Regular guys — genuine, open and aware.

1. Live Consciously

   Stay aware of your impact, your reactions, and your presence in the group.

   Read the full suggestion

   Living life fully begins with awareness—of ourselves, of others, of the world. Awareness is a tree that always branches out while always growing within. Its root is an intimate knowledge of our self. Awareness looks and listens and considers, but it doesn’t judge what it sees.

   Humans are animals with consciousness, but this awareness can seem like a mystery. At its core, though, isn’t it an acknowledgement and an acceptance of our whole self and experience? This deep self-awareness allows us to connect freely and openly with others, too.

   How are you living life? Unconsciously or consciously? As a self-absorbed observer or a self-celebrating actor? In the there and then of fears, longings, and regrets, or in the here and now of reality? Can you look at yourself, others, and the world around you, simply noticing it all with wonder?

2. Live Curiously

   Ask open questions. Seek to understand another man’s perspective rather than judge it.

   Read the full suggestion

   Curiosity opens doors to discovery, within ourselves and within our relationships. If I’m not curious about what’s going on inside me, then how self-aware can I be? If I’m not curious about what’s going on with and inside others, then how rich a connection with them can I have?

   Curiosity wants to learn about what it doesn’t know. It asks questions, waits for answers, and withholds judgment. Its goal isn’t so much to accumulate knowledge about people and things. Instead, it’s to know others deeply and to be known by them just the same.

   How are you living life? With an open heart and mind or behind the closed doors of fear and judgment? How honestly and vulnerably do you know yourself and others? Are you in the habit of asking hard questions and waiting, without judgment, for the answers?

3. Live Candidly

   Speak your truth directly and honestly, without pretense or performance.

   Read the full suggestion

   Oysters, mussels, and many men have something in common. They clam up when others approach. For mollusks, the instinct’s understandable. It’s no fun to be a seagull’s breakfast. What if you’re a human being, though, who wants to be in relationship with others?

   To live candidly is to live in open, honest, sincere dialogue with ourselves and with others. It’s to speak and listen from a place of curiosity, empathy, non-reactivity, and love. When we live candidly, we say no to our ego’s need to protect itself and yes to our heart’s desire to share itself with others.

   How are you living life? Do you reveal your true self or conceal it from friend and foe alike? Do you share thoughts and feelings honestly or withdraw into a hardened shell? Can you listen consciously to others . . . with curiosity but without judgment? Do you guard against being vulnerable or open up to the potential of deep human connection?

4. Live Emotionally

   Honor your feelings and give other men the room to express theirs fully without rushing to suppress or fix them.

   Read the full suggestion

   For many guys, experiencing their emotions is like riding a scary roller coaster. They’d rather not get on in the first place, but life seems to insist. Once on, they grip their safety harness and grit their teeth. They can’t get off the ride fast enough when it’s over. What scares many about their emotions is the unknown.

   What if we allowed ourselves, though, to feel fear, anger, sadness, happiness, and arousal? What if we let them flow through us, instead of stuffing them down, trying to silence them? What might happen? We might just learn to live free . . . from expectations, from judgment, from fear.

   How are you living life? Clinging to a safety harness or embracing your emotions as they come? Do you stuff your feelings down, hoping the scary ride will soon be over? Or do you let yourself feel all your feelings, curious about what life’s next twist might bring?

5. Live Intentionally

   Take active responsibility for your choices, your growth, and your relationships.

   Read the full suggestion

   For some people, life is something that happens to them. As though on a flimsy raft on a stormy sea, they feel tossed around by their circumstances. They feel powerless, subject to whatever life washes their way. Worse, many feel anxious, even resentful, that things don’t turn out as they expected.

   We don’t know how life’s winds will blow, nor can we control them. Still, we can stop living passively—as a victim, blaming someone or something when life doesn’t go our way. We can experience life intentionally, as a choice, curious about what it might teach us.

   How are you living life? Do you create, or co-create, your experiences, or does everything merely happen to you? Do you take full responsibility for how you show up, or do you often react in pain, like a wounded animal in a cage?

1. Listening

   We listen without rushing to judgment. A man is not interrupted, corrected, or improved while he is speaking. Listening is participation, and it is enough on its own.

2. No fixing

   No advice giving and no fixing. What another man is carrying is his to carry, and a circle is not a place to be solved. Speaking from your own experience is the alternative that works.

3. Speaking from experience

   We speak from our own experience rather than about other people's. That keeps a conversation honest and it keeps it from turning into a debate about who is right.

4. Privacy

   What is shared in a gathering is treated with care. Groups agree at the start how they will hold what is said, and those agreements are stated out loud rather than assumed.

5. Dignity

   Every man is treated with dignity and respect, including the ones who see things differently. A circle is not a soapbox and it is not a debate stage.

MenLiving formally became a 501(c)(3) in 2019 to reach its vision of being the catalyst of connection for thousands of men and boys throughout all walks of life — providing resources, teachings and a safe space to more fully know ourselves, build a bridge to healthy masculinity and make the world a better place. Nonprofit status makes it easier to work with other organisations and to raise the support that funds MenLiving’s programs.

MenLiving is peer connection. It is not therapy, it is not clinical care, and a facilitator is a trained volunteer rather than a professional. Many men do both, and they do different jobs.

Questions men actually askSee all circles