Men, before we dive in, I've got something big to share with you. The wait list for the Evolve Men Brotherhood is now open. This is the space where men stop doing the work alone. Inside the Brotherhood, you'll connect weekly with other men committed to growth, leadership, and living with purpose. You'll get access to live calls, courses, and the community that keeps you accountable when life gets hard. Registration opens soon. Join the wait list now at Evolvmen Project.com/slash Brotherhood and be a part of the movement. Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to the show. So today I want to start with a story that might sound familiar to many of you. And for me, it it starts back when I really kind of realized that I wasn't alone in this world and that there were other men out there that wanted to help and support me. So for a lot of my life, I had lived this story that my troubles were my own and that nobody was experiencing the the same sort of things that I was in life, right? That they weren't, they weren't having these struggles, that they weren't, that they weren't doing these sort of things that I was doing, right? Like, you know, drinking, looking at porn, like any of these different things. And so all along, right, I just continued to reiterate that story to myself that like I'm the only one in this world that's going through these sort of things in their in their relationships, you know, in their struggles in the day-to-day life, right? Whatever it is. And so I never allowed myself like nobody wants to hear my story. Men don't share those sort of things, right? There's, you know, I'm I'll I'll be crazy if I say it to anybody else, right? And and the problem with that is that it left me alone, right? It left me to not sharing those things, to not getting support, to not yeah, to just really not, you know, recognizing for what it is like stopping, taking an inventory, and recognizing where it is that I was. And so I just continued to tell myself that story. And so with anything that came up in my life, I just figured that nobody else wanted to hear about it. Nobody else wanted to support me, that I was completely alone, right? That, you know, for all I knew, that I was gonna go my entire life living the way that I was, with you know, and that there was basically kind of no hope. Right. And once I started to kind of open up for it, right, and I and I really realized that there were that for the most part, everyone around me was having similar struggles in some sense, right? Whether it was just who they were as a person, their identity, how they showed up for their family, how they were showing up for themselves. Like the reality is like everybody has these same struggles. And but we're all, you know, sometimes I tell the story. It's like two guys sitting across from each other at a table, right? And one of them says to the other guy, like, hey man, what's up? You know, how have you been doing? What's new? And he's like, Oh, you know, it's good, the family's good, we're all doing really good, we're fine, right? And the other guy's like, Yeah, but me too. Like, we're we're doing really good. But the reality is that behind that, like everybody's struggling, right? That there's there's things that even if they're minor, there's this part of their identity and who they are that it's like, I can't, I can't share that with anybody. Nobody wants to hear it. And so when I really started to realize that there were other men out there that were struggling with some of these same sort of things, right? That they were on this journey of growth and discovery, everything really started to change for me. Right. And so it it was recognizing that lie for me that I'd been telling myself all these years that I was going through this stuff alone, that nobody knew those sort of struggles. And and once I recognized that, and I and I recognized that it was this story that I was crafting over and over again, I could start to change it. Right. So today we're gonna be talking about the lies that men live by, right? And and how to rewrite that story. Because every man carries one. And it, you know, it might sound like, like I said earlier, like, yeah, you know, I'm I'm fine, I'm doing good. Right. Or, you know what, I've I've always been this way. There's no point in changing now. Or it's it's too late to change, right? I'm can't teach an old dog new tricks, right? Or I don't need anyone, right? But the thing is, is that those those lines, as we're saying those day in and day out, right? The that they slip into our our identity, right? So easily that we we stop questioning them and they start actually running the show. And what makes them so powerful isn't that they're they're loud, right? It's that they they sound reasonable, right? They they actually give us permission to stay the same as we've always been, right? Because it it's one of those, you know, it's it's not like they're they're you know screaming in our ear or any of these other things. Like there's actually some logic to it, right? Like, you know what, I'm too far along in life, I'm in my 40s, in my 50s or 60s, like you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Like, this is just the way that I am, right? I can't find somebody new, right? Nobody will ever love me. And so, but the truth is that when you actually start to to build your your life around those lies, even a small one, you end up living a version of your life that that isn't truly yours, right? And you you shrink down to to fit into that story, that story that you've been telling yourself over and over again, right? And you you edit yourself to stay consistent with that script, right? So instead of like stepping out of line or trying something new, you're like, no, like this is who I am, this is what I know. And and at any opportunity for you to start to deviate that, you you like self, you know, correct and get back in line. Right. And so eventually the the lie doesn't just hide the truth, it actually ends up replacing it, right? And and that's what's at stake here. So we're gonna talk a little bit about the the hidden architecture of a lie, right? Every every lie that we live by begins as just a single thought, right? That that felt safe, right? And it comes in, it's almost like this whisper off to the side, right? That you know, maybe it started with like disappointment or shame. You know, maybe it was maybe it was a story that that you learned early on as a child, right? To not to not rock the boat, that you know what, I don't, I don't need too much. Just just be easy, like quit being the the like the overdramatic or the the needy one. And that that thought, the thing is that that thought creates a feeling from it, right? Maybe maybe calm, maybe control. And as a result of that, that feeling drives a behavior, right? So you avoid conflict, you keep quiet, you overperform, or you you numb out, right? And those those behaviors, right, they create results, right? People, as a result of that, of you, you know, avoiding the conflict or having the hard conversations or being quiet, maybe people praise you, right, for for being reliable or steady or successful. And those results reinforce the original belief, right? And so round and around we go. If if you can you can see this sort of invisible loop that we have, that there's this situation that we come across, whatever it might be, good, bad, or indifferent. And from that, we create this thought in our head that I'm I'm not good enough, right? I nobody will ever love me. Like if I say that thing, people won't want to be my friend, right? That, you know, I'm not confident, I'm not good looking enough, or whatever it is. And from that, right, so we've got the situation, we've got our thought, the emotions that it creates, the actions that we take. And as a result of that, right, there's there's this like feedback loop. And this worked both ways. It can be both positive and negative, but what happens a lot of time is that it's it's negative.

Right.

And it's so it's not that you're you're lazy or broken, right, as a result of this loop that you get into. It's that your your brain learned to associate truth with pain and lies, right, with safety. So the first step in all of this is just awareness to to notice the pattern, to notice the language that you're using with yourself. And every time that you hear yourself say things like always or never or like just how I am, you gotta pause. Right. And and that's that's usually the sound of an old story coming up for you. Right. And you can't lead yourself if you're being led by a lie. So why do we believe our own lies? Right? Because it seems really simple. You know, there's this voice going on, you think to yourself, like, dude, that's I would never believe that sort of stuff. Right? But let's let's go a little bit deeper, right? Why do smart, capable men believe the their own falsehoods? Right? Because those those lies meet needs at the time. They they protect us from exposure, they give us a sense of control, they let us belong to the version of the world that we know, right? Because telling yourself like I'm fine is easier than admitting that you're lonely. Right. If the guys are, you know, and and and this can happen in any sort of environment, right? The the guys invite you out, right? And like, hey man, how are you doing? You know, I I know you and your girlfriend broke up. Like, how are you doing? Like, man, I'm fine. I don't need anybody, right? But the reality in those sort of situations, like, dude, it's hard for you to maybe admit to your guy friends that, dude, I am I'm struggling, I'm lonely. You know, saying things like I I don't care feels safer than risking the the rejection, right? Or the the scrutiny in those moments. Pretending that, you know, I've got it under control is is easier than saying like that I'm scared, that I might I might fail at doing this. Right. So underneath every lie, there's a need for safety underneath it, right? Safety or belonging or significance, right? And it's it's not weakness, it's humanity because it happens for all of us. But when that need stays hidden for long periods of time, even I mean lifetimes, it it becomes it it gets to the point where it rules who you are. So here's the paradox that the moment that you start telling the truth, you you expand your world, right? Positive psychology calls it the the broaden and build effect, right? The truth broadens your awareness and it builds new options, expands possibility. When you start to like switch these sort of things around and you start to say, like, you know what, I'm not fine. Right. You you make you make space for support in those sort of moments. When you say, like, I do actually care, I care a lot. I'm a person that cares a lot about this. And so you you you start to open up the door to intimacy and connection and things, right? And these are all the things that that over and over again in my life, like, you know, people used to always say to me all the time, like, man, like Corey's never, he's never high, he's never low, he's always just a he's just a five, right? And that's because I was never I had this story, right? That I told myself, like I said, that that nobody ever wanted to hear what I had to say, that I wasn't it wasn't important enough, right? And so as a result of that, like it really limited the depth of my relationships, my friendships, my my connection, right? So, because the truth is that, well, in that, that truth creates motion and lies create these loops that we just cycle through over and over and over again. So the question becomes this, right? What what truth, what truth wants to move through you right now, but you've been avoiding it. So, how do we rewrite that story, right? These things that we've been telling ourselves over and over again, many of us for our entire lives, right? And here's where the shift happens. You don't rewrite your story by deleting the past, like acting like they never happened, right? You rewrite it by changing your relationship to it. And I'll I'll come back to it, but there there's a story that I that I want to kind of express with this as well. So step one is to to name the lie, right? And so whisper it if you have to, but call it what it is, is to catch it in that moment, right? Of like, oh shit, that's that's happening again. Right. Step two is to feel the cost, right? Because every every lie has a price, right? It's lost energy, it's connection, it's self-respect. And let yourself actually feel the weight of that because that's what that's what starts to wake you up, right? When you start to recognize that, man, I've been telling myself this like this lie forever. And as a result of that, like I'm not making the friendships, I'm not making the connections, I'm my relationships with my my wife or partner or my kids are suffering as a result of that. Right. And that carries a weight that you know when you start to look at it, is unbearable. So step three is to ask, like, what's actually true? Not not what was true like five years ago, right? Not what somebody else said, but what's actually true today? Like, how much, how much, you know, one of the things I say often is like, would this be irrefutable in a court of law? I think that's the right word, right? Is this something that somebody could actually stand up and stay? Like, hey, Corey, you know, Corey's a bad guy. Corey has no respect for anybody else. Corey is not a hard worker. No, of course not. Like, I could I could ask any number of people, and they would argue that point, you know, in favor that I am a good person, that I I am contributing to the world, that I am a good father and a good partner and these sort of things. So what's actually true? Step four is to to see yourself living that truth, right? And so, you know, maybe that means like closing your eyes and actually picturing the man who who lives from that place, right? Is carrying out those actions, right? And to see how he actually how he carries himself, how he speaks, how he shows up, how he breathes, right? And feel it in your body. And this isn't just like woo-woo fantasy, right? That's this is rehearsal for the new story that you're writing for yourself. So step five is to to begin to actually speak and act like him, right? One conversation at a time, one boundary at a time, one decision. One one of the things that I talk about a lot is this model of like be do have, right? And and kind of as a part of that, like, who do you want to be? Right? What sort of what sort of person do you want to be? What sort of characteristics do you want to embody? Right. And as a result of that, when you define what that is, what do you have to do as a result of that to actually carry that out, right? Do you stand up straight? Do you talk with more confidence? You hold your boundaries a little bit more. And as a result of that, you end up having what it is that you want. So the the thing kind of comes down to is that every action that you take from truth changes that story, right? Every time that you tell the truth faster, you you reclaim authorship. So the story that I that I wanted to kind of tell with this as we kind of get to the end of this little part of the section is that I heard it once from one of my mentors kind of described as a book, right? And it was this book that we have all throughout our lives that that we carry around with us. And yeah, I'll I'll tell it how it was kind of described to me at the time. And so it's this book that says, like, okay, you know, it's it's like a framework or a cookbook for life. Like, okay, on chapter 63, when I see a cute girl on the street, I it says here that I look down or I look away and I don't pay any attention to it and I just keep walking by, right? That that's what I do, that's who I am. And so that story could be the same for anybody. Like, hey, you know, when a challenging situation comes up in my relationship, I act like it didn't happen and I don't bring it up again. Okay. Right. And so every time that we that situation comes up in our life, right, instead of actually like having to figure it out again over and over, like we just flip, you know, we go right to the index and we see that in the book on page 57, like this is how I handle difficult conversations or whatever it might be. And so, and every time that you do that, right, to this point that I was talking about, every time that you do that, you're writing it harder and harder and harder again over that ink in the book. Right. So, but every time that you start to change that, right? You're so in that situation, you're walking down the street, right? And you see a beautiful woman that you want to talk to. And and maybe it's not doesn't happen on the first try, right? But this time, right, uh the situation comes up. You turn to page 57 or 633 or whatever it was, right? And you say, okay, I this is what I like. Here's the here's the section, this is what it says. And you say, you know what? I'm not gonna do that this time. I'm not gonna, I I I recognize, you know, and so we go going back to like step one, right? Naming that, holy shit, like this is what I'm doing every single time, this story, over and over again. And as a result of it, I'm never making these sort of connections that I want to. What's actually true? You know, and so going through this process, but so as as the story goes on, right, you start to the ink in that starts to get lighter and lighter and lighter again. And it starts to not tear through the other pages until at which point you start writing a new chapter in that book and you start writing a new story, right? A new part of the framework that you can look look to later on. And you don't so it's so kind of going back to it, it's not like those chapters don't exist. We don't just get to tear a page out of the book, right? It's there, sure, and there's there's a part of it for whatever reason that that served us at that time in our life, but we're we're making a different decision now, right? Uh a decision of what's true, and we're gonna actually live from that truth. So, with that, right, if we were to just kind of remember, I think one of the takeaways here is that we're not the story that we've been handed our entire lives, that that book that we've been carried around, that it's not actually who we are, that it's something that we created, right, that we wrote in, right? Whether that was from situations that we were in, right, but we're the author of that book, and that we can rewrite it with new, updated, more accurate information. So I want you guys to kind of pause for a moment and and to take a breath, right? If you're if you're if you're driving or whatever it is that you're doing that you can't pause and stop for a minute, then just I just want you to reflect on this for a moment. Right. And if you're at home, take a moment and grab your journal. All right. So I want you to to take a moment to to think about these questions that I'm gonna ask. And so the first one is what's what's one lie that you've been quietly agreeing to, right? Over and over again, day in and day out, right? About, you know, maybe who you are or you know, the progress that you're making or not making in your life. The second question is, what does that lie protect you from? From feeling or or facing, right? Because there's something there, there's a reason that we're telling ourselves these lies, that there's something that we're avoiding. So again, the second question is, what does that lie protect you from feeling or facing? The third question is, what would telling the truth make possible? So if you were to actually say that thing, right, or to do that thing, that it is that lie that you're telling yourself, what would actually open up for you? What would change? How would how would you grow in your life as a result of that? So third question again is what would telling the truth make possible? The fourth question is who do you become when you stop pretending? Right? What version of yourself do you step into as when you stop pretending that that's the case? The fifth question is what's one truth that you're willing to stand in today, even if it costs you comfort? And this doesn't have to be right, as we're thinking about this, this doesn't have to be monumental shift, like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out, you know, it's like that fuck you, fuck you sort of thing. Like, we're just looking to make like what's one thing that we can that we can stand in today, a truth that we're willing to stand by, even if it makes us a little bit uncomfortable. So here's what I want you to remember from today that you're not broken, right? For for believing the lies, right? That at any of these these times, we're just trying to survive them. But survival, survival is not what we're here for, right? We're not we're not meant to born and die living from this sense of survival. We're we're meant to to lead, right? And every man reaches a point where pretending becomes heavier than on honesty, right? And and when that moment comes, you you have a choice, right? You can either keep performing or you can start becoming. Becoming the man that you're becoming, right, doesn't have to hide behind half-truths, right? He meets himself honestly, even when it hurts, because he knows that that that's where the real strength begins. So this week, I want you to practice that, right? When you when you feel yourself rehearsing an old script, I want you to pause, right, and take a breath, and to to say the truth out loud, right? Even even if it catches you a little bit, right? Even if it doesn't feel right, even if it sounds a little silly, right? Because that's what rewriting your story looks like in real time. Perfect. Well, that so if this conversation today, guys, stirred something in you, right? If you're ready to start walking with other men who are who are done pretending and committed to leading from truth, then I want to invite you into the Evolved Men Brotherhood. It's our private community for men who are ready to do this work together, men building lives of integrity, courage, and connection. Right? You can join the wait list now at Evolvemenproject.comslash brotherhood. When when the door is open, you'll be the first to know. And you'll you'll step into a circle of of brothers who actually get it, men who who challenge you, who support you, and remind you that you don't have to do this alone. Because transformation doesn't happen in isolation, it happens in brotherhood. Hey, before you go, this podcast is just the surface. The real work happens inside the Evolve Men Brotherhood. This is our private community of men committed to leading themselves boldly, building confidence, and sharpening one another in the fire. Registration officially opens December 1st, and we kick off our Brotherhood calls together beginning in January 2026. But you can get on the list today and be the 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 Evolvement Project.comslash Brotherhood. Don't just listen, step into the Brotherhood. I'll see you inside.