Can "Partying Down" Save Your Life?

One of the main principles of personal growth and maturity we tend to talk about at Men's Psychology has been that of "win/win" thinking and behavior. This kind of fairness to others and to yourself - respecting others while being self-respecting and honoring others while honoring yourself - can be a tricky balance to find.

After all, if we choose the wrong people to be friends with, be business partners with, to work for, or to hire - not to mention the women we choose to date - then being fair to the wrong people can lead to being undervalued or even cheated. On the other side of socializing, when we are too unfriendly and too reluctant to connect with others, we can alienate people around us.

Boundaries Are Life-Saving Psychological Tools

The key to striking the right balance in your amount of investment in others is learning to have solid boundaries. 

In the MindOS Mastery Program , we teach the fine points of what I call boundary anatomy. The foundation of this anatomy involves envisioning the invisible circle or shell around you - the one that marks your privacy and your personal space. It is the line between what you control and what you don't control. Your boundary is the container of all the psychological features that make you a unique individual. Inside your boundary are your rights, opinions, emotions, beliefs and the free will to make decisions. In this sense, your boundary is also a barrier or shield against the invasion or offense of your person by others.

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Because of your boundary, you have a right to your opinions, emotions, ideas, beliefs and decisions. Nobody else has a right to tell you what to think, how to feel, or what to choose in your daily life's decisions. Of course, we all begin life with underdeveloped boundary and learn from our parents, ourselves and the world how to build our personal boundary as we go. There is a condition babies called "Failure to Thrive," where a lack of protective, nurturing adult involvement can literally lead to the death of the infant. This condition involves more the a physical illness. A baby literally needs EMOTIONAL connection to others in order to survive. Our personal boundary is literally the gateway for emotional connection to others.

Enter the concept of a "Boundary Hole." A Boundary Hole is a place where it is vague and unclear to us where our own rights, ideas, emotions and control end and where the control of others begins.  

A child who has barely had interaction with others will have many Boundary Holes. The child will be exceptionally vulnerable to emotional stresses. The child will have a difficult time handling the beliefs and opinions of others. The child will not begin developing an ability to consider outside influences and make up her own mind. As a default, the child will allow the decisions of others to essentially steer his or her behavior.

A child who is socially connected and who is going through normal boundary development will learn to say NO to the requests of adults, starting at about age 2 and through the teen years. A health personal boundary allows the child to strike a balance between rebellious independence and diplomatic harmony in the world. The young person learns to identify Boundary Holes and strengthens the boundary by developing an ability to say no to the requests of adults.

If we're developing healthy boundaries, then each of our early Boundary Holes eventually gets replaced by a "Boundary Door." Our Boundary Doors are the ways we communicate and collaborate and compromise with others. If I want a burger for lunch and my friend wants Chinese food, and then, we both compromise and go for pizza, which we both enjoy, then we have just used our Boundary Doors. This is the beginning of win/win decision-making and collaboration with others.

A win/win negotiation needs some parameters to be successful for both parties. It needs the fairness and best results that arise from the "Nash Equilibrium," which is the roadmap of win/win decisions made famous by Nobel Laureate John Forbes Nash and highlighted in the film, A Beautiful Mind. We understand this as "win/win" dealings versus "win/lose" dealings. Our decisions about whether to collaborate with each other must benefit us both equally.

Have you ever felt yourself drained by your work? Your friendships, or most of all, your love relationship? If so, you might not be awake to and aware of the dynamic process of boundaries. You rarely make win/win deals with others using your Boundary Doors. You exhaust yourself from helping others too much. Few of your interpersonal choices involve mutually beneficial social agreements. This kind of psychological exhaustion can lead to physical problems like clinical depression and cardiovascular illness. Numerous studies have shown the effect that psychological exhaustion can have on physical health and well-being.

This is why your Personal Boundary can be livesaving.

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Mentors and Students - What Do They Give Each Other?

I've been thinking recently about the relationship between a teacher and student, and how much it is that a student benefits from the free and personalized involvement of a mentor.

The mentor is someone who advocates for the student and wants to see the student thrive. In accord with psychologist Erik Erikson's model of human stages of development, the mentor in a teaching role actually benefits from the relationship by way of what Erikson called "generativity": taking one's achievements and giving to the next generation as a legacy. This is rewarding to the mentor and an attestation that one has built something lasting in life and is of high worth as a man.

Such reasoning certainly makes sense in terms of a man's sense of core masculinity. It raises our level of masculinity to become a father and provide for the young. It is "masculinizing" to spend resources on those you care about and see them as an outgrowth of your own identity. In the film 300, the warriors die but leave a legacy to the rest of humanity by preserving a form of government called Democracy.

To understand more deeply how masculinity operates, see the Mature Masculine Power Program (soon to be called miMan - Masculine Intelligence in Being a Man.) In the program, we clearly see how such activities as educating yourself (the Apollo Instinct), spending your resources on others (the Poseidon Instinct) and other features of being in a mentor-student relationship can make you feel great about your life, and more masculine.

This brings us to another masculinizing instinct called the Dionysus Instinct. The Dionysus Instinct is our ability to celebrate as a man. I have known many men who have a difficult time taking compliments, celebrating their victories, and enjoying the journey of life. As men, the celebration is especially powerful when we celebrate the mentors in our lives.

How Partying Down Can Save Your Life

When I say that partying can save your life, I don't mean that partying is akin to an emergency surgery or a wonder drug. I'm talking about using partying to raise the level of HOW ALIVE YOU FEEL as a man. When you help someone else, you feel more masculine, more alive, and you have more "passion for life." When you celebrate a coach or a mentor, when you win a victory - get a job promotion, a raise, land a contract, attract the woman you have been interested - you feel more passion for life. When you celebrate those real accomplishments with your mentor, your students, your team, then you feel even MORE alive.

The Dionysus Instinct has the power to masculinize through celebration.

I came to this concept by wondering about what we owe each other in friendships, especially in student-teach friendships. If they are to be win/win, then what is really owed by a the student to the mentor?

It certainly isn't money, or education, experience or skill. By definition, the mentor has more of those things than the student. It also strikes me as too simple to say that the student just provides a person to be generative with - a beneficiary. I realized there is also an emotional connection to be addressed - not just the generativity issue that makes men feel more masculine for giving to the next generation.

The student owes the mentor the gift of celebration. It's time to party down and celebrate our accomplishments and mentor(s) who helped us to get there.

CELEBRATION

This is a special discovery for all men who have ever had trouble appreciating the journey, being able to celebrate in life, and really get the most out of it.

If a mentor has cheered you on with fatherly support for the anxieties, challenges and stresses you face - the competitions you want to win - then they have donated confidence to you. What we owe them in return is the emotion of CELEBRATION for their efforts, and we can emotionally afford to send this active emotion of honoring a mentor back in return. It is a confident emotion in return.

I remember an old mentor of mine getting angry at me at a wedding for not being in the mood to dance. He said that I was "rude for not dancing," and I didn't understand at the time why in the world he would be angry. Maybe I didn't feel confident enough in my dancing, and maybe that kind of shyness really is rude treatment of a mentor and other revelers.

I know why now. It is the lack of honoring others PHYSICALLY, in the form of confident celebration that is offensive. They are dancing confidently, and they are all out there on the floor willing to share that group confidence with you. Why would you then not dance, even clumsily?

I notice that many times when a mentor takes you into a confidence-building, fatherly "talk" - like a sports coach to pump you up for a big game - he wants you to win, and through his efforts at education and experience, maybe you WILL win.

But what comes next is important too.

After the big win, which is owed in part to the mentor, you definitely own him one more thing that perhaps honors him even more than your big win - it's CELEBRATING THE BIG WIN. A VICTORY PARTY IS IN ORDER. 

Self-Esteem is Also Life-Saving

In MindOS Mastery we talk about what I refer to as "The E=mc2 of Psychology," that self-esteem itself has two quantifiable parts: Well-Being and Confidence.

If you don't have well-being - an emotional sense of having all your needs met, feeling nurtured in your life - and confidence - an emotional sense of being able to tolerate risk, change and loss - then you don't have self-esteem. Well-being is like feeling "mothered" in life, and it doesn't feel happy and non-depressed to be confident or a risk-taker if you are hungry. You don't have high self-esteem yet. It also isn't helpful to have your needs met in life if you aren't confident enough to go out into the world with them and make things happen. You need BOTH well-being and confidence to have a complete self-esteem, and to be happy.

In any relationship that will last, there are conversations, sharing, skills education, and various other intellectual aspects, but the core of a friendship or any relationship really is an exchange of self-esteem. Ultimately a parent, mentor, teacher, or anyone who supports the efforts of another person is boosting their level of self-esteem - cheering them up, making them happy, "donating" of their own self-esteem.

Therefore, if there are two types of self-esteem - well-being and confidence - then these are the two types of ultimate emotional benefit that a mentor gives a student.

A mentor who is more nurturing gives a student a boost of well-being, and the student feels "mothered" emotionally.

Another kind of mentor who is more take-charge and bold gives a student a boost of confidence. The student then feels "fathered" emotionally.

What then, does a student owe a mentor in return for the teaching, other than being the beneficiary of the mentor's intellectual legacy?

Eureka, we have it...

You Owe Your Mentor Gratitude and Celebration

Combine both of these types of self-esteem to the idea of a mentor's legacy, and you have a recipe of what we owe a mentor for his free help and guidance.

Did you ever notice that if you donate your time or energy to a person who then wastes your efforts, you don't feel like helping them anymore? If someone gets one over on you in this way, then you were fooled in terms of your Personal Boundary. You had a "Boundary Hole" in it, through which your student got a "Win/Lose Deal." They won your time and energy, your emotional investment, and you lost your time, energy, and emotion.

If your boundary skill is solid, then you will spot these Win/Lose Deals and stop them at the door, helping out only other guys who will take that emotional investment and augment or expand it. They will take your generosity with self-esteem, and expand its volume. Then they will have a surplus of it through your efforts. They will be happy with the education and experience you have provided.

From there, there really is something to give back...

You know what I am talking about if you have MindOS Mastery (miMan - Masculine Intelligence in Being a Man.)

GRATITUDE

If a mentor has cheered you up with motherly support, then they have donated well-being to you. What we owe them in return is the emotion of GRATITUDE for their efforts, and we can emotionally afford to send this appreciative emotion back their way in the form of our THANKS.

Notice something. When someone has accepted your time and energy and doesn't give you thanks, it automatically tells you that the person is not only being Win/Lose, but also has poor boundaries - Boundary Holes. As a mentor you likely will dial back how much mothering you do for them - how much nurturing support.

The Value of the Dionysus Instinct in Making You Feel Masculine

Combine all this together and you get something remarkable. The act of celebrating - "partying down" - brings together so much. It expresses the confidence you feel in facing fears that we talk about in the "Anxiety Map" of the MindOS Mastery Program. It honors your mentors who have given you fatherly advice, and a pumping up of your confidence.

But it is also the gift that keeps on giving - it revs up your level of masculinity through the very act of celebration itself. This is the Dionysus Instinct - both an expression of masculinity - call it the "being a good party host" instinct, the "man of the house" - and also FEEDS your masculinity too, independent of what you may owe a mentor who has helped you to be more confident.

I certainly found that in my aversion to dancing long ago, that when I got the bright idea that it would benefit my social life to start throwing parties for my friends and new acquaintances, I suddenly felt much more like dancing, clumsy as I am.

Right out of the miMan Program - Masculine Intelligence in Being a Man (formerly the Mature Masculine Power Program)...

It was the Dionysus Instinct in action - the masculinizing force of taking on the celebrating, party host leadership role in your social circles - and one that simultaneously honors your supporters, and makes you feel "more alive," more vital, more masculine.  It this sense, "partying down" saves your life.  Your experience of passion for life.