Men come to MenLiving with diverse backgrounds and experiences to engage in discussions and activities rooted in living a conscious life as a man in the 21st century. Men have in some ways forgotten how to connect with (and rely on) other men, our wives, partners, families and our communities beyond simply the “surface” level. Our vision is a world of healthy, intentional, connected men.
Our Vision is
a world of healthy, intentional, connected men.
Our Mission is
to create spaces where men can connect, heal, and thrive.
Our Suggestions for Living Fully
MenLiving wants to see a world of healthy, intentional, connected men.
To make that vision a reality, we create spaces where men can connect, heal, and thrive.
We also offer simple suggestions for how they might live life more fully.
MenLiving isn’t about creeds or gurus or judgments.
Still, we believe that some approaches to life can lead to greater contentment.
We offer the following for your consideration, hopeful that you’ll find it helpful.
You may even find these suggestions transformative.
Live Consciously
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?
Live Curiously
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?
Live Emotionally
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?
Live Candidly
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?
Live Intentionally
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?
Non-Profit Status
We formally created a 501c3 in 2019 in order to reach our 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. Our non-profit status enables us to more easily to work with other organizations as well as making it easier to raise the necessary support to fund the programs of MenLiving.