates of various elements of his culture. He is in good hands. His ground is solid and true. He is capable of deep relationship.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“The pressure of having to express their softer feelings or having to be vulnerable is far from appealing for most men, being one more “should” on the relational to-do list, one more shame-inducing expectation to bear, one more hurdle to somehow face and try to clear.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“In the heat of such dark ire, we feel far away from our shame, even though we are in fact being driven by it and our aversion to it. It’s easier to fight than to be vulnerable, easier to attack the other than to openly state that we’re sorry for what we’ve done to them, easier to do battle than to connect, easier to hold a grudge than to grieve together, easier to engage in warfare than in peacemaking. It’s easier to armor ourselves than to step out of our armor.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Staying present with your shame takes far more courage than converting it into aggression. Neither indulging in your shame nor avoiding it furthers the authentic warrior in you, the one who can step into the fire of deep challenge and remain present, without numbing himself or emotionally disconnecting. Being present with your shame takes guts. It also deepens your capacity for vulnerability and compassion, and therefore also your capacity for being in truly intimate relationship.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“True masculine power happens when courage, integrity, vulnerability, compassion, awareness, and the capacity to take strong action are all functioning together. Such power is potent but not aggressive, challenging but not shaming, grounded but not rigid, forceful but not pushy. Again, it requires head, heart, and guts in full-blooded alignment.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“The more our self-esteem is tied to our competency or perceived competency, the more debilitating shame will be for us, whether it’s coming from us or from others.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Seeds grow in the dark—so do we. Let’s stop making such a virtue out of the light and turn toward what’s in the shadows and breathe it in, breathe it here meeting it face-to-face until we realize with more than mind that what we are seeing is none other than us in endarkened disguise Seeds grow in the dark—so do we. Let’s not be blinded by light let’s unwrap the night building a faith too deep to be spoken a recognition too central to be broken until even the darkest of days can light our way”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Softening can be a profoundly healing undertaking, helping to make more room for pain and difficulty, enriching a man’s capacity for deep relationship, rendering him more flexible and permeable, more heartful—especially when that softening coexists with stead-fastness and firmness. An example of such coexistence can be seen in fierce compassion, wherein we’re both forceful and soft, both angered and caring.”
― Robert Augustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“If a man wants to be of real service—and I see more and more men who do, and not just when they reach midlife—and wants to bring forth the very best in himself, then the great testing ground, at once sanctuary and crucible, is intimate relationship, or at least doing what best ripens him for it.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Such defensiveness may just seem to be a refusal to take responsibility for engaging in something essential to healthy relationship, but underlying it is one hell of a double bind: (1) the pressure to cultivate and make central the qualities that make great relationship possible (like vulnerability, emotional openness, and integrity); and (2) the coexisting pressure to cultivate and make central the qualities that supposedly make us real men, especially at work (like aggression, emotional stoicism, and driven performance). Trying to do both, trying to please both sets of standards, simply divides and, therefore, disempowers us.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Anger protects boundaries, aggression disregards and disrespects them, and violence trashes them completely.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“Cutting through what we recognize as our illusions—especially the ones central to us—is no small task, and it generally requires far more than sage advice or a gentle push. In fact, we sometimes may need to be at a perilous point before we’ll cease clinging to our illusions—whatever lets us know right to our core that the stakes are very high. Now.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“If it’s not a significant challenge, it’s not your edge. If it doesn’t require courage, it’s not your edge. This doesn’t mean that danger has to be present, but there is definite risk involved, whether it be losing face or speaking truths that might radically alter our life direction. If all it requires is thinking positively, it’s not your edge. If it doesn’t, however briefly, bring up resistance in you—resistance that can easily toss aside or shed therapeutic and spiritual interventions—it’s not your edge. If you think you’re doing deep inner work while you sit relatively intact, it’s not your edge. If it’s easy, asking nothing much from you, it’s not your edge.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power

“The more our self-esteem is tied to our competency or perceived competency, the more debilitating shame will be for us, whether it’s coming from us or from others.”
― Robert Agustus Masters, To Be a Man: A Guide to True Masculine Power