I was just hearing uh Jocko Willink speak about the best parts of the Navy SEALs and it wasn't the action, it wasn't the anticipation, it was doing something that was worthy with other men who you love and live and would die for. That was the best part, and I think that's something we're all deeply missing inside of us. We live in a very atomized, isolated world right now, one totally different from our ancestors. Our ancestors used to hunt, go to war, build, farm, celebrate, get wild with one another. They were raised in tight-knit bands of boys who would grow into manhood and have comrades beside them. There was a sense of community and this sense of valuation from the tribe towards men. You felt like you were a part of something, and we are totally missing that right now. In fact, one in three men today report having less than two friends, one in five men report not having a single close friend. Think about how different that is from even 50 years ago, let alone 5,000 years.

ago, we live in this individualistic world where it is every man for himself, and our circles have grown pathetically small. And because of this, I think heartbreak hurts that much worse. In these conditions, codependent relationships are the norm. When you don't have a strong sense of community and brotherhood around you, you wrap your whole world into someone else, and the attachment is so strong. And when that inevitably breaks apart, you're left, your life crumbles, your whole world crumbles. The sense of having to go face life totally alone is one of the worst, you know, sufferings known to man. I know I experienced this really acutely a few years ago, where I felt like I was just in the desert, devoid of connections, and the one person who truly knew me, who truly loved me, was gone. So what do you do about it? We're gonna get into a couple things in this video. This is Wisdom Warriors. I'm Christian. Thank you for joining me. So this video was inspired. I was sitting with a friend at a festival a couple weeks ago, and man

he was going through the darkest part of a heartbreak, and facing the reality that he may never talk to that woman again. And he loves her, though the worst part is, he was terribly in love with her even after a year of being apart. I sat there with him, just holding that darkness and literally crying with him for an hour because I know how black that world is. I know I've laid on my floor incapable of moving for hours, with despair whirling through my mind. Words could never describe it. It felt so good to hold that space for another brother, and I think that's a first step in healing at all is being able to talk about it, being able to feel it. My friends, when you start speaking about what you're going through, when you start speaking about the addiction, the heartbreak, the attachment, the pain, the grief, the loss, the shame, the sorrow, all sudden like you start crying, like you start purging and processing that emotion on a much deeper level. It's why Community Support is so important for

these times of initiation, and that's what heartbreak really is. It is a time of initiation. So today, I want to talk about separation. I want to talk about heartbreak. Now, I don't know how much my petty words can do on the subject because the pain goes so deep, but I'm gonna do my best. So I broke this down into three keys for going through separation. Number one is you have to collapse; you have to feel. This is one of the hardest initiations for men, is surrendering when everything goes to it feels like your life is falling apart. It's falling down on you. What are you going to do? The despair can run rampant in your mind, creating all these catastrophes into the future, and your mind can be like a really unsafe place. In that situation, I highly encourage you to feel, to go directly into the energy, into the emotion, and feel with the heart of a warrior. You see, the mind will keep weaving stories endlessly until you deal with the energy behind the emotion. Feeling is healing, and it takes tons of

courage to actually surrender and let go of all this escapism, and let go of all this control, and let go of the future, and be with yourself where you are now. In my book, The Psychology of Slaying Dragons, I call this surrendering into the Heart of the Warrior, and it is necessary to earn a new life. You've got to recognize when you're in that place, that time of trouble, or big loss, or big heartbreak is upon you. You have to feel into the fact that this is happening for you, this is your opportunity. And trust me, brother, this darkness, this blackness, this despair, it will pass, it will pass. So how do you want to face it? How do you want to face this suffering that God gave to you? Marcus Aurelius once wrote one of my favorite quotes, and it says, Accept whatever comes to you woven in the pattern of your destiny, for what could more aptly fit your needs. In order to surrender fully, there has to be an element of faith, a faith in the whole, that even if this person was your

perfect somebody and you lost them, and you things up, or you know, whatever your mind is telling you. You have to find some sense of Faith, some space of connection to a higher intelligence that is guiding your life. One of my favorite mantras is, I believe, I trust in the guidance of my life. Can you accept loss? Can you accept grief? And can you accept it with the heart of a warrior? Whatever cracks the heart, lets the light in. I know when I was going through this great grief, that even just the sunrise, the chirping of the birds in the morning, could literally overwhelm me with joy and tears. But that night, I'd have to face that Darkness again, and the waves of heart. How open my whole being was, was one of the most special experiences of life, and it is an initiation that forever changed me. And I just want to let you know that it's going to pass. So how do you want to face what is number two? Build your foundation, get on your mission, my friends. Heartbreak brings fire, it brings pain, it brings

anger it brings tears, and all of that can be funneled into your work. Into a Reinventing Your Life. I want you to take a step back and look at this Grand Arc of life you are on. You know you're probably here in your 20s, in your 30s, and you have so much more to live, so much more to give, so much more to love, right? Who do you want to be? This falling apart may actually just be a falling into place. Let me repeat that. When your life falls apart, it is actually falling into place. This is an opportunity to reinvent yourself, to let go of addictions, to let go of attachments, to let go of patterns that aren't serving you, and bring that fire into what you're here to do, into your purpose, into your work, into the gym, into your foundation. Build your physical foundation in life, my friends, so that you are ready to take on that next opportunity that walks through your door, and it's going to be so beautiful. Number three is build your Social

Capital. This probably helped me through heartbreak more than anything. To really elaborate on this, I'm going to lay out Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Understanding this pyramid really helped me reinvent my life when all things fell apart. At the very bottom, you have physical needs: take care of yourself - food, water, shelter. Like figure out at least that element or else you're never gonna have a foundation. Number two: safety needs. This is like get going on a career, on something, on a job, on some work. Like bring in resources, start building your physical resources, and stay busy. It's so important to stay busy, especially at the beginning of heartbreak, so that you don't add unnecessary suffering onto yourself. Number three, this one and the next one, number four, are so important. Number three is love and belonging. It's critical to start building a friend group, to start building and participating in community, start gathering brothers around you. Here's the thing I realized when I was going through heartbreak is women will come and go, you could have the love of your

life for 10, 15, 20 years, and all of a sudden she's gone forever, right? But if you build friendships, true friendships, true Brotherhood that lasts forever, I will always be best friends with my best friends. That's not going anywhere unless something absolutely catastrophic happens. There's a sense of security in that. There's a sense of security in community. So I'm going to talk more about how we build love and belonging right after number four. Number four is esteem needs. This means feeling confident inside yourself, building skills, feeling valuable to others, valuable to community, being rooted in your Dharma, in your purpose. This is about being disciplined and about being courageous. The upper levels of the Pyramid of self-actualization are completed through one thing primarily. You need this one quality, and that is courage. And in times of initiation, in times of intense heartbreak and turmoil, courage is what you most need. The courage to feel, the courage to go try new things, the courage to go meet new people, the courage to

leave behind the friends, the place that you grew up in, and go find where you belong, and go find the people you belong with. Courage is going to change your life, and that is the number one thing I recommend if you're going through heartbreak is courage. I was at that Festival sitting with that friend, and he wasn't the only friend I held space with there. I saw multiple men, at least three, going through heartbreak, you know, like even if they were interacting or they were alone. I saw this deep sadness in their eyes, and all I wanted to do was just go up to them and lift them up and cry with them if that needs to happen, but also light the fire of courage in them to go talk to someone new, to go talk to other brothers, to go build new relationships, to go expand again. Courage to go through that threshold is everything in terms of building Social Capital. There's two steps that changed my life forever. Number one is go and participate in community. When I went through heartbreak, I started going to kickboxing.

classes, volleyball night, dance night, you know, concerts every week, every day. I'd go to the coffee shop, and I'd go to the gym, right? And I'd just go out. I'd participate. I'd see people. I'd build, you know, small relationships that could snowball into something. I was out in the world. It's so important to get out of your monk mode, man. Cage and go live, go live in the world, go see people. It's so important. So, however you can do that, go do it. Number two is approach people every single day. I approached one person new. I still do this to this day, to some degree, but just having the courage and having the practice of if I'm interested in some guy at the gym, I go say hi. If I, you know, like a girl at the coffee shop, I'll go give her a compliment and ask her her name. This is courage to approach someone new. A couple years ago, I approached this new guy at dance, and I was like, hey, I'm Christian. I introduced myself. We had a conversation, right?

invited me up to his house a year later. We started running, you know, men's work and Brotherhood stuff there, and all of a sudden, you know, years later, I have the best group of guys I've ever experienced. Like, I love every single one of them, and I never would have had that if I didn't have the courage to say hey to somebody. One new connection, one new connection can change your life forever. Have the courage to say hello. It's so important. It's so simple. Go out in the world and say hello. That's how you build social capital to the point where you have Community. You have sisters. You have brothers. You have possible relationship Horizons. You don't feel so attached to this one person anymore because you have all of this opportunity over here. This is critical. And coming back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when you have your physical needs, your safety needs, your love and belonging needs, and your esteem needs met, right, you are in a place to have a beautiful relationship. Until that point, every relationship you

get into will be codependent because you guys will have to share a pyramid together. You guys don't have the the bottom built so when you build this pyramid by yourself and you find someone who's also built that pyramid for herself also you guys can work together on creating an actualized relationship and that's really what we all want. When I looked back on the relationships in my past, so many of them, yes, they were beautiful but also they were holding me back in huge ways from stepping fully into my Dharma, from stepping fully into Community, into friendships, into my life right. And now I have that and now I feel ready for a beautiful relationship to unfold because I have my Foundation. So I hope all that inspires you. In conclusion, so much of heartbreak is about Courage, the courage to face the truth, the courage to let go of someone or something that is no longer working, the courage to go expand, to go try new things, the courage to go meet new people, the courage to start on the purpose on.

the path that you dream of. Courage is what leads you through the thresholds of initiation. Men of Courage earn a new dawn. If you want to go deeper into all my work around heartbreak, around courage, and initiation, make sure to check out my new book, The Psychology of Slaying Dragons. Over half of it is dedicated to this topic. It's coming out in two weeks, so you can hit that notification Bell below, or you can sign up link in the description to get notified about the launch date. Would love for you to support my work in that way and support you in that way. Thanks for being here. This is Wisdom Warriors. I'm Christian. You're well, my brothers. [Music]

Dealing with heartbreak in the lonely new world

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