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EP41: Embracing Vulnerability as a Superpower
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“There’s a sense that our value as men is tied to what we produce in the world, and that’s a dangerous mentality,” explains Jordan Holmes, founder of How Men Cry. Through gatherings, retreats, and speaking engagements, Jordan creates spaces for men to open up about their mental health struggles and the pressures of traditional masculinity—pressures that often prevent them from opening up elsewhere. Under the performance name “Dxtr Spits,” he uses music, poetry, spoken word, and storytelling to challenge his own narratives about manhood.
Jordan explains that our narratives are shaped by social conditioning and childhood experiences, often becoming so ingrained that we mistake them for our true personalities. By embracing self-curiosity, vulnerability, and neuroplasticity, we can discover who we are beneath our trauma. He shares the three questions that spark the most passionate discussions and how he models the vulnerability he aims to inspire.
“How Men Cry” goes beyond just shedding tears. In today’s episode of The Conscious Entrepreneur, Jordan shares the story behind his organization’s name and the subtle yet significant difference between “how” and “why.”
Quotes
- “There’s a lot of social programming and other things that have been delivered to men where we have—the sense I said before that our value is tied to what we produce within the world. And it’s such a dangerous mentality to be caught up in because then in the moments where you aren’t producing, or something that you produce fails, or the business doesn’t grow as much as you need it to within a certain amount of time, then that becomes something that’s taken on personally.” (5:25 | Jordan Holmes)
- “So many of the traumas and narratives that we deal with in general—how we learn to be in a relationship, how we learn to be in friendship, how we learn to communicate, our self-talk—so many things are rooted in our childhood experiences.” (7:03 | Jordan Holmes)
- “I’m not really talking about physical tears, quite often, I’m talking about all the different ways that men—or people, for that matter—can cry out from unprocessed pains and traumas. And from a lot of the material, like my writing and performance material, I was finding through-lines in narratives of my own pain and the ways that I was crying out without necessarily dropping physical tears.” (14:21 | Jordan Holmes)
- “Individuals don’t really learn their best when you try to force answers on them, anyway. Part of why I think so many of the male narratives in the world are not landing well is because we’re doing a lot of prescription of “This is how someone needs to be” or criticizing this part of somebody or all these other things that don’t really allow for the space for people to learn and grow safely.” (19:21 | Jordan Holmes)
Links
Connect with Jordan Holmes:
LinkedIn: https://howmencry.com/
Website: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-dxtr-holmes/
Connect with Alex Raymond:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/afraymond/
Website: https://consciousentrepreneur.us/
HiveCast.fm is a proud sponsor of The Conscious Entrepreneur Podcast.
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