I coach men. It's what I do.
I wake up, grab a coffee, sit at my computer, and immediately start answering emails, texts, and Discord DMs. Even prior to my 10–12 hour coaching day, which is most days, I'm already hitting the ground running, putting out time-sensitive fires with buzzer-beater energy.
Guys in all time zones reach out constantly for various reasons, and I'm always on call to give them advice, or just hear them out on something that's troubling them. I do it because it's my job, but also because it's my purpose. For me, mentorship is a labor of love; and having worked under some of the very best in the world, it is a privilege and an honor for me to now pay forward the lessons I have learned in my 55+ years from these unheralded masters.
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At this point in my career, with more than 25K coaching hours under my belt, I have similarly earned the title "Master Coach." While flattering, I think it's more accurate to say I practice mastery than to say I am a master in some absolute sense.
It's like earning a black belt. You join the ranks of black belts who will spend the rest of their lives training, raising their craft to an art form through many, many grueling and highly technical reps. And comically, the training partners who will best help you develop your skill set couldn't be more dichotomized. As the adage goes, the two most dangerous people on the mats are a black belt and a white belt.
This is never so clear to me than when I work with someone whom I consider to be a "difficult" client.
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In theory, my authority is established in our initial consultation. They've set up the call. They know what this is. It's why they're here. I'm Dennis of Man-UP! Life Coaching (MULC), and my pedigree as the Bro Coach® precedes me. They're here to train, and they've chosen me as a coach because I'm able to get them results.
But here's where it gets complicated. What precisely are the results? What exactly is my offer?
The MULC elevator pitch is that I'm a wellness and betterment coach who helps men achieve personal and professional success. But different people of different ages and at different points in their lives are obviously going to have different definitions of success. Right?
Well, yes and no. I jokingly tell guys that the unofficial MULC slogan is "Come for the abs, stay for the enlightenment." And while humorous, it's really pretty accurate. The guy coming here "for abs" is typically looking to earn external approval for his productivity, performance, and achievement. He seeks to raise his self-esteem through his accomplishments, to compensate for his low self-worth.
The "enlightenment" piece is when he learns to prioritize internal approval, and raise his self-worth through the practice of self-love, which is a switch that, when toggled, literally inverts your value system and thus how you experience the world.
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So back to the difficult client. This is a guy who, for whatever reason (and there are many), is fighting the idea of self-love as the meta holistic fix to all of his subsequent problems. In his limited idea of how this process works, he imagines he's hiring a coach or mentor to address symptoms. For example, he may be overweight and wants to get in shape because he imagines this will change his quality of life in some meaningful way. Or maybe he has a scarcity mindset and wants to make enough money to feel both accomplished and financially safe.
The list of symptoms that guys try to address in an effort to cure their underlying issue is practically endless. Find a new job. Launch a side hustle. Get a hair transplant. Find a girlfriend or wife. Repair a strained father-child dynamic. Again, I can do this all day. And I do.
The difficult client says, "I'm hiring you to help me to [blank], because [blank] is the reason I'm unfulfilled."
I correct him and say, "Actually, you're hiring me to teach you the thing you don't know that you don't know. And sure, along the way we can check as many boxes as you'd like. But we're changing why we're checking those boxes."
And he doesn't like this answer. In fact, he hates it. And I don't use the term "hate" lightly. The experience of trying to get the rebellious client to man-up and follow protocol, rather than debating with me and trying to control the process, is exactly like the dynamic between an angsty son and a tough-love dad.
The dad does the son a disservice if he lets him throw emotional tantrums without consequence. But on the flip side, if he fails to persuade his son through patience and persistence, and instead either explodes in righteous indignation or throws his hands in the air and walks away, the kid is going to feel like he is unlovable.
And so, in keeping with the black belt/white belt analogy, the dad tries to use kid gloves, and the result is that he gets beat up trying to manage this errant, caustic child of his. And here's where the mirror metaphor comes into play.
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The father is seeing his son as a reflection of himself. He wants the son to trust him. To learn from his mistakes. And most importantly, to surpass him. To be better than him. And this is because the father too struggles with self-judgment.
When the kid acts like a brat, the dad blames himself. He sees his own character flaws caricatured in the son's flagrant behavior, and he wants it to stop at all costs because it's painful to watch. It's the ultimate failure for a dad.
And the son wants the dad to accept his ideas. To appreciate his viewpoints. To remove his strict expectations and to love him unconditionally. He wants his dad to be a mirror in which he sees himself as worthy. As lovable.
So here you have the coaching conundrum. How do I help someone who doesn't follow my instructions? Who doesn't show me the respect I deserve? Whose toxic self-hatred is projected outward to everyone around him? Who sees this as proof that the world is against him, rendering him a hostile victim nurturing extremely unhealthy vengeance fantasies? How do you teach someone to let go of hate and embrace love? And for that matter, how do you love the unlovable, when every effort to do so results in a kick in the dick?
Well man, that's why I'm sitting here at my computer as my family sleeps, typing this out as an exercise in self-regulation. I have had several interactions with some especially stubborn, defiant, and emotionally violent clients in the past few days that have pushed me to the point of overwhelm.
When my guys experience this in their lives, my patent prescription is as follows:
- Feel your feelings. Breathe and let yourself feel whatever is happening in your body as calmly as possible, like you would if you ate a hot pepper that was way spicier than you expected. Take the ride. Embrace the sensations. Feel them. They don't mean anything. Develop your ability to feel without assigning meaning.
- Choose your emotions. If you truly want peace, then choose peace. You have a choice, and self-mastery is not just understanding this intellectually, but practicing it in moments when you are dysregulated, when it is least intuitive, and therefore the most challenging. Lock in on it with intention. "I choose peace in this moment." Breathe, rinse, repeat.
- Control your narrative. Your self-talk will insist that you have a "right" to be angry, to be punishing, to be reciprocally toxic, and so on. And it's very tempting to let these arguments persuade you to choose unbecoming behaviors. Remember that you are not obligated to follow this outdated scripting, but rather have the power to change it. Redirect it, even if your phrasing is as simple as "I choose to see peace instead of this." Repeat it like a mantra as an antidote for intrusive thoughts.
Great coaching advice in theory. But I'm also up at 2:00 a.m. practicing what I preach, and man do I have empathy for my guys right now. This isn't an easy discipline to master. There's a restlessness in my body, like something in my gut is twitchy and could mule-kick me from within at any moment. I have to intentionally avoid replaying conversations in which these people were insufferable. I have to tell myself that now is when I earn my mastery title. Right now, by choosing love over hate.
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I have a teenage son. He's autistic and extremely difficult to reason with. Also, he's quite physical when he gets upset. If I'm not extremely careful in how I deal with him, he'll self-harm and lash out at me. When he does this, I have to override the impulse to reflexively reciprocate. I love my son. He deserves my peace. He needs me to be a mirror in which he sees himself as safe and loved. Any judgments I project become spots on the mirror. It's my shit, but he sees it on his face.
These difficult clients are the same. For them, I'm a rent-a-dad, whether they realize it or not, whom they have hired not to obey but to defy. That's really what's happening in this dynamic. The game is that they do everything they can to convince me that they are unlovable, and challenge me to love them even as they're coming at me knives out.
And as someone who manages PTSD, having them jump repeatedly on the bear trap and not snap takes a tremendous amount of energy. And so, like my son, I have to show love. They deserve peace. I need to be a spotless mirror.
And like all of you, I have an inner child. The young man that I was is still working through his trauma, and so he needs me to parent him with love. I do my best, just as I ask my clients to do in our sessions. I validate incessantly, to override my own abusive self-talk, which would otherwise play nonstop in my head, reinforcing all of my doubts and fears. Of the three, this guy, my inner child, is the one whom I struggle most to forgive and to love. Yet this is why I meditate, or pray as it were. In these moments of reflection, I see a spotless mirror that doesn't judge me, but instead shows me in the light of love, mercy, and grace.
And it is this grace that I extend to everyone. The love that I offer my brother is the love that I receive in kind. And when he does finally have his moment of enlightenment, it isn't because of some genius instructions I've offered him from the Master Coach Playbook.
It's because in one holy instant, and you really never know when it's going to happen, he and his coach find themselves standing before each other as opposed mirrors, their spotlessness yielding an infinity tunnel, and in that moment of divine clarity it's comically obvious that peace is really all there is when you remove the obstacles to love's presence.
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