Filthy Contractor: Writes About Men And Emotions.

Men feel and move through emotions. Naturally, moving through them with reasonable force, as the summer breeze moves through a forest, between the trees, weaving around branches, shaking the leaves free.

Men move through them, and trouble begins when we stop the good movement through them. We sit, dig our heels in and begin not to work out an exit strategy or how to move past it, sitting there stale without thinking or trying to understand why did we stop here? Being guilty of this, working out of the dark places will be difficult.

No real pep talk for it, like doing mental grunt work. The trending thing to call it is “shadow work.” It just needs to be done, especially if this mental chaos is spilling over to how you treat your family, brothers, and friends. There is no shortcut for this. I looked; the shortcut is not wasting any time on looking.

It would be no different than jumping from one thing that makes you happy to the next, chasing it around like a dog chasing a bone. If you believe happiness is only doing easy things or things you like, you will need to look a little deeper into what it means to you. Some men call this being busy. Some of us even fall into using food, or drink, lust, as a distraction from the “real” nasty work, like facing the 6 basic fears.

Happiness and being of a positive mental attitude are not the same thing either. Men should be aware of the distinction between the two. Men will also fall into the trap of thinking what they feel is the truth. Feeling a thing has nothing to do with fact. Feelings are not facts, and facts are not feelings. A man who cannot use his rational mind to disconnect from what is a feeling and what is true is easily controlled, tricked, and leveraged to do something outside of his character.

The flip side to that coin is that if you become a man obsessed with facts. You will become a man rigid and mechanical in your thinking, living, relationships, and love. Men are not machines, and we are not inspired by facts to move into the unknown and the chaos of life.

We are inspired by examples, great stories, beauty, love, endurance, and overcoming significant challenges. Tell us extraordinary tales of perseverance, heroics, virtue, where few overcame many, and watch us smile with wild energy, ready to move well into our own story. List off facts, like they are groceries or an Excel spreadsheet, and the soul of it has lost its connection to a man's heart. Men are not heartless, but we don’t do well when we dwell on negative emotions from an event that happened long enough ago that a whole new life could have been lived since then. Move forward. There is nothing back there for you gents.

This is the opinion of a filthy contractor.

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