Speaker 1: 0:04

Are you ready to break free from hesitation, self-doubt and isolation? Do you want to lead with confidence, build powerful connections and live boldly? I'm Cory Baum and I'm here to share the most impactful strategies and mindsets that I've learned through coaching, leadership and real-world experience. Together, we'll forge unshakable confidence, master social dynamics and create a life rooted in purpose, brotherhood and bold action. Inside, you'll get the tools and insights to become the strongest, most connected version of yourself. Let's dive in, all right. Well, welcome everyone to the Evolvement Podcast. I've got with me today Stefanos Koutsoupis, and he is a fellow men's coach that I've got on the show. I'm really excited to talk to him. So, stefanos, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of your journey along the way, as to what brought you here?

Speaker 2: 0:57

Yeah, yeah, thank you for having me here, and it's very nice to to meet other coaches working with men, because I think it's a really, really underrepresented the world out there for for men in mental health and coaching and therapy and psychotherapy. So about my journey you know I initially, you know, studying. I was a physicist. I did the PhD, I worked a couple of years in research before pivoting at some point to business and to IT and to project management. So I've been doing very well in my professional life in research. I was doing very well in my professional life later on in business, and still there was something that was budging me and I was doing a zillion hobbies, I was trying a lot of different things, I was meeting a lot of people and still this feeling of you know, something was disturbing me, something was not right and I couldn't tell what disturbing me. Something was not right and I couldn't tell what.

Speaker 2: 2:09

So, more or less things started when, when I tried to look for that answer and I did this through, initially, a self-development group I was, I found, in my town and later through therapy, that and those two things are that helped me really come in terms that, okay, okay, I'm a human being.

Speaker 2: 2:26

I do have some emotional needs which are not met and I don't have yet the tools to handle them. And I worked a lot with cognitive therapy and I learned, you know, to understand the patterns of mind and what make me tick. So this is one part. In the meantime, I learned about mindfulness and I practiced a lot and it worked in parallel with therapy and it made waters. I know it's something I still do, practice today, every day, and at some point I found out also about coaching, and coaching came to me as an answer to you know, I'm having this conversation with Corey and I know I'm right. Why can't I make him see my point? And you know coaching replied, gave me this answer that you know you can't make someone else believe anything. The solution comes and the answers come from within. So this is the speed version, speed dating version, of what brought me here today.

Speaker 1: 3:34

Okay, yeah. So with that, I know that you host men's groups where you're at right, not only men's groups but as well as coaching. Tell me a little bit about those men's groups and kind of what your experience have been about the men that are showing up and some of the struggles that they're dealing with as they're there.

Speaker 2: 3:58

You know, I'm always amazed by the people coming in, about how open they are to collaborating and sharing with other men even from the first time. As soon as you set some ground rules about confidentiality and about not telling other people what to do, they are ready to share. And there are very heavy subjects coming up. There are men who are divorced and they don't have a place to stay. Or there are men that their work has taken such a big toll on their lives that they ended up sick, sick, overweight, not being able to move. So those are some of the toughest situations.

Speaker 2: 4:51

But more or less what I see in men is that they really, really and this is true, there was true for me and it still is to some extent it's super, super hard to understand what is bothering them, what brought them here today. I mean, people are coming in their room and they're not sure what is happening. And you know this is not our strong point understanding our feelings, our emotions, what make us tick. So without doing this, it's super hard to actually find a solution to your problems because you are not problem aware at all. You know something is bugging you, but you don't know what it is. Maybe it's your wife, maybe it's your job, maybe you are unlucky and something is wrong always on their external factors, and we're trying to change that. So this is why men are coming. They are trying to change their external factors, with no success for so long that they start seeking for help.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Yeah, definitely I resonate with that.

Speaker 1: 6:01

So, it sounds like for you that a lot of these guys maybe and I think it's the case with a lot of men is that they're so in their head or they're used to approaching things from this logical sort of standpoint right, that they can only go in circles so many times before they're like man I. This isn't working for me. I keep doing the same thing and keep getting the same results, and there might actually be something to exploring how it is that I feel about it or these other sort of things. How has that? How has that journey been for you and the group? You know, I imagine, that there is probably a certain part of the population that shows up that is, I don't want to say like hesitant or resistant or anything like that, but it's just new to them. They don't know anything about it. How has that journey been for you and the men along that path?

Speaker 2: 6:58

You know, I never expected what will happen that people will be coming and be ready to participate, and starting in the first meetings, I was very held back because I didn't know how far I can go or how far I can ask. And what I found out is that men are carrying a lot of courage with them to share and be open. They are always happy and they are looking forward sharing their knowledge and their life lessons with other people. So most men are coming. They have burned in their lives one or twice and they are saying, okay, I'm here, I've learned something. I want to teach other people about this. So this sharing mindset is something I love.

Speaker 2: 7:52

I see that the men who are coming you know they don't care that much about what I do in terms of work, of coaching, of self-development. Maybe they have seen some of these things. They don't care, they don't believe them, but they do care a lot about the community and they do strongly believe in having other people in your environment that can support you in your journey. So this is something big. This is something you know. We have to tap more into it, because men are looking for friends, men are looking for mentors, for support, and they can't find it. Actually, you know, they just bumped into my group, for example. They didn't know I existed. Nothing similar is in this country at least you know, I'm based in Greece and they bump into it and they like it, and they like what they see and it's something new to them. So, yes, tapping into this community, it's, it's something we should do more, because they need it more.

Speaker 1: 9:00

Yeah, definitely. What do you think? What do you think it is that keeps men from searching those sort of things out or resonating with that sort of environment Right I mean on the flip side of that, right there's there's women's groups where this is the norm, right that everybody's showing up and doing it.

Speaker 1: 9:21

Like, how do men get in this space of of one? Not you know? And part of what we talked about before the show is that there is a real need for community, and it's not just necessarily about I think it's great when they end up in a place where they are vulnerable and they're challenged by other men, but I think that overall, the, the men, don't have the same number of friendships now that they have in the past. And so what do you think it is that kind of finds men in this place of low number of, especially a low number of like deep, intimate connections?

Speaker 2: 10:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I know, you know and it's from my personal experience a lot, and from what I know as a man is we have no clue about sharing. We want always to save face, to appear strong, to appear stoic Like we have all the answers. Yeah, and it's funny, you know, because if you go to find, for example, an alpha male in movies, if you end up in a James Bond movie, you have this guy who's always in control, zero emotions, he knows everything and this is what we are trying and envision to be some sort of such a character. But those are not real characters, those are not real men at all. So we have no idea of what a man looks like.

Speaker 2: 10:58

We tend to men, men. We tend to go into communities and they can be business communities, they can be sports clubs. You can go out with friends friends in a pub for a beer, you know, but you don't have those vulnerable discussions because you have learned that you shouldn't have them. What happens at your house stays at your house. You need to appear strong, even to your friends.

Speaker 2: 11:26

It's funny, you know, this is my work and sometimes a friend might call me, mention an issue they're having and I feel the rush to change the subject, because I still don't feel comfortable when someone is opening up and it's the same for me and same for other men that we're not feeling comfortable about opening up ourselves or hearing other people comfortable about opening up ourselves or hearing other people. And we really needed, you know, in the men's group, to create the ground rules and the space, the emotionally safe space, for people to to feel that okay, it's okay to do that. This is this is my best answer that we're not primed for that, we are not taught how to, to do that and it won't happen on its own. You know, having those deep conversations, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 12:20

You know, as you mentioned, that I'm thinking watching with my kids marvel movies, right, like these action figures you got captain america and iron man and all of these sort of things. And like Iron Man's not, he's not necessarily breaking down and like sharing his feelings and sharing with the other character that never has a bad day, that never needs anything. And, interestingly, one of the topics that we talked about recently in my men's group is and it's something that's come up a lot is leadership and what leadership looks like. You know, and really what we dug into in that time was that leadership isn't always about one having all the answers right, doing everything right.

Speaker 1: 13:24

That, if anything, that's probably that that sort of mentality probably inhibits growth, right, and that sense of progress and leadership and things like that. That it's not. Until you actually maybe step back and allow others the opportunity, you know that you're sharing with them and you're connecting with them and you allow others to kind of take the lead, that real wholesome sort of leadership really kind of happens. So what, what do you feel like from your perspective? What sort of changes are possible when, when a man does kind of start this journey and start opening up to explore it. You know, and this isn't obviously, you know I've done it and you've done it and we we've been in groups for a while, so I know that it's not, it's not a softening of going to that side of things, right, that that there's a real sort of like I don't know.

Speaker 2: 14:27

It's I.

Speaker 1: 14:27

I picture it as like a, a glowing right, A radiance of like kind of coming to life and coming to yourself, maybe for the first time in your life. But from your experience, what do you feel like is possible when men start to explore this?

Speaker 2: 14:45

You know, we have this big part of our brain that is totally untapped and we don't use it, and it's our emotional brain and you know, as men, we're not very good in emotionally regulating ourselves. So this is a part for growth and this is something we can really. You know, you can make your brain smarter, you can be smarter. This is the the answer that people who start tapping into their feelings and becoming vulnerable learn how to take smarter decisions, faster decisions, because they train their their brain to and use it as a whole both their logical brains and their emotional brain to get to faster, better decisions that are better aligned with what they really want. This is an example I'm always giving and it's not a funny one, but it's about lobotomized people.

Speaker 1: 15:48

You know, in the 1900s, when they would do this operation to separate the logical brain from the emotional brain and people oh, and you're talking about like when they, when they do, when they get a lobotomy, like they, actually go in and take a piece out. Yeah, exactly exactly.

Speaker 2: 16:08

And when you have your frontal lobes, you know, separated from the emotional parts of your brain, you couldn't take any decisions at all. I mean like what to eat or if you want to sleep or lie down or get up. And we're very close to that because we do take decisions, but only logical decisions. But you know, there are some things that you can't decide logically, like where do you want to stay, or who to marry, or how many children you still have. These are the things that men coming to the groups are struggling with. They know how to take logical decisions, but those decisions don't have any meaning behind them. They don't mean anything to them, so they don't have the scale to tell them what they should do.

Speaker 2: 17:03

And you know you either go into the FOMO approach, like I have to do everything, or you become very cynic and say, okay, I won't do nothing, this is my life, I'll be like this, I'll be bitter until I'm 70. So this is the change that I see. That is happening. People are becoming smarter. They are taking decisions that they support with their hearts better, they are more sure of themselves. You know, this is how self-esteem and self-confidence is built From doing things. You believe in them and you can do a hundred great things and people will clap you because you are such a great leader. But if you don't believe in your decisions and all the validation you are getting is external, then you'll never have the confidence, you'll never have the self-esteem to put behind this and you will never relax. Actually, you can never let your guard down like this.

Speaker 1: 18:09

You know, one of the things that reminds me of so I have part of my program is a man's guide to self-leadership, and in that we we talk a lot about this model, this be do have model. I don't know if it's something that you're familiar with, but how a lot of times, especially as men, that we go about it kind of the wrong way and it can show up in different ways. Kind of the wrong way and it can show up in different ways. One that like, hey, if I, if I have these things, or if I buy these things, then I'll be able to do these sort of things and as a result of that, I'll become this sort of person, right? Or there's also, if I, if I just go out and I work really hard, I work my face off and as a result of that, I'll get to buy all of these sorts of things and then I'll get to be that person, then in the end I'll get to be that person.

Speaker 1: 19:00

But the reality is is really starting from who is it who? Who do I want to be Like? What matters to me? What are my values? What's the core? What matters to me? What are my values? What's the core? And then from that deciding what needs to be done in order to be that person, and as a result of that, as a by-product of that, you have the life that you want to live, but it all goes back. And this was the same way for me that I don't know in the beginning, when I started on my journey, that I had ever really asked myself well one.

Speaker 1: 19:34

I had never considered what my core values were, right, but I'd never stopped and taken the time to ask myself, like, how do I feel about this? Why is why is this important to me, right? Or what is important to me? And and I think those are times where you, as a man, have to like, stop and ask yourself, like, how do I feel about this? And when we don't have the skills to be able to feel, then we pick up. I think, from a lot of times we pick up what it is that we're supposed to, who we're supposed to be from everybody else, who we're supposed to be from everybody else, right? Well, you know, the way to be successful is to work your face off, never spend any time with your family and have a lot of money, like you know.

Speaker 2: 20:20

So, yeah, yeah, what are your thoughts on that? I was reading today a story you know it's a story for children and it says that there was this king, this very wealthy king, and once he had to go out of the street to meet the villagers, the road was just dirt. So he was walking with no shoes because at that time there were no shoes. He was walking on the dirt and his feet were hurt and swollen and he was very angry with that, that he had to do this to his body. So he called every person who was working with leather in his village and he asked them to cover all the streets with leather so when he walked he wouldn't have to hurt his feet. And someone told him okay, this will be a very hard project. Maybe it will be easier to create something to cover your feet. And this is how they created shoes. This is the same story.

Speaker 2: 21:23

The king was trying to change all the external factors to solve the problem and he would have to do this huge effort. That would cost a lot and would take a lot of resources, but the solution was within. He could just protect his feet. And it's like this, you know, exactly like your story. You can have all the checkmarks. You can have all the successes, you can buy all the things, get all the money and it will improve your life to some extent, for certain. But as long as you don't work with yourself and fix the things that bother you on the inside, you will never be fulfilled. This has no bottom. Actually, there is not a peak high enough that will make you happy if you don't feel happy in the first place you know, he went back to the leather maker and was like, hey, line the streets with leathers.

Speaker 1: 22:33

Like, oh man, that's, that's so funny. Like, hey, let's just put this blanket, let's cover the world with leather and I'll never have to worry about it again, instead of, like, going back and looking at how you personally could address this for yourself. Right, what is this? What can I do? What kind of action that I take? Right, and maybe you can tell other men after that. Hey man, I put these leather things on the bottom of my feet and my entire life changed. Okay, cool, but you had to do the work for yourself in the beginning.

Speaker 1: 23:02

So I love that story, the men that you work with and the men in your group that you have some sort of like a first aid kit for men that are starting to do the work, that are doing the work as a way to handle stress and situations and feelings and things like that. What's in that toolkit?

Speaker 2: 23:27

You know, I've been meeting a lot of people and I was feeling the same and I still do feel the same at some points, but less and less that sometimes I'm too stressed or sometimes I want to quit everything and stop being. And you know, we can pivot in our lives, but quitting life is not an option actually. So we have to keep going through and I started writing an article with things that I did and helped me personally, and I ended up creating a small guide with five habits someone can incorporate and have immediate relief in how they are feeling. You know, these feelings of stress, of want to quit, there are some habits of our mind, there are some inclinations we have and it's good to recognize this because this is our patterns. This is how I'm clocked or how someone else is clocked, how I'm clocked or how someone else is clocked. So the habits that I describe, they are there to work in 180 degrees the opposite direction, make your mind inclined for the best. You know, I have them as a guide, but as a quick reference. There are some things you can do daily, like they can use detox, stop learning bad things or connect with people, but you know, real connections, practice a bit of mindfulness. You know, 10 minutes per day can work wonders.

Speaker 2: 25:07

This is, you know, there is an example I'm giving, always about habits, because it's a hard idea to grasp and it's not enough, you know, listening to a podcast, finding a guru, reading a book, it's not enough having the information about something. I mean, I know that washing my teeth every night will help my gums be healthy, but if I just read it and I don't do it daily, then it won't work. It's the same with our minds. We do have a lot of negative patterns, a lot of bad habits. We think negatively a lot. This is how we are built. So we need some kind of way of mental hygiene and we need to do it daily. And those are the habits we need to build. And it's not enough just knowing that. Okay, I shouldn't have bad thoughts, but you should really, for example, practice gratitude and do it daily and do it intentionally.

Speaker 1: 26:18

Yeah, I totally resonate with all of that. I one of the things that comes up for me along the way. You know, and I've, it's almost like that there's this earned sense of confidence, right, that it's not to your point, you can't just think your way into healthy teeth, right. That you actually have to do the work and it's not until you do the work that there's. I feel like there's, and it goes back to this be do have. I feel like there's this mindset that like, hey, I, I need to do these things so that I can become confident, so that I can come out and go out. And once I'm confident, then I'll go out and do these things Right.

Speaker 1: 27:02

But the reality is that in most cases, and whatever it is, it doesn't have to just be confidence or brushing your teeth or whatever it is, but like you have to actually brush your teeth first. That's like the key ingredient. You know, and I have found for myself that a lot of times it's navigating all of the stories. You know whether it's the internal or the external or how it is that I'm going to deal with it ahead of time, but still in the end, just going out and taking that action, right. So if it's approaching somebody in public and introducing myself, spending some time and having navigated, like what it is that I'm afraid of, right, all of the other possibilities, but at the end of that I still just have, like the real fruit comes from, just going out and doing it.

Speaker 1: 27:54

So how do you success as a part of that kit? What do you, you know, what do you suggest that? How do you suggest that men approach those sorts of things? Because it's, it's easy enough to just say like, oh, okay, like I'll, I'll add more gratitude in my life, as you kind of mentioned. But how do you suggest that men go about implementing these sorts of things into their life?

Speaker 2: 28:22

you know you need to to approach this as a habit or as a ritual, as something you you do every day. I mean you, you take a shower every day and you eat every day. You know if you have just one lunch, it won't last you for a week, so so you need to to be there. It needs consistency. You know I can read a hundred books about working out, but in no chance I will go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow and I'll be shredded, like, for example, I need to do the work, I need to to eat healthy, or it's actually what I need to grow. I need to go to the gym five times per week. And it's the same thing for every habit we are trying to build, and especially for those habits that involve the brain, because we know that we need to build those new pathways, those new neurons, and it takes time. So this is how I tell to people to approach this.

Speaker 2: 29:31

Approach it as a ritual, do it every day. After some time it becomes easier and easier and you start to see the results. And the results won't come to in day one, they might come in day seven, but if you keep practicing for longer and longer, this is where your life is changing. This is, you know, a big part of the western philosophy. We trust a lot our logical brains and the information that we're having. If you go to the western philosophies, people would repeat the same exercise forever and ever and ever. And this is the Tao. You do the same thing day after day after day, and this is the road to mastery. So this is true we need time to learn.

Speaker 1: 30:20

Repetition is the road to mastery, even in the simpler tasks or in the even the simpler habits yeah, you know, from what you're saying, I hear like a lot of consistency in there of like, hey, that this day in and day out, that doing the same thing with repetition for myself.

Speaker 1: 30:41

Long ago from one of my mentors I picked up like a essentially like a habit tracker where I it was. For me it was in Excel, right, I do so much in Excel and I would have my goals across the top and maybe the dates down the side, the extent where I would actually every day, you know, marking a yes or a no, that I spent 15 minutes salsa dancing or I got in the cold plunge, right, or I did these sorts of things to where I could look over the course of a week and over a month what my, what my consistent consistency percentages were Right, and I can see that over the course of the month, like you know, that either I had a really high or a really low consistency. And then it gave me an opportunity to to look at and evaluate and fit, you know, to look at why was it I wasn't meeting my goals, right, what was what is important to me, what's not important to me? But but being that level of intentional and tracking where it is that I want to go, or what's important.

Speaker 2: 31:52

Yeah, you know, tracking and getting stats is a big part in business and I understand a lot of the men that you're working with are leaders, they're managers, so in their work they do track progress, they do have their key performance indices, they do measure stuff. If this works in a business environment, then it will work in a personal environment as well. And I do something something similar. I do have some KPIs in my clients and help them define them for themselves and then track them, because it's easy, you know, to fall back into the habit of just thinking, overthinking and procrastinating, and our minds can tell the difference between thinking about something or actually doing the work.

Speaker 2: 32:47

But if I think all day about that salsa class I should do and I never go because I'm stressed in the end of the night I'll still be exhausted and have zero experience because my mind was thinking about it. So my mind is exhausted but I do have the zero experience and we have to track it sometimes and people totally underestimate this and once you have them, you know if they are on a diet. If you have them track how many times they eat sweets in their week, they will be amazed because they might be doing, for example, every day, in small doses. They forget, but they do it every day and it's important to track what we do. In these things we want to improve at least.

Speaker 1: 33:38

Yeah, absolutely. And as you're saying that, I feel like I find myself back in this logical place, right, like you say, I have KPIs. It's really easy to get right back into that. But it is that ebb and flow between that and I think, especially as men, that I find, at least for myself, that I do enjoy looking at things at times from that perspective of being able to make it very logical and break it down right that, how am I doing this? But it takes both that logical side and the emotional side to go back I think and question yourself like okay, well, I can understand logistically why it is that now I can see that I am or I am not doing this.

Speaker 1: 34:21

Now I can see that I am or I am not doing this. Why am I not doing it Right and digging into the emotions around? That is interesting. I'd like to, as we continue on, kind of get back to a little bit of the men's group and you working with men and what, from your experience, has been some of the changes that have happened for the men that have shown up for you and done the work either with you or in the men's group. What sort of realizations have they realized in their life.

Speaker 2: 34:59

But men start building different kinds of relationships with other people, not only with the men in their group, but they start questioning all of their relationships. They start having deeper conversations with people they already had the existing relationships with. So this is what is more interesting for me that they change how they approach the work, the world in general. There are smaller life changes happening, like someone getting a raise, a promotion or starting something of its own, which are the good side results of the group, because you know people, once they get some, once they are released from the stress they live, they become a bit more creative, they see more opportunities and they go after those opportunities. So somehow they end up improving as well their external factors in their lives, because they are more ready for that. But the biggest part is how they approach relationships and how they approach friends and how they get some.

Speaker 2: 36:15

You know there are things that we don't know. No one taught us in school how to make a relationship. It just happened. You know to sit with that guy and you are still friends 20 years down the road. But learning how to make friends from scratch is a life skill Learning how to manage tough times for yourself so you won't indulge into rage or self-doubt is a new skill into rage or self-doubt is a new skill by being able to emotionally regulate yourself better and this is something men are taking from the groups then you are ready to take more educated decisions in your life.

Speaker 2: 37:10

It doesn't matter if you are, you know in in the, if you're driving your car and someone gets you and you learn how to process the trades, or if this is your boss and you are afraid of him and you freeze every time and you're still be able there to process that feeling and come back with a better answer for yourself, a better way to handle the situation, whatever that is. So, if I sum up, the two things I see are that people are learning to connect better with other friends, men or women or their parents or whoever, and they also learn how to process their emotions in a way that is helpful for them and supports their goals, instead of, you know, not helping them.

Speaker 1: 38:01

Yeah, totally, I totally resonate with that no-transcript that it's expected that you picked up on it magically along the way. Magically along the way. But there's not a whole lot of emphasis that goes into learning and developing these sort of skills, and so it yeah, that people are kind of out to their defend for themselves and don't realize that it carries over to so many different things in their life that it's so important. So, yeah, well, hey, what, what would you say? Is we kind of start to wrap up here, stefanos, what? What would you say to the man that's on the outside right now? That's, I guess, kind of like lost in their life and looking for hope and don't know where to look. And maybe they're they're looking for the first time and getting support through either a men's group or coaching or something like that. What advice would you give to that man?

Speaker 2: 39:51

I would give the advice to experiment a bit. Give it a couple of tries and come up with some solutions that may be there for him. It can be group, it can be therapy, it can be trying, a new experience. But I will say, just go and try it and trust your gut and if you think that it's working, then it is really working. I'm speaking with a lot of men who say, okay, that therapy oh, that's good for other people, coaching is good, but for other people, therapy oh, that's good for other people, coaching is good, but for other people. Well, if you think that something is good for other people, then most probably it's good for you as well. So give it a try. You know it's no shame in trying definitely, definitely.

Speaker 1: 40:41

Well, hey, stefanos, I've loved talking with you today. This has been been. It's been great to get to know you. How can the men that are listening here get a hold of you or get in touch with you or follow your work a little bit more to find out about who you are and what you do?

Speaker 2: 41:09

this guide, the first aid kit I created there. People can find me also on in meetup, but I'll give you the links where people can find my events and everything and I think this is the best way to follow with me and if anyone feels like he wants to experiment, you can join. You know, your group, my group, have an experience and a voice of his own, actually.

Speaker 1: 41:28

Yeah, I love that. Well, again, Stefanos, thanks for coming on the show and, of course, we'll have any of the information in the show notes of how to get a hold of Stefanos. And yeah, it was a pleasure, it was a pleasure.

Speaker 2: 41:42

Nice speaking to you, Corey.

Speaker 1: 42:07

Hey, before you go, this podcast is just the surface. It was a pleasure, nice, first to claim your spot. If you're tired of going to life alone and you're ready for true accountability, support and connection with men who get it head to evolvemenprojectcom, slash brotherhood, don't just listen. Step into the Brotherhood, I'll see you inside.