In this episode of the Impostor Syndrome Files, we talk about the importance of helping men to become more emotionally connected. My guest this week is Mike Cameron, leadership coach and author of the book, Becoming A Better Man: When "Something's Gotta Change", Maybe It's You! Here Mike shares his personal journey from financial entrepreneur to coaching men to improve their mental health by becoming more emotionally connected, which began with the murder of his girlfriend by her ex-boyfriend. Mike and I talk here about the ways in which the patriarchy negatively impacts men as well and how we would all be better off if men were given the space and encouragement to connect with their feelings.
About My Guest
Mike Cameron is a two times TEDx speaker, Canadian author, entrepreneur and Certified Executive Coach. As a sales and leadership authority, Mike has studied the impact that emotion has on human behavior for over 2 decades. After tragedy struck in 2015, Mike sold his award-winning, multi-million dollar business and turned his expertise to teach men to become better leaders.
He is an ultramarathoner who loves running hundred-mile races for 30+ hours through the mountains. His adventures have taken him everywhere from the coastal mountains of Costa Rica, and the geothermal pools of New Zealand to the beautiful Rocky Mountains in his own backyard in Canada.
A gifted storyteller, Mike will share stories that challenge and inspire you. He will introduce you to his S.O.A.R. framework for resilience. He will teach you to become a stronger leader connected with your passions and purpose in life. He excels at helping leaders pull the best out of themselves and their teams.
He is the founder of Connect’d Men, an organization designed to create a safe space for men to practice emotional fitness. His 2018 CBC Op-Ed “Dear Men” has been shared over 125,000 times. His 2017 Tedx “The way men think of strong is wrong”, urges society to help redefine what it means to be a badass. He is also the co-founder of the Ignore No More Run for Respect, an event designed to raise awareness around gender-based violence and specifically engage men and boys in the conversation.
Cameron is also the founder of Axiom Mortgage, one of Canada’s largest independent brokerage firms, which he sold in December 2019. He has worked with various nonprofits and charities to pave the way for a violence-free future.
His keynotes addressing the importance of emotional fitness have been heard across North America. He has facilitated youth programs for the Edmonton Police Service Diversion First Program. He is passionate about working with youth and supporting the next generation of men in becoming more emotionally connected to themselves and their families and building stronger relationships with those around them.
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Connect with Mike:
Website: https://mikecameron.ca/
Connect’d Men Men’s Group: https://mikecameron.ca/activity-2/
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Transcript
Kim Meninger
Welcome, Mike, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while now you and I had a chance to talk offline, and I can't wait to bring our conversation to the community. And I would love to start by inviting you to introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Mike Cameron
Sure. As you said, my name is Mike and I have been an entrepreneur, for the last 30-plus years I started in finance, eventually started my own business, built that business over 16 years, and ultimately sold it in 2019. To focus on what it is I do now, I'm a leadership coach, certified executive coach. But more specifically, I work directly with men and their, their wellbeing. So, you know, I talked about emotional connection and its impact on peak performance, leadership, and probably more importantly, mental health. So that's, that's what I do. I do a lot of keynotes in the mental health arena, as well as performance coaching.
Kim Meninger
Still, that, obviously, is a big shift from entrepreneurship and financial space. Right? So what motivated you to move in this direction?
Mike Cameron
Well, it’s interesting, because it's not as big of a shift as it sounds. And that was kind of a revelation for me. So yeah, my story what, what led me to this space, you know, I think we all have those pivotal moments in life, those moments that ultimately changed the course of the path that we thought we were on. And for me, that was October 2, 2015. On October 2, 2015, my girlfriend Colleen woke up at my place, her alarm went off at 5 am. She's a yoga instructor, taught early mornings. So alarm went off at 5 am, she gets up, gets dressed, comes around to my side of the bed, gives me a kiss. I said, Have fun at yoga, and I rolled over went back to sleep. And off she went. I woke up at seven o'clock, went downstairs and as was our custom. I shot her a text and they said, Hey, how is yoga? To which I got no response. And, you know, I didn't think too much of it at the time. She's not a huge talker. But she's an incredible listener. And as a result would often get sucked into long drawn-out conversations with students after yoga. So I didn't think much of it, had my breakfast, got dressed, got ready headed out the door to go to a meeting. still hadn't heard from her. So I sent her another text no responses I got in the car. I picked up the phone I called phone rang and rang and rang eventually went to voicemail. And, you know, now I'm starting to like, get that little feeling like okay, is that I did I do something to make her mad? Am I in the doghouse is you know, and then of course your mind starts doing those stories? Is she getting back together with her ex-husband is you know what's going like, wait a minute, and then you know, so you have to sort of settle yourself down. I went about my morning, how am I meeting, went back to the office, I had another meeting. We wrap that meeting up and I still hadn't heard from her. And by this time, you know, I've got that feeling in the pit of my stomach. Just something is not right. And I could not focus at all we ended up going across the street to go for lunch. And as we walk into the restaurant, with my clients, my phone rings, and I look at it and it's a block number and answer the phone and the voice on the other end of the phone says Is this my camera? And I said yes. He said this is Constable so-and-so and my heart just sank. And I practically screamed into the phone. I said to she okay? And he says where are you? And I yelled again. I said, Is she okay? He says where are you? We're at your house. We're coming to you. And so I told him where I was I turned I walked out of the restaurant and I stood, stood at the curb for what felt like an eternity but was probably five or six minutes my house was not far from where we were. And this unmarked police car pulls up across the street. And I start walking towards it cop gets out and starts walking towards me. And in the middle of the road halfway across the street, he just looks me in the eye and he said three words to me that would change my life forever. He simply said, Colleen is dead. Shot and killed by an ex-boyfriend who subsequently took his own life. And in that moment, you know, everything obviously shifted for me. And you know, I was fortunate in that I had lots of friends and family and coworkers and colleagues. I had a large community around me that supported me. And you know most of them wanted me to go after the justice system because they know I'm a doer I don't, don't just sit back and, and let things happen. And so I had lots of folks talking about, you know, the justice system, which certainly let her down, you know, she'd done all the right things filed the paperwork had the restraining order she'd filed the breach. But as we well know, you know, a piece of paper isn't going to stop a bullet. And when I looked at that question, I thought, you know, how do we build a better restraining order? is probably the wrong question. And maybe a better question is how do we prevent men from getting to that point in the first place. And so when I looked at sort of my skill sets, and bringing this back to sort of entrepreneurship, sales leadership, I realized that, you know, over the course of the years, I got invited to speak at conferences, because I've been fairly successful in business and in sales. And I always talked about the impact that emotion had on human behaviors. So you know, if you want to sell more widgets, you need to make that emotional connection with your customer. If you want to inspire your team, to be a better leader, you need to make that emotional connection to your vision. So I talked about that, in the context of sales and leadership for 20 some odd years. And what I realized was that this was the exact same thing, just a different context. I mean, this was a man that made a decision, with very permanent consequences based on a very temporary emotion. And, you know, the more I sort of went down that road, the more I realized, again, and for us as men, you know, we're actively discouraged, we've had the emotions conditioned out of us. And if we don't understand the underlying emotions that drive the decisions we make, we're kind of fucked. Excuse me, I hope it's okay to swear on your contracts. If it, I mean, you know, we're, we're screwed. So and again, that's a disadvantage as men have is, is that we're typically not really good at exploring that emotional side of self, because we've been conditioned, that that's weak. It's not strong, we need to remain strong. So. So that's the long version of you know, how I ended up in that space, and how, in fact, it's not as much of a leap from the sales leadership and business side of the equation, as one might think it is. Because and that was that really struck me. And I recognize that, a choke up as I say this, like, everything I've done, my entire life has prepared me for this. Yeah, and it was just, it was such a powerful revelation. So, you know, again, I still come at it from, from the leadership performance side of the equation, because typically, that's what guys respond to, right, we want to perform better, we want to show up in the world better. We don't necessarily want to talk about our emotions. So you know, from, from a sales pitch standpoint, you know, that's kind of the lens I come. That's not kind of that is the lens I come at it from is how do we live a richer life? How do we perform better? How do we show up better? And most men want that? And the reality is, that's through becoming more emotionally connected to self to others and community?
Kim Meninger
Well, I have so many different questions. I'm trying to figure out which one I want to ask you first, because I'm so glad you brought up the social conditioning piece. And this is something that is really near and dear to my heart because I have two boys. And I want them to be, you know, mentally and emotionally healthy when they go as they continue to grow and go out into the world. And, you know, I had an experience recently where my younger son who's nine, now we were watching TV, and it was an older show, and one of the boys said, like, Oh boys don't cry, and I saw hit the panic in his face. And he said, That's not true, right? That's not That's not true. Like he heard it in this very, almost threatening way. And I thought to myself, like, wow, this is not this is not I mean, not that I didn't know this already. But this is not something they're born into. Right? This is something men are taught. And so I wonder as you think about your own journey, like you were, you were talking about and you were, you know, really connecting around the importance of emotion, but did you have to have to do any inner work on your own? To get to this point, like what was your relationship to emotions?
Mike Cameron
No, I was born emotionally connected. Well, that is that's a true statement. I mean, if you Think of, you know, you've got kids remember them as toddlers, like, we're not born emotionally disconnected, if you've ever had a toddler, you know, because they can throw their little hissy fits, they are very adept at expressing emotions. And it is something that is conditioned out of us over time, and especially us men. So for me, and it was interesting, because when I first started having these conversations publicly, and I first started talking about this, my mom reached out to me, and I think she was a little offended. And she said, you know, we never raised you like that. And she's right. She didn't like they it was always a safe environment in our home. We were never raised with, you know, dad wasn't sort of the suck it up. And don't be a pussy, you kind of kind of thought like, he was never that way. And mom certainly wasn't. So, you know, within our home the way I was raised, we were absolutely, you know, allowed to emote. But still, to your point, I mean, the, the media that we see the pop culture, the movies, the television, all of the messaging is around that boys don't cry, suck it up, Don't be weak. So for me, I mean, I absolutely fell into that category. And, and in such a big way, you know, my first foray into finance. I mean, that's, that's a longer story. But, but I, I, when I was 26 years old, I started doing fairly well financially in the finance space. And so I went and bought a Porsche. You know, as I said, I learned early in my sales career that we buy on emotion, and we justify it with logic, I gotta tell you, there is nothing logical about buying a Porsche, that's two times your salary. When you're 26 years old, it was all an emotional decision. And it was all because I wanted to show up and I needed to be a baller and I needed to, you know, if I was going to be successful, I justified it with all this bullshit logic. So, absolutely, I needed to do a lot of that inner work, you know. And then, as I went on, and became more and more successful in business, that became my go-to, and as my ex-wife and I started to sort of drift apart, you know, she threw herself more into the kids, I threw myself into my work because that was my identity. And in fact, as I look back, you know, that was my coping mechanism. That was my numbing technique. You know, some folks jumped to drugs or alcohol. I mean, workaholics. They're the respectable addicts. Right. And I get patted on the back for all the accomplishments. Yet the reality was, all I was doing was knowing my emotions. And so to your question, did I have to do the work, I continue to do the work. And that was one of the really cool things that Colleen and I did together. We did a lot of that work together. I spent three years after my divorce, just by myself doing some of the work. Then I met her, we did a lot of that work together. And you know, when she was killed, that was that was, again, another opportunity for me to do more of the work. And, you know, I certainly could have thrown myself back into, into my work into the busyness the business, and continued to go down that path and just numbed that the shit out of myself. But for me, I realized and it was actually a friend of mine sent me a letter to Rachel written by a fellow by the name of Ram Dass, Ram Dass was an American spiritual leader in the 1970s. This letter to Rachel was a letter he wrote to the parents, Rachel was a young girl who had been murdered. He wrote this letter to her parents, and there were, I would highly recommend that your audience look it up. It's like five paragraphs long. It's not very long at all. Round US Letter to Rachel. And in that letter, there were three big epiphanies. For me the first he said, is anyone strong enough to remain conscious through such teachings as you are receiving? Probably very few. And what I realized in that moment was that I needed to stay open to the lessons I needed to receive the gift that she had given me the gift of a depth of feeling that many people will never experience. And again, don't get me wrong. It's not a gift that I would necessarily wish upon my worst enemy, but I couldn't change what had happened. So I recognize that I needed to remain conscious. I could not numb myself through this. The second piece. In that letter, he said, our rational minds will never understand but our hearts if we keep them open they will find their own intuitive way. And I can't tell you how many times ask that question why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why her why now? Why? And there's no rational answer for that. And what I realized was if all I did was ask that why question, it was just gonna keep me stuck. It was like trying to move forward paddling a rowboat, you're moving forward, but you're looking backwards. And I needed to flip that into a kayak where I'm facing forward, and I'm paddling, and I'm moving forward. So that kind of became a bit of a mantra for me, kayak, not rowboat. And the third and probably most powerful piece out of that letter was he said, now's the time to let your grief find expression, no false strength. And again, as men, you know, I can't tell you how many times well-meaning friends, family, loved ones would give me a big old hug, squeeze me and say be strong might be strong. And while I love them for their intention, it just saddens me that our western cultures version of strength is to suck it up to bury, suppress and avoid those difficult feelings. Because the reality is true strength is about having the courage to open up and actually feel the feelings, observe them and learn from them what we can, you know, back to that it was Carl Jung ease, he said do I was his quote. Until we make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Mm hmm. And I think the same holds true for our emotional responses until we can be present to what we're feeling. Those decisions that we make, are always in there's a ton of research behind this lookup, Antonio Damasio, that we make decisions based on emotion or emotion is at least the foundation for decisions. And if we don't understand the underlying emotions that drive those decisions, we're screwed, because emotions, drive decisions, decisions, drive, behaviors, behaviors, drive results. And again, often we just try and address the behaviors, you know, the restraining order, which may work temporarily. But if we want long term lasting change, we need to take a couple of steps back and address, you know, not only the emotions, but okay, what's driving those emotions, the thoughts, the beliefs, the attitudes that we have that create those emotions that ultimately create the decisions that create the behaviors that drive our results.
Kim Meninger
I feel like for so long, and you know, I'm sure this is partly a function of the socialization that we're talking about. Because for me, you know, most of history workplaces have been male-dominated, right, this idea of like, you check your emotions at the door, we don't, we're not emotional here, right. Whereas like, I worked for a high-tech company, where men would literally throw it throw a temper tantrum and call themselves passionate. But if a woman shed a tear, it was, Oh, you're so emotional, we don't do emotions. And so, I think that, you know, when you when we talk about things like mental health, and we talk about things like emotions, there's a, there's a recognition at some level, that this is part of the human experience, that it's really important. But there's also still such a stigma attached to it. And, and I worry so much about just the social pressure to not even be vulnerable enough to have the kind of conversation that you're talking about. And I wonder, like, when you're working with men, or you're having these conversations, do you have to kind of, like, hide the broccoli and the mashed potatoes? Or do you actually come right out and say like, Hey, we need to overtly start talking about this?
Mike Cameron
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit of both. That was kind of what I was getting at before. So to me when I come at it from, you know, I was a high-performing leader, so I sometimes get doors open for me that others might not. So if you've got the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion experts, you know, a female person of color that comes in, there's going to be an audience that will not hear them regardless of the message. So, you know, I'm a middle aged white dude, I acknowledged that I've got some privilege, my opportunity is to use that privilege to reach others. So sometimes it is hiding the broccoli and the mashed potatoes. But I talk about the emotional connected the emotionally connected continuum. And my hope is that we can move guys up that continuum. So at the low end of the you know, the at the far extreme end of the continuum is Paul Jacob, the man that killed Kali. And while I hope that most of your audience is not so far down the emotional connected continuum, that they would take somebody else's life and their own, I can assure You're all of us have some room to move up that continuum. You know, it's interesting, because I often think about, at what point in Paul Jacob’s life, and what kind of intervention might have made that difference. You know, maybe a kind word from a teacher, you know, how far back do we have to go? That there would have been a decision that sort of did that 1% pivot that might have ultimately changed the trajectory of his life. And, and it just, it drives me to realize that, you know, changes don't have to be big. They just have to be consistent and over time, so that to answer your question, I will typically have a quick assessment of where I feel folks are on that continuum. And then I know how I need to talk to them. And again, my hope is that I can, you know, we start with the broccoli and the mashed potatoes, and then a few servings down the road, we start to pull the broccoli out so they can actually look that was broccoli you ate, it was actually not so bad, was it? And by the way, there's a whole bunch of research that shows that broccoli is really healthy for you and good for you. You want to be healthy, don't you? Right, so, so it's kind of that whole, you know, I don't want to sort of oversimplify it. But, but yes, it's, sometimes there's that, you know, I used to call it the Trojan horse, I'd have to, you know, I come in and I talk about you want to, you want to sell more widgets, I can teach you how to sell more widgets. And oh, by the way, that competence that you need to sell more widgets, building that emotional connection with your customers, you can't do that if you don't have an emotional connection with self. And if I can get you to that emotional connection with self, which will then teach you to make that emotional connection with customers, which will then teach you to sell more widgets because that's really what you care about. That's why you came to me, that's why people will pay me because, you know, it improves their ROI. But at the same time, you know, the reason I'm passionate about teaching men in particular, the art of emotional reconnection is emotionally connected men don't freakin kill people. emotionally connected, men make better leaders, they make better partners, they make better fathers, they live richer lives. And for me, this whole experience has been the difference of moving my life, from black and white to full 4k color. The depth of experience that I can now have is mind-blowing to me. And that's my hope for every man is to be able to get to that place. And again, not that I'm there. I've always got room to move up the continuum. And sometimes I slide back on that continuum, there's no question.
Kim Meninger
Well, and I think, you know, we tend to think of things in very, you know, sort of binary terms, right? We think of men is not emotional, and women being super emotionally sophisticated. But there are many women who are, have the opportunity to move up that continuum as well. Right?
Mike Cameron
No question. One, and I think that's one of the potential perils that we face in this race for equity and equality. Are we trying to condition the emotion out of women so they can be equal? Well, I hope not. I'm hoping that we can, instead of doing that, we can condition the motion back into men, so we can become more equitable. I mean, again, that's oversimplified, but, but I think there is a risk of doing the same thing to women that we've done to men as a society. And that's problematic.
Kim Meninger
Yeah. And, you know, I think you and I probably talked about this when we first talked to but I think a lot about the fact that as a society, at least, you know, here in the US, I know it's not true in every part of the world, but at least here in the US, we have been updating for years the definition of what it means to be a woman in society, there is so much flexibility women have so many choices, whether it's stay home with your kids work part-time, become a powerhouse executive, you know, come in and out of your career at different stages. And we have not really updated the definition of what it means to be a man in society. And so I feel like we are on this mission through diversity, equity and inclusion to create more opportunities up top of an organization for, for women and other members of marginalized groups. But until we make it safe and respectable for men to walk away from those roles, and do other things, right? Like we create this situation where they we're asking them to be supportive of everyone around them, but we're not showing support to them in exchange. And so I wonder what your thoughts are on how we want to bring men on this journey, we have to center them in the conversation, to some extent to it can't just be like, Oh, everybody else is on this journey. And men are kind of on the side. You have to be our allies, but you're not allowed to have your own experience in the process. Right?
Mike Cameron
Yeah. And, and you're right. And that's, that is a conversation I have often and, again, fully acknowledging the privilege I hold as a male. But let's not forget that, that privilege, the patriarchy, also comes with a price for men. And I think we need to talk about that more. We absolutely need to talk about that more. That's a hard one, because there are so many people that don't want to have that conversation because you've had it so good for so long. And so we're not talking about you anymore. It's like, okay, but I get it. But do you want to be right? Or do you want to be effective? Yeah, because sometimes you can't be both. And I will choose being effective every single day. Over being right. So that's a very important conversation. But it's also interesting, because, you know, I did a workshop for senior executive at a fairly high-level firm here in Canada. And I proposed that we do something exclusive for their male leadership. And of course, the immediate pushback was Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hell, No, we cannot do something exclusive for our dudes. And I said, Okay, I'll tell you what, I said, You go interview all of the VP level and up females in your organization. And you ask them how they feel about if we were to do this thing exclusively for our men again, knowing that it's, it's centered on emotional connection, mental health for guys. You ask them what they feel or what they think about that. And I'll, I'll reconnect with you in a couple of weeks. So I reconnected in a couple of weeks. And this individual it was a male. That was I was talking to that we were talking about organizing this. He was blown away. He said, Oh my god, Mike, he said, You know what? I was shocked. He said, every single one of them as soon as they brought it up, like I didn't even have to finish saying my sentence. They were like, hell yeah. Because if you take care of those men and organization, so many of our other problems go away. So and I think that gets lost, right? If we take care of and again, to how you define take care of, if we create this space for men to become more emotionally connected to self to others, and community. A lot of our societal problems go away. A lot of them do.
Kim Meninger
Yeah. And I think that's really important the nuance because there is so much attention being paid to what other you know, even just the fact that you, you have repeatedly said you're aware of your privilege, right, I mentioned to you that I had been conducting a survey of men to ask them what's hard about being a man in the workplace today? Because I don't think they generally get asked that question. And I really want to understand it as per the context of what we're talking about here. And almost every single respondent answered that question with a, well, I know, I don't have it as bad as other people, but… Right? And because they've been conditioned to believe that their experience is not as important or not as bad or, you know, and I'm not saying that there's that we should be comparing, all I'm saying is that we have to treat every human as having a valid and legitimate experience. And that, you know, as long as people feel like they can't, they can't share their story or, or own their own experience, because that would in some way, de-legitimize the experience of someone else, then we aren't going to get to where we want to be.
Mike Cameron
Yeah, 100%. And again, that's the problem. So if you've got the sort of the extreme views or sort of, you know, problematic beliefs, attitudes that we want to get away from, if we don't create a space where somebody can actually articulate those views. Then they just go underground. And the behaviors don't change. The attitudes aren't visible. You know, again, I use the iceberg analogy all the time, right? What we see are the, the behaviors and we see the results. What we don't see are The decisions we don't see the emotions, we don't see the thoughts, beliefs and attitudes underneath that. And if all we do is wag our finger and shame, the beliefs and attitudes, then I will just shut down. And I'll pretend like I don't have those beliefs and attitudes. But my behaviors aren't going to change because I haven't been given the space to actually unpack the beliefs and attitudes that I have that ultimately, as we go up that iceberg start to manifest in behaviors.
Kim Meninger
So is there something that you would recommend people listening, think about doing in their own worlds like me, so much of what I, you know, I go on this roller coaster ride all the time of, I see the opportunity, and they get enthusiastic about it. And then I realize how expansive this problem is and I get frustrated. So my optimism, like, what are the things that we can all do or think about to try to move us in the direction that we're talking about?
Mike Cameron
Well, I think the first thing is just to create the space for the men in your life, create the space for yourself if you're a dude. So you know, whether that's journaling, meditation, self-reflection, whatever you call it, just create that space. If you are somebody that loves a dude, and you want to create that space, and I hear this, often, my guy won't open up to me, he won't share with me, there's a couple of things going on there, I'm in the middle of writing an article about this, that I think you need to understand is a, it takes a hell of a lot of courage for us men to actually share what we're feeling. So we probably need a lot more space than you think we need. So when you ask me, you know, how are you feeling? Or what's coming up with that? My immediate reaction is, it's fine, I'm fine. You can ask me a second time, it'll probably be the same. You know, it might take 10 times. And it's not just peppering me with questions. But you know, my point is, it takes us a lot more space to get there typically, then then a lot of women that in my experience, so it takes a lot of courage for us to do that. So we need a lot of space to do that. The second piece is we're not very good at being able to articulate that. Because again, we've had the emotion conditioned out of us. So if you're a dude, and you want to get better at this, you know, building that emotional vocabulary is huge. I run a men's group every second Wednesday. And that was one of the exercises we did two meetings ago, we met last night, the meeting before we took anger, fear and sadness. And we brainstormed all different variations of each of those emotions. So we practice building our emotional vocabulary. So that's the second challenge in getting changes is we typically don't have a very strong emotional vocabulary. The third piece is, we're also worried about your reaction to how we show up. And you know, whether that's another man or whether it's a woman, it's hard, because most of us aren't super good at holding space. You know, we either want to fix things or we want to ignore things. And so I've got to be concerned about your reaction when I do become vulnerable. And I do disclose because it's gonna weird you out because that's not what guys do. So I have to be concerned about your reaction. And maybe, maybe you won't love me as much because you do want to the protector, the provider, the producer, and again, it doesn't mean I can't strive to do those things while still being vulnerable. But understand that when you asked me to be vulnerable Wow, that just hit me. It. It's, it's a scary fucking thing, Kim. It's a really, really scary thing. And it takes a lot of courage to do that takes courage. I need to find the vocabulary. And I need to be safe and knowing that your response to that your reaction to that is not going to hurt me harm me in any way. So, you know, the, the biggest thing for individuals I think is just to slow down and self-reflect. Take that time. For me journaling is a big one, I don't write to document my thoughts I write to discover my thoughts. So that's a big piece of it. Journaling, for me is another one, having conversations like this is another one. My men's group, you know, literally connected men, I've created a community, my mission is to create a community of emotionally connected leaders that inspire men to feel more so they can be more and ultimately do more. So I created a group called ConnectED Men. Again, we meet virtually every, every second Wednesday from 6:30 to 8 pm. I've got an online community where we, we meet and we just talk about what's going on in life. And it's, it's that practice of showing up, you know, we had a fellow last night, sure, want to be cautious confidentiality, but just is some of the some of the shares are just so incredibly powerful. And these are things that many of these guys have never said out loud, ever anywhere. And there's a there's a magic that happens when a group of dudes come together with intention.
Kim Meninger
And, you know, as I was hearing you talk to one of the things that struck me is that the emotion that all men are feeling in what you're describing his fear, there's a lot of fear. And maybe that's not something they can name. But I just don't think that and we see this in every aspect of society today, that when you have a population of people who are afraid, and don't have the coping skills, or the self-awareness, to process that fear, [or the space] the space, yeah, exactly, and, and to really find the support that you need in other people, that bad things happen. And your story is, is just horrible. And, you know, I'm so sorry for everything that you've gone through. And I'm so grateful to you for the work that you're doing in response because I think it is so incredibly important to all of us. And I just want to reiterate for much of my audience is, is female, and I just don't want this to feel like it's an either or proposition, right? That is a betrayal of the women's movement to want to support men…
Mike Cameron
Not in the slightest, not in the slightest. I do a lot of speaking on I get hired to come out and talk about men as allies. And almost always I lead with men, what you need to understand is, women don't need our help. They just need us to take care of our own shit. And that's it. So yeah, so it's not at all about taking away from anybody else. It's just, again, we don't need to be the white knight, we don't need to be the Savior, all we need to do is take care of our own shit. Women are fully more than capable because you've been supporting our story backsides for a very long time and a lot of cases. Especially that emotional support, right? And that and that's, you know, there was a piece in I think it was in the Huffington Post a while back, I actually reached out to the author and spoke to her for a bit at the title of the article was something to the effect of men have no friends and women pay the price. And it was just, it was a very powerful look at, again, for most of us, you know, speak for me. Most of my life, my only emotional support was my partner. And when that's the only place, the only thing you've got, that can be challenging. I mean, that's a lot of weight to carry. And so I think again, getting out creating those other spaces where guys can connect with one another, and don't have to, you know, have the big pissing contest and we can actually just drop the stereotypical masculine bullshit and just get real for a few minutes. Like, that's, that's huge.
Kim Meninger
Yeah. I that's, that's my vision, too. I really am grateful that you're on this mission. And I'm, you know, I'm wholeheartedly supportive.
Mike Cameron
Yeah, and, and sort of just to go back to your point about, you know, you're sorry for my loss. I want to be clear that this is a powerful story. Yes. But this isn't a story about loss. This is a story of hope. I think that's important. And that's, you know what I always try and bring it back around to I, you know, you can see me I tear up all the time telling these. But at the end of the day, I tear up because I'm hopeful. Not because I'm destroyed are sad, or I mean, there's a sadness in there for sure. But it's hope that gets me emotional.
Kim Meninger
What a powerful way for us to wrap up this conversation today. And I will say it to the those of you out there listening if you have brothers, partners, friends, colleagues, anybody that you think could benefit who can't, right, from this conversation, please, please help us share it. And, and Mike, thank you so much. I know you mentioned places where you are and where people can find you. All of those links will be in the show notes as well for anybody who's interested in following up with you directly. And thank you again for such an important conversation.
Mike Cameron
My pleasure. Thanks for having me.