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Strong Men Still Fall Into Temptation (The Odyssey Explained): Lion Counseling Podcast Episode #84
Most men think discipline is enough.
It isn’t.
In one of the most famous scenes from The Odyssey, Odysseus doesn't trust his own willpower. He knows temptation is coming, so he prepares before it arrives by having his crew tie him to the mast.
That ancient strategy has surprising implications for modern life.
In this episode, Mark Odland and Zack Carter discuss:
✅ Why temptation often begins with curiosity—not just desire
✅ The connection between the Sirens, dopamine, AI, social media, and doom scrolling
✅ Why high-performing men often overestimate their ability to resist temptation
✅ What pornography addiction reveals about human nature
✅ Why accountability is a strength—not a weakness
✅ Practical ways to "tie yourself to the mast" before temptation strikes
Whether your struggle is pornography, social media, work, alcohol, endless information, or something else entirely, this conversation explores why preparation consistently beats willpower.
🎙 Book a Free Clarity Call:
https://www.escapethecagenow.com/contact
📘 Get Mark's FREE book, Escape the Cage:
https://escapethecagenow.com/subscribe/
📩 Join our newsletter:
hhttps://escapethecagenow.com/subscribe/
Click here to watch a video of this episode.’
About Lion Counseling
Lion Counseling helps high-performing men break free from the hidden struggles that keep them stuck. Through EMDR therapy, intensive counseling, and leadership coaching, we help men overcome trauma, anxiety, burnout, pornography addiction, and relationship challenges so they can lead with greater strength, clarity, and purpose.
Whether you're a business owner, executive, first responder, pastor, physician, or another man carrying significant responsibility, our mission is simple: help you escape the cage that's holding you back.
#MentalHealth #HighPerformingMen #SelfDiscipline #PornRecovery #AddictionRecovery #Leadership #TheOdyssey #ChristianMen #PersonalGrowth #Therapy #EMDR #Dopamine #Accountability #Psychology #LionCounseling
Most men think discipline is enough.
It isn’t.
In one of the most famous scenes from The Odyssey, Odysseus doesn't trust his own willpower. He knows temptation is coming, so he prepares before it arrives by having his crew tie him to the mast.
That ancient strategy has surprising implications for modern life.
In this episode, Mark Odland and Zack Carter discuss:
✅ Why temptation often begins with curiosity—not just desire
✅ The connection between the Sirens, dopamine, AI, social media, and doom scrolling
✅ Why high-performing men often overestimate their ability to resist temptation
✅ What pornography addiction reveals about human nature
✅ Why accountability is a strength—not a weakness
✅ Practical ways to "tie yourself to the mast" before temptation strikes
Whether your struggle is pornography, social media, work, alcohol, endless information, or something else entirely, this conversation explores why preparation consistently beats willpower.
🎙 Book a Free Clarity Call:
https://www.escapethecagenow.com/contact
📘 Get Mark's FREE book, Escape the Cage:
https://escapethecagenow.com/subscribe/
📩 Join our newsletter:
hhttps://escapethecagenow.com/subscribe/
Click here to watch a video of this episode.’
About Lion Counseling
Lion Counseling helps high-performing men break free from the hidden struggles that keep them stuck. Through EMDR therapy, intensive counseling, and leadership coaching, we help men overcome trauma, anxiety, burnout, pornography addiction, and relationship challenges so they can lead with greater strength, clarity, and purpose.
Whether you're a business owner, executive, first responder, pastor, physician, or another man carrying significant responsibility, our mission is simple: help you escape the cage that's holding you back.
#MentalHealth #HighPerformingMen #SelfDiscipline #PornRecovery #AddictionRecovery #Leadership #TheOdyssey #ChristianMen #PersonalGrowth #Therapy #EMDR #Dopamine #Accountability #Psychology #LionCounseling
Creators and Guests
What is Lion Counseling Podcast?
The Lion Counseling Podcast helps men escape the cages that hold them back and become the Lions they were created to be. It exists to help men obtain success, purpose, happiness, and peace in their career and personal lives. The podcast is hosted by the founder of Lion Counseling, Mark Odland (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified EMDR Therapist), and Zack Carter (Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling). In their podcasts, they address a variety of topics relevant to men, including: mental health, relationships, masculinity, faith, success, business, and self-improvement.
Welcome to the Lion Counseling Podcast. Today, we are reacting to a unique interpretation of the sirens from Homer's The Odyssey. We'll be discussing what it reveals about temptation, curiosity, and lasting change. Check it out.
Lecturer:There are these women who sing. They make you just want to go and listen to them. And piled up in front of the Sirens Island is just rotting bones of people who started listening and they could just never leave and they starved and died. I think the reason that Odysseus wants to hear is because he's this man of great curiosity. When they actually speak to him, Odysseus tells them, the Phaeacians, he tells what the Sirens told him.
Lecturer:And the Sirens say, We can tell you the story of everything that happened to Troy. We know everything that happens on Earth. They can give him infinite knowledge. That's what they're saying to him. And this is the thing that a man of those kind of proclivities wants most in life, or at least he knows the power of that insider knowledge, that special insight into the universe.
Zack Carter:Alright, Mark. When you hear the story of the sirens, what connections do you see between modern day and this ancient story?
Mark Odland:Oh. Well, it's interesting because you're saying modern day, but in some ways, my mind went backwards before the Odyssey, and it went back to Genesis and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It was the same desire for, like, ultimate knowledge, wisdom to kind of understand all these things, the story of the Tower Of Babel. Right? To become and now modern day, artificial intelligence.
Mark Odland:Just typing in a little something and we have like this almost godlike power to just know something immediately. So that's that's not quite the temptation angle, but that was my initial my initial reaction. And I think somewhere like way back before I was really too familiar with the Odyssey, I always thought of the siren song as being just purely temptation. Right? It's just like this irresistible song or beauty or temptation, and you're just like sucked into it.
Mark Odland:Right. And so, yeah, I mean, the work we do in mental health, right? The addiction thing definitely comes to mind as well. What are you thinking?
Zack Carter:Well, let's see what this guy has to say. And I'll share my take.
Lecturer:For me, I think it's also the temptation of being an academic is one of the reasons I left academia because well, was one of the reasons I was in it because I had this tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. I want to read more. I want to find out the end of that story or, oh geez, five more books I need to read. If you follow that too far, you end up potentially a rotting pile of bones at the feet of the sirens and never getting home and never doing what you need to do. It's this kind of temptation of knowledge.
Lecturer:Maybe there's a person or two in your audience that can relate to the temptation of the university, but we can all relate to the doom scroll. And it's often, it's not just like, it's not stupid humor all the time. A lot of it is you're, you're, you tell yourself, I'm going to get some insight on, you know, what the Bitcoin price is going to do from this saran thing and, oh, well, how can I ignore that? Blah, blah, blah? And it's it's it's all it all seems actionable.
Lecturer:It's it's it's constructed. It important. It feels important. It's designed to feel important because it's risen up in the algorithm. And I think this is really speaks to a profound inclination that people have a temptation that people face that leads in not just to inaction, but to unreflection too.
Zack Carter:Seems like he he kinda headed in that initial direction you went around that temptation of knowledge.
Mark Odland:Yeah. And it seems counterintuitive. Right? Because so much I mean, as parents. Right?
Mark Odland:We want good education for our kids. We say things like knowledge is power. Right? It leads to opportunities. And yet could there be a place where enough is enough?
Mark Odland:Right? And and it becomes a never ending pursuit that doesn't lead anywhere that's life giving. I think in a way, though, I I wasn't sure when he went into the doom scroll thing because the doom scroll for me feels less about the pursuit of knowledge and more about the pursuit of stimulation and and just dopamine. But are they different things? May maybe they're actually more tied together than we'd like to believe.
Mark Odland:Maybe we think we're pursuing knowledge, but we're just pursuing, like, these little hits, these little little highs. And then when it's all said and done, it's like, yeah, there's the pile of bones thing that that he's talking about.
Zack Carter:I think I think the knowledge take is a really interesting one of that they're gonna tell you the secrets. I think it fits really well with pornography addiction. And so that's kind of where my mind goes because I have a lot of clients who struggle with that nowadays. Yeah. And so, like, the the, like, in your face, the beauty of the sirens, the call, the song.
Zack Carter:But one of the huge triggers to, like, wanna look at pornography oftentimes is curiosity. Can I find a new image or a new person or an what's the what's the next highest level of intensity I can get to in the types of things I'm watching? So a lot of it could be curiosity driven in the same way it was for The Sirens. But here's the part that I think is even more powerful around this story. Odysseus plans ahead of time when he knows he's going to enter into temptation, when he's going to get into those sirens' waters.
Zack Carter:He says, hey, everyone, plug your ears with wax. I want you to tie me to the mass. And so he he knew ahead of time that this was going to be a problem, and so he prepared for it.
Mark Odland:Yeah. I mean, I think that's a a really good insight, Zach. And actually a lot of parallels with not only do we do counseling, but some of our listeners know that our specialty is is unique in the sense that we work almost exclusively with high performing guys who are under a lot of responsibility, a lot of stress, kind of the Odysseus. You know? They're the captain of the ship.
Mark Odland:We deal with a lot of captains of of of their metaphorical ships, business leaders, CEOs, entrepreneurs, professionals of different kinds. And a lot of times they're running into problems when they are under the illusion that the same discipline, work ethic, all these things that got me to where I am should be enough to resist this temptation. And so it's kinda like the blinders are on, and it becomes kind of their weak spot. And Odysseus somehow had enough honesty about his own nature that he didn't fall quite into that same temptation. He tied himself to the mast.
Mark Odland:He said, yep. I mean, maybe theoretically, Odysseus had a had a good therapist, and, he's like, well, you have to be able to deal with the sirens and needed to use some strategies, when the sirens. This is yeah. Maybe. No.
Mark Odland:I just gotta tie myself to the mast. I can't even I can't do this. And that tie is actually ties in with, like, some of the things Jesus said about if if if, you know, one hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Yeah.
Mark Odland:Probably not literal, but the point is well taken. Sometimes extreme measures are necessary to give ourselves a fighting chance because we are much weaker than we like to think sometimes.
Zack Carter:Exactly. So, like, what is a modern application of these principles? Oftentimes, men, especially high performance men, believe they need to do it on their own, and they believe that they don't need outside help. A lot of times that's that's false. If we look at the hero's journey, part of the hero's journey is bringing in people to help them.
Zack Carter:You have that with Neo. He gets Morpheus and he gets Trinity. You have that in Lord of the Rings. You have the the group of people that are going to Mordor together. You've got it in the TV show Band of Brothers.
Zack Carter:You have your band of brothers that you're banding together with. With pornography addiction, oftentimes, we need accountability partners, and we need blockers, and have accountability partners on those blockers. And that takes like a that takes a lot of humility. And there are a lot of guys that don't wanna do that. They don't want anyone to know about issue that they have in secret.
Zack Carter:And so it takes a lot of courage to come out and ask for help, whether it's from therapists like us or whether it's from the people in their own life. And so if people are thinking about this and have gone back and forth on blockers, Three options that you can go with. Oftentimes, computers themselves, phones themselves have some form of form of blockers that you can engage in. So look it up online and see like what are the parental blockers on my device. Next, a lot of people use Covenant Eyes.
Zack Carter:And so Covenant Eyes is not as much of a blocker as it is as like a monitoring software that takes images of whatever you're looking at. And so if you know, hey, somebody's going to see this image that I'm looking at or this video that I'm looking at, a lot of times it prevents people from pulling pulling up that video or that image. You can also use something called Kanopy, which is an actual blocker that will use AI to block out those images. And you can have an accountability partner on that one as well. It's a little less invasive.
Zack Carter:So if you're like, dude, I'm not having somebody watch me. Okay, well, Canopy allows an accountability partner. They'll get reports if you're messing around with stuff, But you still have an accountability partner. If you're like, dude, those options don't really work for me. Lastly, there's a software called Cold Turkey that you can set up specific times to block you.
Zack Carter:So maybe most of the day, you don't need help. Most of the day, you're not tempted to look at pornography. What's nice about cold turkey is that it takes a period of time and just says, okay, I usually struggle after 7PM. Okay. So it just like turns your device into a brick, and you can't do a bunch of things with it after that after that hour.
Zack Carter:And so these are a bunch of really good options to kinda tie yourself to the mast like Odysseus.
Mark Odland:Yeah. I think that's a powerful metaphor. I think we've seen week in and week out with our guys too that it's not the exception of the rule when a successful guy is struggling with something like this. It's almost more like the question of, alright, man. Like, what is your struggle?
Mark Odland:If it's not porn, it's something else. So many metaphors to mine in the in in the Odyssey. I mean, you could go down with the the calypso and eating the lotus flowers, and there's there's, like, a lot of interesting things we could we could and it's such a powerful metaphor for just the guys that we work with. But, yeah, I think it's tying yourself to the mast is is a huge takeaway, for our listeners today. The truth is there's no shame in giving giving ourselves a fighting chance.
Mark Odland:We're all human. We all have weaknesses. Being stubborn and relying on, quote, unquote, willpower, it's got its limits. Right?
Zack Carter:Yeah. Absolutely. Well, as you're listening out there, I I'm curious. What are some some things you see in this story? Are Mark and I business not about knowledge and it's not about pornography.
Zack Carter:That's stupid. Like, let us know. Like, okay, what are we missing? What is, what are you seeing in the story that we're not seeing? Be sure to subscribe, give us a like, comment below.
Zack Carter:And as always, if you find that you need help, reach out to us at escapethecagenow dot com. Sign up for a clarity call, free clarity call where you can meet either me or Mark, and we can talk about how we can help you on this journey. Thanks for watching our video today.