How to Be Consciously and Authentically Masculine with Stef Sifandos

The Unbreakable Success Podcast

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Unbreakable Success Podcast, Episode 60 How to be Consciously and Authentically Masculine with Stef Sifandos.

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Stefanos Sifandos is an author, international speaker, and mentor who -- if you're willing, will help you transform your idea of relationships, quality of life, and modern masculinity.

In today's episode, our friend Stef shares his very personal story that led him on a journey of transformational growth through neuro-empowerment practices, and an integration of spiritual praxis and western psychology.

Stefanos has brilliantly integrated the best of eastern and western methodologies and philosophies, and used integrative techniques methods to create programs and systems to enhance the quality of your relationships and personal performance.

Add to that, Stef is one of the most easily likable people you'll ever meet. Please make sure you've bookmarked his below website, followed him on social, and reach out to him to learn more from his and thank him for his time today.

I'll say "you're welcome" ahead of time for this episode, because after this episode, there's no doubt you'll be grateful for the introduction to Stef. :)

Please listen, share and make sure you're subscribed to Unbreakable Success on iTunes and YouTube.

With love & respect - Aaron

Full Transcript:

Aaron: 00:00 All right, Stefanos, thank you so much for joining us today. Everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Unbreakable Success. I'm excited to have a conversation with somebody who I'm already beginning to think of as a friend is, you know, I have to apologize to you as you're listening, uh, all of you out there listening and watching because we kind of been chatting away and having some conversation. I'm thinking like we really need to be recording this because we're starting to get deep into the conversation, but I think we can pick it up with no problem anyway, for, for those that don't, you know, Stefanos Sifandos, and we were working on your name before we started. Obviously you've got a lot of accolades behind you. You're an author, you've been doing some speaking internationally. you're a phenomenal coach on, on masculinity and relationships. Can you tell us, just tell us a little bit about you, what your work is like today so people can get a good gauge on the things you're doing if they haven't met you already.

Stef Sifanos: 00:57 Thank you. Thank you for the kind introduction. It's a privilege to be here as well. I'm super excited. So for me, I blend the combination of neuro empowerment practices, a Western psychological frameworks and eastern mysticism in terms of assisting people in cultivating their brilliance, actualizing their potential or shifting from a place of pain that they may find themselves in or that they're attached to. And so my coaching or a massive fan of the word coach, but I don't think I have a better one at this moment, but the guiding, the coaching, whatever it may be, the friendship is, um, it comes from a place of really wanting to serve and serve in the sense of how do we liberate ourselves from the tension or the incessant tension that we at times experience. And so the tools and techniques and how I do that. A, again, a combination of what I've mentioned and also leveraging my own personal experiences and of course the amazing experiences of other people such as yourself, such as people that I come into contact with, family, friends, men, mentors of my own and other leaders of past and present as well.

Stef Sifanos: 02:08 And so I just really, I'm, I'm very excited about it. I'm crazy about sacred union. I'm crazy about human optimization in terms of how do we really develop this amazing grand version of self.

Aaron: 02:21 Yeah. And, and I love, what you're saying there. Especially about the term of whenever I hear the word coach and even though it's funny, it's one of those, we were talking about some quandaries that earlier and you know, from a business perspective when you're describing yourself, you have to put something contains it to describe what it is you do. And I think for, for many of us in the work that you do in the work that I do, coaches use the appropriate word, but I never really feel like it covers everything. You know, it's a little bit difficult. So I appreciate you sharing so much. Give us an idea of, you know, for you, you know, when you think of a, uh, a clients if there, if there is a, if there is that ideal person or, or, or, uh, someone who you meet and right away you're thinking, yeah, this is somebody I'd love to work with. What is that like for you? And obviously I'm not expecting you to have just one type of client you'd like, but know what are some of the things that that triggered you to recognize it somebody or group of somebody who are the right people for you to work with? What's that like for you?

Stef Sifanos: 03:28 I love that question. Willingness is the first thing that comes to mind and to be really honest as well, willingness is something that I look for in my intimate relationships as well. Like how willing are you to celebrate your joys? How willing are you to celebrate us as a, as a couple? How willing are you to traverse your own pain and your difficulty? How willing are you to look at as much of life as possible and really absorb it and then be discerning about what you allow in or what you continue to believe is to be true. For me, that willingness, like whether it be with clients, whether it be my friendships with any person that I'm interacting with, that willingness is so powerful for me and it's what, it's a magnet for me. It's like a, what I'm really, really attracted to and what I'm also looking for when I'm working with him.

Stef Sifanos: 04:13 Because if we don't have that willingness, we're closed. We're essentially, we're coming more from fear than we are from courage and theories. Uh, it's a constricted, restricted, tight, rigid place to come from. And so there's very little wiggle room and you know, speaking a little bit to your, your previous career and, and like it got me thinking because I've done a lot, a lot of work with special forces military and it's, I've learned so much from working with these people like so, so much and some of the rigidity that they have found themselves in like you would think, how do you even shift from that, whether it be physically, emotionally underway, willing, willing, you know, in adverse conditions, whether it be our physical environment, our internal landscape in our own spirituality and sense of self when we're, when we're faced with adverse conditions, it's our willingness that instigates our ability to be creative, to move and shift from that place. So if I'm with someone that has zero willingness, it makes it tough, it makes it really difficult.

Aaron: 05:17 Sure. I think we can all relate to it. I mean, regardless of, you know, for those listening, regardless of where you are, we've all experienced that one way or another, whether it's a relationship like you alluded to earlier or you know, somebody is a manager or CEO or, or a team leader or in coaching relationships, we've all been in those situations where we're looking to inspire or influence change in someone, but when there's pushback it makes a lot more difficult. So I, I, I, I love that. And hopefully of course, if your listener of the show, I'm going to assume that you got some willingness to always be learning something new and, and get some new perspective because that's kind of our jam here. So yeah, yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm glad to have you here with, look, we catch people up because we were, like I mentioned earlier, we were having a conversation earlier about, um, about masculinity and I was really excited to have a discussion about the topic because we've never really touched on it, at least from my recollection in any of the episodes that I've had on a so far on the podcast here.

Aaron: 06:19 So if we can fast forward to, through to masculinity specifically as a topic, I'd love to get your take on that because that's become at least one of your areas, one of your targeted areas that you specialize in when you work with clients in groups of people. So give me idea of, of number one, what kind of sparks that as being something that felt important to you to kind of focus on and dive into and then help others with that process. And why do you think it's. Why do you feel like it's so, such an important conversation? I certainly have my perspective, but you're the man here. This is your show now here. I got to hear from you. Your take on it.

Stef Sifanos: 06:58 Yeah. That's great, Aaron. Thank you. Yeah. So for me, what really, what really sparked to things in retrospect to one singular experience and then an ongoing experience that really sparked me delving deep into the psychology of masculinity and uh, understanding what it means to be a healthy man in contemporary times. And so the first was my ongoing relationship with my father and the, the masculine archetype. The father archetype, it was a very unhealthy relationship. There was a, as I mentioned earlier, there was violence, emotional abuse, and that was really the norm, the aggression, the confrontational approach to problems or to, to live that was the, you know, the agitation of frustration, the fear mongering that was, that was the norm for me. And so when I was in that, that was the norm. But when I was out of that allowed me to reflect and say, is this really what it means to be a man to live with all this tension and fear and essentially bullshit.

Stef Sifanos: 08:02 Like it was just, it was just so much heaviness, heaviness. And so that was one of the catalysts for me to look deeper into my own manhood, my own sense of self as well. Uh, and, and of course, as a, as a, as a side note, I want to, I want to make mention that, you know, the old cliche hurt people hurt people. And so this isn't a blaming or an external shading to my father, you know, for whatever it's worth, he has an amazing heart when he's connected to that. And his ability to give and be present is quite phenomenal. It's unfortunate that he can't really didn't have the tools and the learning and the understanding to tap into that and the support. He didn't feel supported. He's on live. And so the second catalyst for me was a few years ago when I was in an intimate relationship with a woman.

Stef Sifanos: 08:53 We were girlfriend and moved together, um, and I was unfaithful in that relationship and I was commuting in fidelity at rampant rights. And so that all came undone. She found out. And that really that singular event or experience really it caused me to look. It allowed me to look deeper into is this the man I want to be in the world? Like, is this because my whole world was falling apart? It really was. And I couldn't say it. I'll just throw others is part of life because I was accustomed to that burn build that we'd spoken about. So when we we able to build and build and create as men, because men have amazing creative energy as well, just in a different way to women as women have a nurturing creative energy as well, or the feminine does rather. And I can go into masculine feminine, what that actually means in terms of gender dynamics as well as physical gender beyond bonner agenda feel so inclusive and binary gender as well.

Stef Sifanos: 09:49 And so, uh, having that, that creation, but then this habit and familiarity of our better it before it's taken away from me, at least the self control. We have control, greater control and autonomy, but it's a false sense of autonomy and telling the healthy autonomy because we're not really allowing ourselves to appreciate what we're creating. And so we're creating out of insecurity, out of hot the selfishness, out of fear and out of pine. And this is all suppressed and oppressed and within ourselves and unconscious. And so that, that opportunity, that breakup and that process gave me an opportunity to deep dive into me. And so I did that. I let go of my businesses. I went into debt because I stopped, I literally stopped working. Um, I, I just spent hours everyday. I took 15 hours a day on personal growth. Like on my own personal growth.

Stef Sifanos: 10:39 I sought counsel is spiritual healers. God's mentors. I'll put everything I had into that. I spend time in nature. I spent hours meditating, reading, being with a crying, breaking down, releasing like emotive Cathartic releases, uh, uh, you know, I immersed myself in physical activities or Kate, my buddy movie, and at least be able to change my state to flux as often as possible to have some, some level of reprieve Saran myself where I could with good people. I let go of a lot of friends. I completely, I just stripped down and stripped away everything. Or was that an ego self or the spiritual self? I was a rower. I was just an isolated most of the time. Um, and it also served me as well. I needed that. That was my journey into that. That was, that was made. And so the first part of your question was, you know, what was the catalyst for that?

Stef Sifanos: 11:32 And then the second part, I believe, if I remember correctly, it was like how do we begin begin to define masculinity because it is such a complex conversation, it's about culture, it's one about environment, but it's also one about our physicality, how our biology, our neurobiology and physiology, men's physiology influences our behavior as well, coupled with what is the environment or the culture of that time say and, and the culture of the past and how that's permeated into contemporary times. And now we just sit there. And so, you know, scholars will argue like, is it, is it a biology that dictates our masculinity? What is masculinity? Is it purely culture? I believe it's a combination of both and I believe that every man needs to set out to define his own sense of masculinity. But I'm not going to leave people there and say, Hey, go to find your own mascot.

Stef Sifanos: 12:22 I teach this stuff. So like I'll be calling you back. You're not getting off that easy if you know. So there's a couple of things and I'm going to start with two major points. So I've developed a framework which has 12 principles and these principles, they feed into each other and there is a circular model and one is not dependent on the other, however, they are reliant on each other to some degree to, to create a harmony and balance with the expressive self. And so there's two elements of masculinity that I'm really, really excited about and they are inclusivity and sustainability. So let me elaborate. A Nice history has shown us as men generally generally speaking, so this is generalizing to be quite isolating, to be the lone rangers, to be also quite separating and segregating and we can see that in our cultural practices.

Stef Sifanos: 13:15 We can see that in our political systems and we can see that, that it wasn't until the seventies that women just started to get more rights, like some legitimate rights in terms of what they were able to do and be in society. So we've been quite controlling and oppressing as agenda. We haven't been inclusive in our decision making as individuals and as collectives. We've taken a superior ground and then there's sub groups within men as well that, uh, have caste systems of inferior and superior. That's not sustainable, but it's not. It's for, for our level of consciousness and awareness of society and where we're going and how technology is feeding into the rapidness of decision making and how we grow as a society. This is just not going to cut it anymore. This, this sense of exclusivity and short term gains, selfish, selfish, short term gain.

Stef Sifanos: 14:15 And so we begin by looking at ourselves as men and saying, how do we operate in the world? The actions that we take, the thoughts that we have, the belief systems and the decisions that we make and the emotions that we feel. Are they inclusive and are they sustainable? To me, if every man can start from that place, don't even worry about the 12 principles and that, and they have really deep as well. We're going to them. If you, if you lock, but I'm not even worry about them, just start with sustainability and inclusivity. I believe that will change the entire cultural paradigm and landscape of the way we interact at agenda level and it will begin open up the conversation and I'm not saying anything new yet, you know, like this has been going on for thousands of years, hundreds of years. This will open up the conversation for, um, what's the word I want to use?

Stef Sifanos: 15:05 I don't want to, I don't want to say cultural relativity. That's not quite the right term. I want to say it's going to open up a conversation for equity, equity, equity in our society, you know, like that. That to me, that's super powerful. Like, and hey, I get it. I'm coming from A. I'm coming from a place of I'm a, uh, I'm a young male, mid thirties. I'm a male, I'm Caucasian. I'm middle class like I get, I get, there's a complexity here with this, right? And however, we have to look at that. We have to, we, if we, if we want to create equity in our society, we have to take ownership and responsibility, which happens to be the first principle of conscious warrior, the framework ownership and responsibility of who we've been as a collective, who we are and where we're going and just get real, get real with who we are. That's, that's the simplicity of it.

Aaron: 15:57 Yeah. I love it. You and I are on the same page. It's funny because you tapped on the beginning points of talking about I'm taking ownership and responsibility and I have a framework elsewhere for something else. Not touching on that masculinity, but that's the starting point. But I think, you know, with it's pretty universal and it's certainly applicable, uh, in this topic of masculinity as we're discussing it today, that, you know, w we have to take ownership of our decision making and take ownership of the process and take ownership of, of what beliefs we're gonna perpetuate as, as men and, and if, if it doesn't start there, if it doesn't start with, okay, I'm choosing to then, then you're losing game because then you're either, you know, blaming somebody before you are blaming society for others just the way it is.

Aaron: 16:53 And it's when all the power is depleted from the decision making, which makes it kind of interesting for somebody to claim some masculinity or authority if you're passing the book in...