The New Man: How A Swiss Army Knife Can Solve Toxic Masculinity
By: Untidy Bits
Tags: Toxic Masculinity, Masculinity, Life Lessons, Men, Mental Health

The New Man: How A Swiss Army Knife Can Solve Toxic Masculinity

CyberTool M by Victorinox

Is anyone else tired of hearing about so-called toxic masculinity? I know I am. I’m also tired of hearing people use words without knowing what they mean.

Here’s the definition of masculinity: qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of men. And now for a few of those qualities that fit the above definition: strength, courage, independence, leadership, and assertiveness. If you look at these qualities, there is nothing here that could be considered “very harmful or unpleasant in a pervasive or insidious way.” (I grabbed this definition of “toxic” from a quick Google search).

Like barnacles attaching themselves to the hull of a boat, though, certain beliefs have become associated with what makes a man manly, including the belief that men must be hypersexual, emotionless, hard-driven animals.

For such men, being strong means having big “guns” (although they might need to use a hook to reach back and get the toilet paper). Courage is confused with being angry almost all of the time. Independence is taken to mean that they cannot accept any help from others; otherwise, they are weak. Assertiveness is confused with being a jerk. And leadership? These men have none.

The image above is a stereotype. Like all stereotypes, it arose because there are men who behave like this. These men should not be taken as role models; instead, they should be viewed as what they are: examples of what happens when masculine qualities are distorted and amplified negatively.

I want to scrape these barnacles off the ship of Masculinity, and I’m going to use a Swiss Army Knife to do it. Since there aren’t any helpful male role models (the ones who try are often too feminine to be called masculine role models), this inanimate object will demonstrate what healthy masculinity looks like.

Since I don’t want you to have to jump all the way to the top of this article to refer back to the picture of my personal Swiss Army Knife, I’ll repeat it here.

With this picture in mind, I will now break down how the tools present in this humble knife can be a powerful metaphor for healthy masculinity. Along the way, I will provide links to resources I have found helpful; please note that none of these are affiliate links. Ready to begin? Let’s go!

The Bottle Opener and Can Opener

Opening. It can be so hard to open, can’t it? I have found that there are two types of openings that I need to accomplish: taking action that opens me up to the possibility of failure and being emotionally open (and therefore vulnerable) to others around me.

I was very emotionally open as a child, very willing to trust those around me. At the same time, I had a side of me that was also very closed off. Sometimes I was even pretty mean.

My parents got divorced when I was about five, and I missed my father terribly. Every time I would see him, I would run up to him, give him a big hug, and tell him how much I loved him. That was my open side.

A day later in school, though, I’d be the kid telling my color-blind classmate to color his drawing of Santa purple instead of red. Or if someone wanted to play with me, I might hit them on the head with a plastic shovel and play by myself. Those were manifestations of my mean side.

When I was six, I started watching Star Trek. The character that fascinated me the most was Mr. Spock. No matter what happened, Spock was always able to lean on logic to get through it. I was in awe.

Being able to be so emotionally controlled became my goal. I worked on it throughout my childhood and into my teen years. I thought being in control at all times was the height of accomplishment, and I practiced stuffing my emotions for many years.

Inside, though, I was far from controlled. If you could see inside my mind and soul at that point, you would have seen a storm of rage punctuated by images of extreme violence. I was angry at everyone and everything. Mainly I was just angry at having been born.

Sometimes I would drop my control, and the anger would seep out around the edges. I remember telling a classmate one time that he’d better shut his mouth before I decided to slit his throat. He shut up, but his face was red with anger.

By the time I was in my thirties, I was angry all the time. I had had some psychological counseling in my teens, so I knew it was dangerous to stuff my emotions. I figured I was smart enough to avoid the problem.

I began drinking heavily. I’d go out with friends and have a few drinks. Then I might have more with them or, more often, at a bar by myself. Then I’d go home and have some more. Maybe I’d throw in a few pills, just for good measure.

I remember having a realization one time that I was stone-cold sober after having twelve glasses of wine. It was the first time that alcohol had been unable to make me feel different.

Then I began to get arrested. I was eventually arrested twice for drunk driving. While I was lying on the floor of a jail cell for another time, I realized I had to change something.

The first thing that came to mind was that I should buy a gun and put a bullet in my head, just as my father had done a few years earlier. I also briefly considered grabbing a gun from a police officer and pointing it at another police officer. I figured that my luck had been bad for years, though, and I didn’t want to chance ending up a mental vegetable or handicapped in some other way.

Finally, the thought came that maybe Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) could help. I got out of jail, went to a bookstore and bought the Big Book of AA, and gave it a read. From that reading, I knew I had to have what AA offered. I decided to drop all of my preconceived notions about AA and its people. I also decided to drop my notions of what I thought worked and didn’t work; after all, my own knowledge had availed me nothing.

From that tiny bit of willingness to change, my life began to open.

In my first year in AA, I began to be open to new perspectives, new activities, a lot of things that were new to me. I began to realize that the ideas I had held my entire life were holding me back. I was willing to do things differently.

One big realization I had was that I was a slave to my emotions and the opinions other people held of me. I realized that I was selling myself short by giving in to my anger or trying to please other people. Instead of being the independent person I thought I was, I was truly dominated by others.

Another realization was that the image of maleness being sold by the culture was useless to me. I had embraced its notions, and all I had become was more and more psychotic. I realized that to live the life that I wanted, I would have to find my own notion of masculinity.

These notions led me to the conclusion that I had to get free. First up: loosening up the bondage of anger. Abandoning my previous technique of stuffing my emotions, I tried something new: observing them. This meant that when I was angry, I would stop myself from taking the first action that popped into my mind (screaming at or punching someone) and instead say, “Why do I feel this way?”

By doing that, I realized that what was occurring was that I had expected something from someone. I had expected that the person who cut in front of me would not do that. Or that the girl I fancied would fancy me back. Or that the person I engaged to clean my apartment would do so exactly as I wanted without needing a lot of instruction.

Two things emerged out of this realization: I began to see that my expectations were pretty unrealistic and that most people were not trying to do anything to me; they were trying to live their own lives as best they could.

I also realized that by observing my emotional reactions, I could decide to change them. Instead of being angry, I could choose to accept that the person in front of me who stimulated my reaction was not trying to do that — they were operating out of their own expectations.

This was the spot where I could choose to extend a little grace to them instead of offering them something else. When I started actively making that choice, my life and relationships improved. By experiencing success in one area of my life, I became open to trying new approaches in other areas.

And that emotional control I thought I needed? It turns out all I had to do was stop trying to control them, and they stopped controlling me.

I want to briefly touch on one point before moving on to other topics. As I was trying new approaches to dealing with my emotions, I failed many, many times. It’s not easy to rewire your brain when so much time has been spent laying the wiring in the first place. Each failure, though, gave me new insights. By being aware of why I failed, I became less likely to do so again. In short, my failures paved the way for my eventual success.

By trying and failing and mining those insights, I had become open to trying other new things. I realized that failure might represent a step back on my journey to attain something, but that step back would give me the energy to pursue success. Instead of failure become final, it had become a new tool.

So, openings. They’re hard, yes. But so worth it.

The Screwdriver and Bits

Why does my knife have a screwdriver with bits when the heads of the can and bottle openers can be used as screwdrivers? Because those tools aren’t appropriate for every situation, they don’t give the right leverage. And without the right leverage, it’s easy to screw something up (pun intended).

It was Archimedes who is reported to have said, “Give me a long enough lever and a place to stand, and I will move the world.” Whether Archimedes actually said that or not, the saying makes a good point: anything can be moved with the right leverage.

Let me give you an example: when my father committed suicide, I was left with a feeling of guilt that would not go away. To get some relief, I talked to a psychiatrist about my guilt right after the event. He told me that there was nothing to be guilty about; I could not have done anything to change the situation.

Nevertheless, I still harbored the idea that I could have changed the outcome if I had done something differently. A few years later, I talked about this situation over the course of many sessions with another counselor. Even though the guilt had lessened, and I had gained a clearer perspective about my father’s possible motivations, the guilt persisted.

Several years later, another bout of guilt over my father’s death hit me; it was also accompanied by extreme anxiety. My counselor suggested I try EMDR on this issue to see if I could change the result. I was skeptical but agreed to do it.

Over the course of an hour and a half session, my counselor walked me through the situation and my emotional reaction to it. As we proceeded, I could feel a distance opening up between me and the emotions of guilt I had around my father’s death. By the end, I was at peace with the situation.

Even though I occasionally think about my father’s death, I do not have the same emotional reaction, and my guilt over it is gone.

I tell you this story to point out that I had tried everything recommended to help deal with my guilt and found no relief. When the right technique was applied, though, a better result emerged — a result I was not really expecting.

That’s the power of leverage.

We can apply leverage in every area of our lives to create the kinds of life we want. Take the example of Colonel Harlan Sanders. Sanders bounced from job to job (and wife to wife) during his lifetime; he had a hard time finding anything that interested him long enough to stay with it for long, it seems. He finally settled on cooking and spent a good portion of the latter part of his life building what would become Kentucky Fried Chicken while sleeping in his car. Finally, he was able to sell KFC for $2 million (a princely sum at the time).

What does the story of Colonel Sanders have to do with leverage? Easy. Harlan Sanders took a simple recipe for fried chicken and leveraged it into millions of dollars through his dedication and hard work. It’s a reminder that no matter how humble our resources, leverage can multiply those resources into something we could not dream of.

Have a cause you believe in? If you can get others interested in that cause and turn it into a movement, you can have an impact that you never imagined. Leverage at work again.

So, where in your life can you apply a little leverage to create something better?

The Pliers

Ever had to turn a knob and couldn’t quite budge it? I bet you used a pair of pliers to get it started and then found it was easy to continue to turn it without the pliers, right?

I have all kinds of “knobs” in my life; I call them “projects” and “goals”. No matter how much I may want to start pursuing some of these, I sometimes find it difficult to get started. When I remember I have a set of pliers in my toolkit, I can apply leverage to get myself started.

Two tendencies within me often hold me back: I feel that I have to know everything about something before I start, and once I get started, I feel I must do everything perfectly. When these tendencies drive the bus, I procrastinate because I feel that if I can’t do it the way it should be done, why even bother starting?

So how do I use the pliers to apply leverage in my daily life? I sit down and do one thing each day for each project and goal I have. It may not be a big step, it may not be a perfect step, but it is a step. And each step gets me closer to my goal of finishing my project. As I work, I often have to remind myself that even an imperfect step is better than no step at all.

When working through my tendency to procrastinate, it doesn’t matter if I am doing something the “correct” way or am doing it perfectly: every action taken to fulfill my goal will produce a result. I may like that result or not. If I don’t, I’ve learned something that will help me in the future. I may even (gasp!) have to do something over again if I really don’t like it. It makes no difference; by engaging with the process instead of the result, I will gain valuable knowledge that will help me. Maybe not on this project, but the next one.

Now let’s talk about the idea of doing something the correct way. If I were a surgeon, there would be a minimal number of ways to do something; correctness would definitely matter. In my everyday life, though, I have found no absolutely correct way to do most things I want to do, yet there is a way to proceed that makes sense for me as an individual. It may not be the way the experts suggest. For me, though, it works and works well. I’ve learned to embrace this idea of correctness, and it has produced a feeling of freedom and inspired my creativity to flow more easily.

Then there’s the idea of being able to do something perfectly. As a man, I often have trouble with not being the best right out of the gate. This is partially because I have very high standards for myself and because I have been exposed to the narrative of masculinity in my culture and have ingrained within me the belief that I should know everything.

That belief doesn’t serve me, or anyone else, well. What’s more useful is to begin. When I need a little help remembering that, the pliers remind me that if I just apply a little leverage to get started, I’ll have an easier time of it later.

If, as men, we give up that we have to be experts in everything and concentrate on getting one thing done on each of our goals, we will be better off in the long run and less likely to be frustrated. And without that frustration, our relationships and our lives will improve vastly.

The Large Knife Blade

Every day we are bombarded on every side by information. This volume of information makes it hard to make decisions. What diet should I follow: keto, paleo, vegan, pescetarian, vegetarian? Should I be taking fish-based or algae-based Omega 3s (or do I need to be taking these supplements at all)?

I admit that I’m occasionally overwhelmed by the information coming at me. I have found that if I rely on the Internet, social media, or the mainstream news to help answer questions such as the ones above, I will be more confused when I end than before I started. When I think I have my decision narrowed down, I’ll find a bunch of information that contradicts the information I found to base my decision on. It’s easy to fall down information rabbit holes that it’s impossible to dig out of.

When these situations occur, I have found that it’s great to have a tool to cut through the noise. This is the large knife blade’s role: it helps me slash a path out of confusion to freedom. What faculty of mine corresponds to the large knife blade? My intellect, of course.

Over time I have developed the skill to read objectively and use my intellect to tear apart arguments. Often I have found that the “arguments” presented to us today are classic Aristotelian logical fallacies. So the “information” I was using to make my decisions was really disinformation: someone was trying to sell me something. It didn’t matter if they were actually selling something; news outlets are constantly selling their point of view to all who will listen.

If you haven’t developed your own powers of discrimination, there’s no time like the present to start. Buy Aristotle For Everybody by Mortimer J. Adler, along with the collected works of Aristotle, and start reading. Then start reading about symbolic logic, how propaganda works, and the various forms of manipulation you are exposed to every day. Armed with intellect, go out and start taking apart what you see. You’ll probably be appalled at what you find.

Oh, and that question about diet? The diet I decided to follow is the one that works for my body. How did I find what worked? By trying various approaches and seeing how my body handled it. I have found that it’s quite a useful exercise to treat my life as a series of experiments and record the data for each experiment and then act on what the data says. Try it. It truly can be that simple.

And the Omega 3s? I could tell you what I did, but then what would then happen to man’s quest for knowledge? Do your own research and find out. To make a good decision, learn about supplements, delivery methods (capsule v. tablet v. liquid, etc.), the bioavailability of nutrients when a certain delivery system is used (will my body actually use that nutrient or nutrients when it is delivered in the manner it is delivered?), and what form of a supplement (for example, what’s the difference between niacin and niacinamide or magnesium oxide versus magnesium carbonate? Does taking a calcium pill help you or hurt you?) is best. Start with Mark Hyman’s The Ultramind Solution and go from there.

Through the process of using your intellect and learning to discriminate, you’ll find that you will save a lot of time and money because clickbait will be unable to lure you in, and you’ll be able to choose quality products.

You’ll also be happier, and that’s part of what we all want in life, right?

The Small Knife Blade

When I look back upon my life, the best times of my life had one thing in common: I had many advisers whom I could trust to give me wisdom. Developing our intellect is necessary, yes, but it has its limits. One of those limits is that we cannot know everything (something I find especially galling). In fact, it is often hard for us to know what we do not know (alas, I am not Socrates).

So, we need trusted advisors. That’s what the small knife blade represents: the wise advisors that we all need in our lives. Their wisdom is like the small knife blade: instead of the large blade’s slashing, the small knife blade dissects our ideas and lets us see inside to see if our thinking is sound.

The idea of having wise advisors is totally contrary to the accepted idea that men should somehow know a priori what is right and should not rely on anyone to help them; if they admit they don’t know, they just admitted they are weak.

If you can’t tell what a load of crap that attitude is, then I suggest you look back into history. Every king (and every man seems to want to be a king these days) had a circle of advisors. King Arthur had Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. Henry VIII had Thomas Cromwell. The heads of Europe in the 18th century had Tallyrand. Kaiser Wilhelm I had Otto Von Bismarck.

All of these kings and heads of state knew that they needed more than their own wisdom to help them make their decisions, even if they sometimes resented it. Why then have we lost this idea?

Part of the reason is that the American ideal of “rugged individualism”, which was part of the American rejection of European tradition, has spread beyond America and into the world. Consequently, the idea of needing more than what our own intellect supplies has fallen out of favor.

The small knife blade exists to remind us that despite what culture may tell us, we need to be able to look at the fine details of a situation before rushing to judgment.

Okay, you say. Great. I’m not a king with a court full of advisers. Where do I find my Tallyrand? Look no farther than those friends of yours who are living lives that you respect (you do have friends, right? If not, start making some now.) Lay your concerns before them and ask them for their honest opinions. Tell them that you won’t take their advice as an attack but rather as input for creating a better life for yourself. Listen to what they say, honor it, and consider it deeply. When you have collected all of your friends’ advice, see if you can turn their good advice into a plan for your life.

Don’t just settle for a few advisers, though, have at least one for every area of your life. Are you an entrepreneur? Develop some mentors in this arena. Want to be healthier? Find someone to advise you. Want to be wealthier? Find a financial adviser. Your sex life not what it once was? Find someone who can help you with that. Emotional issues or addictions eating your lunch? Find a counselor. Don’t know good advisers? Again, ask your friends.

Above all, choose wise advisors. When doing so, it’s important to realize that wisdom does not always equate to intelligence. Some of the wisest advisors I have had in my life may not have been my match intellectually, but they had a perspective that was beyond mine at that time. So don’t hesitate to learn from every available source — you never know where you’ll find a diamond. Did Prince Hal disdain to learn from Falstaff? No, and neither should you.

I’ve also found that gender means nothing when choosing wise advisers. Women often provide me with better perspectives than men, probably because they mature faster than their male counterparts. I’ve never hesitated to hear the wisdom of women and, in fact, often seek women’s wisdom more than men’s wisdom; women have more often provided me valuable perspectives. You may find the same, or you may not. Try and see.

It’s important to have a variety of perspectives in our lives. Don’t let your life be based on unilateral decisions. Open up your decision making to new points of view. Then integrate the points of view into action steps.

Seeking input for every aspect of your life won’t be the easiest thing to do at first, but it will be worthwhile when you start to see how a more holistic view of your life allows you to sidestep traps that are snaring others.

The Scissors

There are times in life that we need to cut things out of our lives. Whether we have habits that are holding us back or relationships that drain us through their toxicity, chances are there’s at least something in your life that you need to cut out of it.

What I want to tell you is this: that’s okay. It’s normal. We often feel guilty or selfish when we feel that we might need to cut something out of our lives; our intuition says yes, but our hearts say no. We don’t listen to ourselves because we think we ought to gut it out and endure.

Why should that be the case? If you drank poison, you wouldn’t hesitate to use ipecac syrup to get it out of your system. So why should we endure other things that are just as poisonous? It’s because we can’t see them as poison as clearly as we see a bottle of arsenic as poison.

That smoking habit? We can rationalize it away as a coping mechanism, as much a part of our identities as our name. That relationship that drains us more than uplifts us? We tell ourselves it’s our fault for not trying harder.

Or, to hit closer to home for men, take that 12+ hour workday you work 5–7 times per week. Do you think it makes you more of a man to lose sleep, increase your stress hormones, and thereby increase your chance of premature death? If so, you’re not alone. It is, however, a bad and unsustainable habit. If you don’t break out of it voluntarily, your body will do it for you. Wouldn’t it be better to do it now instead of having to pay the hospital bills when you have a heart attack? Just saying.

If we’ve developed the habit of introspection, we can look at these bad habits of ours from a more detached perspective and admit they are harming us more than they are helping. As much as we think they help us cope, the cigarettes are destroying our lungs. The toxic relationships are costing us more in terms of our peace of mind than they give us in return for all of our efforts. The work schedule may be giving us more money to buy more things, but do we need all those things, or would our lives be better if we lived on simpler terms?

If you have not developed a habit of introspection, then maybe you have friends or other counselors who have been telling you about these things for a while. Listen to them. Then, when you’ve decided to make a change, ruthlessly cut the toxic elements out of your life with this pair of scissors. It probably won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.

Just in case it’s not obvious from what I’ve said above, I don’t like giving advice I haven’t used myself. That’s like claiming to be a black belt when you haven’t ever attended martial arts class. So, here’s a few examples of how I have used my pair of scissors in my own life:

Ten years ago, I stopped drinking after realizing I had a problem with it;

Nine years ago, I quit smoking when I realized I enjoyed riding my bicycle more than I enjoyed smoking;

More recently, I have adopted a healthier diet to help combat my cholesterol issues (some of which are genetic);

I have shown people who were dragging me down in various ways the door — and I’m not leaving it open for them to waltz back through.

It would be a lie to say that I accomplished all of the above by myself. On the contrary, I needed a lot of help from many different people to accomplish what I have listed. I didn’t just need the help of people, either. I needed plenty of spiritual help as well.

If I had taken the conventional wisdom of how men should behave to heart, I’d be dead right now. There are other times before I could get free of some of these habits that I should have died as well. The point is, no one should think they have to make major changes in their lives alone.

Also, that last item on the list (showing people the door) may be harder than it at first appears. If it feels tough to break away from someone you know is no good for you, you may be trauma bonded to that person. Discuss this with a qualified counselor to see if this is the case and develop tools to deal with it. Personally, I have had lots of counseling over these types of relationships.

Right now, I’m working on simplifying my life, and I’m sure I’ll use my scissors more and more as time goes on. I love the freedom that comes from not being weighed down by negative forces and the more positive path my life has taken without those forces dragging me down.

Give your scissors a try today, and let me know what you find.

The Tweezers

So far, we have used the tools above to provide leverage to get started, slash through the confusion in our lives, to dissect our own thinking, and cut out negative influences in our life. What possible use could tweezers be to us when we’ve already done so much?

Sometimes I don’t need to make the sweeping changes that we’ve discussed with some of the previous tools; I need to make a small change in how I approach living out my days. This is the tweezers’ role: to remind me to make the little changes that can make a huge difference. Like Aesop’s lion with a thorn in my paw, if I remove the tiny splinter that’s causing me so much pain, I find my life is so much better for it.

Let’s consider gratitude. For many years, I have been blessed to live a life where not only are all of my needs met, but I also have plenty of resources left over for things I merely want. What I have not had a lot of, strangely, is gratitude for my life.

When I started focusing on what I was grateful for, I began to see more of what was positive in my life and less of what I perceived as negative. I began to see how many resources I truly had: people who cared for me, a nice place to live, the ability to do what I want to every day instead of what I merely have to, and many other positive things that I had formerly taken for granted.

I also found that when I concentrated on gratitude, I was naturally more willing to give some of my time and resources to others to help them. Why? Because I was able to see how much I really had, I realized that sharing with others did not diminish what I had. When I gave, I also received. The more I gave, the more I received. It was like having a bank account where I received (at least) twice as much in return with every withdrawal, which made me want to give even more.

When I say I gave, sometimes I gave money, at other times I gave the gift of listening to others, and sometimes it was just giving a kind word to someone who needed to hear it. At other times, I gave some the gift of a reality check. And what did I receive? When I was able to give money to someone who needed it, I felt gratitude for being able to be in a position to share without expectation of repayment. When I truly listened to others, I was able to empathize with them and, in some cases, internalize some lessons about myself. When I gave someone a reality check, it was because I could see how they were hurting themselves with destructive behavior; I was reminded of times when I had been self-destructive and realized how much better my life was since I was able to put that behavior behind me.

Never be afraid to share. If you can exchange resources with another without attaching a string to that sharing, you will never be poor in any way.

I’m sure you can find many other good uses for your tweezers; let me know about it when you do.

The Multipurpose Hook

The multipurpose hook. Possibly the most misunderstood tool in the bunch. The Victorinox people say that it can be used to carry packages of up to 200 pounds. Other people have used it as a phone stand and a way to carry fish (Seriously! Look it up.)

Personally, I see the multipurpose hook and think, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” That’s not an insult, by the way. Let me explain why.

I was a multipassionate person before the word multipassionate came into the common vernacular. Whether I was translating Ancient Greek, working on and programming computers, studying martial arts, learning photography, or learning how to run longer distances — I wanted to be a master of all of it. Preferably tomorrow. I’d devour everything I could find on the subjects that interested me. At one point, I was practicing martial arts for most of my day in addition to going to school and being on the wrestling team.

Having a variety of interests and wishing to master them all put a lot of pressure on me. In some instances, I did become a master of what I was doing — and achieving that mastery wasn’t as great as it seemed it would be when I first started.

What I found, though, was that because I pursued knowledge in many different fields, I had perspectives that people who concentrated solely on learning one field did not. I used tools and understandings from one field to inform what I was studying in a completely unrelated field.

Being a “jack of all trades” has given me a broader perspective that has served me well. If I had listened to the conventional wisdom that I needed to focus on mastering one thing instead of dipping my toe in many, I would have missed picking up information and techniques that are very useful today.

Let me give you one example. When I was learning how to program, I came across the idea of decision trees and flowcharting as tools for algorithm development. While I have used both tools as a programmer, I also use the same tools to make decisions and forecast outcomes in my own life. When I use those tools, I am forced to think more concretely about all possible outcomes. If I had never picked up programming, I might never have found those tools and, as a result, have had unexpected problems arise more often than they, in fact, have done.

Here’s another one. When I picked up martial arts, I was young (about nine). I hadn’t had a lot of instruction in how to live a good life from my father before he and my mother divorced, and while my stepfather was a very strict disciplinarian, he never really encouraged me to strive for goals when I was younger. My martial arts instructor did. He let me know that I was welcome to study martial arts with him as long as I kept up my grades, was respectful to my parents, and strove to be a good person. Learning this encouraging discipline has helpful to me throughout my life. Had I not studied under that particular martial arts instructor, I probably would have had more discipline issues than I did.

The examples above illustrate why I’ve never believed in narrowing my world to just one pursuit. The pursuit of knowledge always seemed like an all-you-could-eat buffet, not a single, sad hamburger on a plate. This was contrary to the advice I received, which was that I had to focus on that thing exclusively to get better at something. Bull. Focusing too narrowly has only ever done one thing: put blinders on me so that I could not see other approaches that would help me.

Now don’t get me wrong: if you want to master something, go right ahead. Just don’t get so laser-focused on mastery that you miss tools in other fields that might help in yours. You won’t know what these tools are until you explore other domains of knowledge.

The Corkscrew

So since you know that I no longer drink, what use can I possibly find for a corkscrew, you ask? I have found that a corkscrew is a great way to untangle the knots of my life; I can insert the corkscrew into the knot, and it comes loose.

What are the “knots” of my life? When I am intolerant of another’s point of view, struggling in my vocation, and unwilling to change things that I know I need to change — like letting go of a grudge — each of these are examples of knots in my life. Although my life is still quite good, these knots represent places where I need to do some work on myself.

So, how do I use a corkscrew on these knots? The first step is acknowledging that I have work to do; that sets the corkscrew in the knot’s body. I’ll be the first to admit that I often resist making these changes. Usually, I have to come to a place where I have seen the effects of these knots in my life, and I can truthfully say, “Okay, I’m tired of this. It’s time to change.” Often, I feel a ponderous heaviness on my shoulders when I come to the point of being tired of a knot like I’ve been carrying the weight of the world around.

I open myself up to change instead of trying to gut my way through it because I have found that I do myself more harm than good when trying to push through one of my knots. Preferring to avoid unnecessary pain, I instead become willing to engage in the necessary pain of change.

Once I have opened myself up to the possibility of change, then it’s time to get down to the hard work of it. This usually requires me to talk to my advisors, listen to them, find resources to support me, and begin doing the work. I also have to remind myself that I’m not going to achieve success at changing overnight, but that change is a process with ups and downs along the way.

Then I take small steps every time the situation I am working on comes up in my life. If I’m working on tolerance, then when something comes up that triggers my intolerance, I take a step back and say, “Okay, why does this trigger me, and how can I look at this differently?” By attempting to understand and reframe the things that trigger me, I often find new insights that deepen my understanding of what I’m working on. To get even more information about these insights, I will often discuss them with my friends and family.

Every time I take a small step such as the one above, I turn the corkscrew in that knot. As I take more and more steps, that knot begins to loosen up.

It’s not like I’m perfectly willing to work on my character defects at all times; sometimes, I want to take a nap or fall back into old habits. I’ve come over time to realize that resistance and falling back are as much a part of the process as taking steps are. In some ways, my resistance and “failures” push me forward by reminding me of why I’m trying to better myself in the first place. My “failures” also provide valuable lessons during the process.

For some time now, I’ve had a devotion to Mary, Undoer of Knots. Having a spiritual practice of some sort while working on my “knots” has been extremely beneficial. Instead of feeling like all of the responsibility is on my shoulders to untie my knot, I feel like I have a spiritual helper to carry some of the load. And that has made all the difference for me.

You don’t need to adopt my particular devotion to be successful at untying your own knots. However, I believe that it is necessary to have some spiritual resources to help with navigating change. So experiment and find out what works for you (remember when we discussed living life as an experiment? Here’s a chance to practice!).

The Precision Screwdriver

Tucked up inside my corkscrew is a precision screwdriver, the kind used to make adjustments to the screws in eyeglasses.

We’ve already talked about cultivating many perspectives from advisers, but the precision screwdriver reminds me that I don’t always need to make big perspective shifts. Sometimes I need a slight adjustment to how I see things.

For instance: I tend to think a great deal before acting (you might have noticed that tendency as you have read this far). I generally consider my process of thinking to be excessive, a kind of weakness of my character. I was recently reminded, though, that thinking something through carefully can be a strength. When I looked at my tendency that way, I could see how it benefited me.

There is a downside, though, to thinking something through thoroughly. Thinking can easily turn into overthinking, a form of procrastination. I have to keep a close eye on how much thought I put into something. If it takes more than a day, I generally take one constructive action connected to my thinking.

By taking action, I break the pattern of thinking. That action might stimulate further thought, but it will be a more productive thought because I have acted instead of being paralyzed by a habit of thinking.

So, by adjusting my view of one habit, I was able to see how to make it a strength rather than a weakness. That’s the power of a precision adjustment and something that I hope you will join me in.

The Awl

What’s an awl? It’s that pointy thing with a hole in it pictured above next to the precision screwdriver. An awl is a tool that is used for punching through leather hide. And the hole? It’s for pulling a thread through that hole so that you can sew the leather.

I have found that there are times when I have been unable to make progress in life. Usually, that was because I didn’t have the right people around me. At times I’ve also been in the wrong environment.

Just like being in a bathtub of warm piss, though, it was easy to be comfortable enough in my life that making a change seemed like a tough choice. The time came, though, when I realized that I would have to make a choice.

When I am confronted with these situations, I remember the punching power of the awl. I summon up my courage and start to make the changes I need to make.

The most salient example of this occurred when I was in high school. When I started high school in my hometown, I didn’t really feel like I fit in, and I found it hard to make friends. My social life was pretty much nonexistent except for having friends over from time to time. Mostly I did my homework, played some games, watched TV, and did some extracurricular activities.

After following this somewhat comfortable routine (there’s that warm bathtub…), I realized that I could not go on with it any longer. I really wanted to be at a school where there were people like me and who would like me. I wanted more than just a comfortable routine.

I brought my concerns to my parents and needless to say they weren’t very pleased. Over time, though, they began to realize how unhappy I was (I had hidden it pretty well for those three years). I think part of what catalyzed their understanding of how unhappy I was was when they told me to military school, and I told them that was a great idea. Since they didn’t expect that response, it caused them to think.

In the end, we found a boarding school in Austin where I could complete high school. Since the school wanted me to be there for more than just a year, though, I voluntarily repeated my junior year of high school to be in an environment that was more conducive to my growth than the one I had come from. I really enjoyed that school and succeeded far more in my two years there than I did in my previous three years. My parents were blown away by how happy I was.

To get from desperately unhappy to happy, though, I had to punch through the resistance I felt to giving up a fairly comfortable life to try to build a better one. I have had to challenge my comfort many times since that first time to build the happy life I have today. If I had just stayed where I was, I would have been comfortable but unfulfilled.

I bet many men feel the same urge to change their lives for the better, but they also feel hamstrung because they don’t know exactly what will happen if they try; all they know is that they would be giving up their comfortable present.

If you recognize yourself in what I’ve shared, my advice to you is simple: pull the awl out of your toolkit and find a way to punch through what holds you back so you can sew together a better life.

The Pen (not pictured)

Ah, the pen. It can be used to create the vilest vitriol or the most sublime poetry. How are you using your powers of expression? Are you using them to heal or to harm?

As men, we are not taught to write our thoughts down or harness our creative abilities. I know what I’m talking about here because I used to think the same thing — it smacked too much of a girl keeping a diary. The minute I began writing down what was in my head, though, two realizations came to me: 1.) the emotional pressure of the thoughts was reduced or gone and, 2.) My concerns sounded downright trite and childish. Basically, I was a whiny, bitchy little girl. That realization stung, but it inspired me to do better.

I also thought creativity was nice, but that work had to come first. When I began making creativity part of my work, though, I discovered that the work came easier, and I had more thoughts about how to approach my work than I did when I attempted to put a separation between the two.

When it came time to decide, pulling my pen out was a great help because it helped me see exactly what I thought the pros and cons of each decision were. I could then take my thinking to my advisers (remember them?) and find out if I was thinking correctly or not. Just by pulling out my pen, I could short-circuit weeks of should I? or shouldn’t I? and get on with my life.

And if I wanted to express how I felt about people in my life, my pen helped me there, too. I could sit with my feelings, write them down, and then edit that writing until I felt it reflected my true feelings.

All this flies in the face of the masculine dogma that we shouldn’t get in touch with what is going on with us. While that dogma has produced men who snap into domestic violence, my pen has produced more peace within me.

Use it and see.