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Hello, and welcome back to Raising Men.

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My name is Sean Dawson.

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Now, let me ask you a question to start off today.

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What does it actually look like to protect your people?

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Now, when you picture a strong man protecting those under his care, what image pops into
your head?

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Is it a guy kind of standing at a podium, beating his chest, making sure everybody in the
room

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Knows that he's the toughest alpha in the building?

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Or is it something quieter?

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Is it a man or even a woman who puts their ego in a box, who takes on genuine personal
risk, and who ensures that the people relying on them don't carry an ounce of extra danger

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just so that they can get a photo op or brag?

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Twitter.

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So today I want to tell you a story.

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I want to talk about a real live event, something that happened back in November of 2003.

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Now, whatever your political leanings are, I want you to put them completely in a drawer
for the next 10 minutes.

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I'm not interested in party politics today.

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That's not what I'm talking about.

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I'm interested in examining character.

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And I'm interested in what happens when a leader

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Understands the difference between performative strength and genuine protective
masculinity.

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So back in the fall of 2003, President George W.

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Bush decided that he wanted to go share Thanksgiving dinner with the troops in Baghdad.

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Now, put yourself in those shoes for a moment.

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He Iraq at the time was an active

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Explosive combat zone.

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Insurgents were firing short shoulder launched missiles at aircraft landing at Baghdad
International Airport.

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Just a couple weeks prior, there had been a DHL airplane that had been attacked,
successfully hit, and basically miraculously made it back to the airport intact.

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And the crew survived that attack at that same airport.

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And bringing the President of the United States into that environment was, strategically
speaking, it was a nightmare.

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And if word leaked, if if a reporter had filed a preview story or if somebody in the White
House wanted to brag about what the commander-in-chief was planning to do, maybe if we had

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Twitter back then, even, that airport would have become the biggest target on the planet.

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Enemy forces would have reigned everywhere.

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Mortar, every rocket, every missile that they had directly onto that airfield.

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It would have been indefensible.

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Now, the temptation for a politician, or frankly, any other person driven by their own ego
and glory and personal ambition is to announce that grand gesture.

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Look, look what I'm doing.

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Look at how brave I am.

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Look how I'm going be flying into a war zone.

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Now, Bush did the exact opposite.

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He slipped off of his ranch in Crawford, Texas in the middle of the night.

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He wore a baseball cap pulled down low, riding in an unmarked vehicle so that his staff
didn't know who it was.

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He boarded Air Force One in total secrecy.

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plane flew across the Atlantic with the window shades pulled down and with the interior
lights turned off so it wouldn't be identified in the night sky.

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They landed in Baghdad in pitch black darkness, running on silent, invisible protocols.

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Why?

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Because George W.

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Bush understood something crucial about power.

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If you expose your people to danger.

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Just to prove how brave you are, just to satisfy your own ego.

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You're not protecting them.

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You're using them.

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And he took on the personal physical risk of flying into a combat zone.

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And so did everybody else on that plane.

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They did it knowingly with their eyes open.

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And he minimized the risk to his soldiers by keeping his mouth shut.

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He didn't demand applause beforehand.

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He didn't bring people on the plane so that they could snap pictures of him in his moment
of glory, because that would have unnecessarily introduced them to risk.

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He didn't bring more people than he needed to.

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When he walked out from behind the curtain in that mess hall, carrying a platter of
turkey, the 600 young men and women in that room were completely blindsided.

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They thought that they were listening to a standard holiday speech from a local command.

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Instead, their commander-in-chief showed up, served them food, looked them in the eye,
shook their hands, and he got wheels up before the enemy even realized he'd been on the

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continent.

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That is a calculated, regulated, protective, healthy version of masculinity.

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Now, in our work here at Raising Men, we talk a lot about the distinction between what
psychologist Steven Stosny calls the toddler brain and the adult brain.

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And what I like to call is the Conan brain and the Sherlock brain.

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Now the Conan brain, we if you've if you're a regular listener to the show, you understand
that the Conan brain is your amygdala.

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It's the reactive, emotional, impulsive.

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It's loud.

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It's the part of a man that operates on pure threat response and ego, part of a man or a
woman.

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Conan brain wants to throw its weight around.

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Conan brain wants immediate validation, wants to be seen as the big man, and demands that
everybody bow to its authority.

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Sherlock brain is your prefrontal cortez.

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It's the strategic, thoughtful, regulated, frankly, quiet side of your brain.

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Sherlock brain looks at a situation and asks, what's the actual goal here?

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How do I achieve maximum good while absorbing the risk myself rather than dumping the risk
onto the people I'm responsible for?

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And when a man operates from Conan brain,

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His strength is short-lived.

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Sometimes it's necessary to do that in certain circumstances.

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You know, we evolved with that.

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His strength is short-lived and it's brittle.

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He's posturing often because he's insecure.

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He needs the audience.

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He needs the chest thumping.

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He needs the adoration of the crowds.

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But when a man operates from Sherlock Brain,

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His strength and his sense of self-worth, it's grounded.

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He can land in the dark.

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He can serve a meal.

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He can do the work without needing a parade.

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Because it's not about the parade.

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It's about the work.

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Marcus Aurelius wrote in Meditations, he said, waste no more time arguing about what a
good man should be.

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Be one.

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In other words, virtue isn't about broadcasting your righteousness.

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It's about executing your duty.

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Think about the crisis facing young men today.

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We live in a world where boys are inundated.

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With performative masculinity.

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They turn on their phones and they see influencers being, you know, flexing their least
supercars, yelling into microphones, insulting people, making fools of themselves, telling

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young guys that being a man means dominance, means posturing, means total self-absorption.

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And we're teaching our sons that masculinity is a show that you put on for status.

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As Will Storr notes in his research,

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On status dynamics.

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When young men can't find healthy ways to earn prestige through competence and character,
they resort to dominance games.

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They try to look tough because they don't know how to be strong.

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We need to teach our young men to be strong, not to look tough.

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The result of that process is boys.

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Who are anxious, who are isolated, who are brittle, boys who think that strength means
making a lot of noise.

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But they actually crumble the second real pressure is applied.

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We need to raise men.

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So how do we translate this Air Force One landing in total darkness at Baghdad down into
our living rooms or our kitchens and our basketball courts?

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I've got some thoughts about this.

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What's the lesson for our sons?

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Well, as usual it starts with how we handle our own power as parents.

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Like when your ten-year-old son blows the assignment on the court or your teenager comes
home past curfew, which which of your brains are you operating from?

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Are you dropping into Conan brain?

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Are you getting loud, flexing your authority, making a massive scene?

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Are you making the moment about your anger and your wounded ego and your authority?

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Are you creating fear in your boy?

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Or do you stay in Sherlock Brain?

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Because Sherlock Brain realizes that your job as a parent isn't to win an argument or
intimidate your boy so that he'll be afraid to misstep.

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Your job is to facilitate the development of his character.

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He's going to develop his own character, but it's your job to give him the environment
that allows him to do it in the most productive way.

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To allow him to

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Create the most effective character that will thrive in the world that he will graduate
into.

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So that means absorbing the emotional volatility in the room so that your kid doesn't have
to drown in it.

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And that he can see, that's what I need to be doing.

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It means holding firm boundaries.

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Right?

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Boundaries are an important component.

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But you'd need to do it with a calm voice and a steady heart.

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You don't need to yell.

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You don't need to yell when you actually hold the authority.

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It's one of those things like wealth or freedom that you can only get obliquely through
indirect offer.

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Authority is one of those things.

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So let's address.

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One more side of this, which is how do we treat our kids' vulnerable moments?

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In the age of social media, I see a lot of parents broadcasting their kids' meltdowns and
their failures, their personal struggles online for clout, for views, or a quick laugh.

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And I don't I mean there's there's a lot to that.

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And it's but that is the opposite of protection, isn't it?

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It's

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Exposing your child to public humiliation, potentially, just to feed your own need for
attention.

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Is that really what you want to be doing?

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If George W.

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Bush had broadcasted that trip for attention, he would have put his soldiers, himself, and
the crew of his airplane in harm's way.

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When you exploit your child's hard moments for public validation, you're sacrificing their
trust for your ego.

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Now, a real parent.

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Covers his kids, protects his kids, protects their dignity in public, even when he
corrects their behavior in private.

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Real strength is quiet.

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It's deliberate, takes on risk, carries the weight.

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And most importantly, it lets the results speak for themselves.

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If you're truly strong,

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You don't need to convince people that of that fact.

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So we want to raise boys who are strong without being brittle, we have to model quiet
calculated strength in our day-to-day lives.

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And so here are a couple of practical ways that you could practice this with your sons
this week.

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First of all, practice a three-second pause.

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So the next time your boy pushes your buttons and tests a boundary or creates chaos in the
house, don't react instantly.

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That instant reaction is the Conan brain trying to take the wheel.

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It feels like the anger that you feel is real, but it's not.

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It's a symptom.

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So, as we said before, wind the clock.

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Give me three seconds.

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Step into Sherlock brain before you open your mouth and show your son what a regulated
regulated, dangerous but controlled parent looks like.

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When tension rises.

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You might do a service project together, find something this weekend that needs to be
done, either in the neighborhood or out in the world, or just even in the house, and do it

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without making a big deal about it.

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And then lastly, of course, protect his dignity in front of others.

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If your son messes up this week, whether whatever, at a ballgame or in front of relatives
or at school, don't obviously don't humiliate him in public to show everybody what a

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certain stern disciplinarian you are.

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Handle the correction quietly, one-on-one, in a safe space.

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Make him feel safe.

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Gentlemen, ladies, parents, our boys.

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They don't need us to be loud.

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They don't need us to posture.

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They don't need us to beat our chests.

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They need us to show up.

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They need us to carry the weight.

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They need us to keep the lights off when necessary and serve the meal.

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So let's go build men who know that difference.

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And remember that you are a great parent.