The Shattering Within: Facing the Man in the Mirror to Finally Come Home

0:00 The topics and opinions express in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. What's working on Purpose? Anyway? Each week we ponder the answer to this question. People ache for meaning and purpose at work, to contribute their talents passionately and know their lives really matter. They crave being part of an organization that inspires them and helps them grow into realizing their highest potential. Business can be such a force for good in the world, elevating humanity. In our program, we provide guidance and inspiration to help usher in this world we all want working on Purpose. Now, here's your host, doctor Elise Cortez.

1:05 Welcome back to the Working and Purpose Program, which has been brought to you with passion and prize since February of twenty fifteen. Thanks for us tuning in this week. Great to have you. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes. Most leaders are sitting on untapped human energy, and I help them unlock it. I'm an organizational psychologist, logo therapist, workforce advisor and the founder of the Gusto Now movement. But the title I live by is really much simpler. I traffic and energy, not the surfle suble motivation or another engagement initiative, but the deeper force what I call Gusto, the life force for performance that drives commitment, perseverance, and genuine ownership of a shared a mission in the clients we serve. You can learn more about us on how we can work together at Gusto dashnow dot com or visit my personal site at least Coortes dot com for information on speaking in my books. Today we have with us doctor Rabbi barhuk Bi Hailevi. He is a trained logotherapist, men's coach, ideogram teacher, and spiritual guide who helps men rediscover who they are, why they're here, and how to live at face with doctorates and counseling and divinity and over two decades of experience guiding people through grief, loss and transformation. Doctor Haleve bridges psychology, spirituality, and coaching through Victor Frankel's meaning centered approach. He's the author of Spark Seekers, Mourning with Meaning, and The Guy in the Glass. Six Questions to See the Man You are you Are Meant to Be, and he hosts the podcast thirteen Minutes Why every Man Needs a Why. Through his men's coaching and men's peer groups, he helps men rise into purpose, connection, and authentic brotherhood. We'll be talking today about the points from his book The Guy in the Glass and specifically

2:36 address the problems men face with their mental health. Cover off on the six questions from the book, and then hear about his own Dark Knight in the Woods story that radically changed him in the direction of his life. He joinses from Denver doctor BARUKHLEVI, welcome back to working on purpose. He doctor lees, thanks for having me. It's always an honor, absolutely, And let me first just celebrate this beautiful thing you brought into the world. You know, I've talked about this before. I've had children. You have not. This is harder, harder to bring this into the world than it is a child, So way to go be, and listeners and viewers, you'll get to know that he has a very big, beautiful, fancy name. But those of us who know him and love him just call him Be and you will too. So now that we've given some levity to the show, b let's get into the meat of this. And I was shocked to learn this stat from you and your book that every thirteen minutes a man takes his life by suicide. And so you host that podcast called thirteen Minute Mission Why every Man needs a Why to address this very tragy And of course, so when you think about that in an hour, more than four men have perished.

3:41 Yeah, by the time this episode closes, I guess that means three men will have chosen to die by suicide. And I have a simple mission at Lease that is to push back the clock one minute. That means twenty eight hundred and eighty eight men this year alone will choose life if we can help them. As our teacher mentor Victor Frankel says, discover and live there. Why a man who has a why does not choose to leave this world. That's my mission called the thirteen minute Mission, and that's what we're doing. Well. Of course you are uniquely qualified. There's a reason you are so riveted on this subject of men's suicide and are uniquely equipped to address it. I knew about your father's suicide when he was sixty and you were thirty four, and the way you describe it in the book is so incredibly powerful and really puts us into that seat. And then, of course your grandmother took her own life some twenty years before before that. Amazing to draw from and to be riveted by.

4:37 Yeah, I do believe God gives us the curriculum that we need, not what we want. And I was put in this life, as Victor Frankel says, transform that tragedy into other people's triumph. And didn't want the curriculum, but I got it, and so here we are. I wrote a book on really kind of documenting it and laying out a plan of how we're going to efectuate this mission and not put an end of suicide, but certainly defy the clock. You know, one thing I want to sell it about about you, As I mentioned to you, and I've been friends for several years, and we met each other because we did our local philosophy Diplomats, which is a master's level degree. Together, that's how we met some I think it was six seven years ago, But I learned a lot more about you in this book. I love the fact that you call yourself a recovering rabbi and a spiritual mutt, and I love that you can draw on the wisdom of all these different spiritual traditions and what you do and you're wicked, funny be Oh my god, I was laughing and I was crying, and I was just like, but then I was so impressed that you have really done something well. One thing that I also love about your book is that it's just piersonally raw.

5:43 It's achingly real, which is you down to the core. But then you do this beautiful thing be listeners and viewers. Is why you got to pick up the book. You do this thing where you're weaving together a parable, a guide book, and a memoir all into one powerful experience. And I was really blown back by how clever this is and how powerflo it is. I'm so glad you appreciated. A couple of my good friends said it's like Doctor SEUs for grown ups. Yeah, they said it as eloquently as you but you know, look, I like a paradox. And it opens up with a pretty gruesome scene of my father taking his life and it was necessary to do that, And it also juxtaposes that against Victor Frankel's survival out of the Holocaust, and so that I can't think of two heavier topics in the Holocaust and suicide. Oh, this is going to be a fun book, and so I juxtaposed it with a I think a pretty fun ride. The guy walks into a bar, a lot of plant medicine kind of experience in there, not sure what's real what's not. But I really wanted to have a humorous light as well as deep and painful.

6:50 Well, so let's just quickly introduce a little bit of it. So I really appreciate that, you know. Well, let's also say, and again, you know, your work with men, your work coaching men, and you know men's peer groups, etceter are so so powerful being able to surface this really painful stuff in life. The book starts though, because you've had You've had an argument with your wife and she's like, go figure your shit out, and so she takes the kids on the trip, and you had you're going to go you know, camping, but you decide to stop by the bar and the bar maid Shama if I'm saying her name right, you do. She's really, you know, a strong catalyst in this and she's a central figure and how she serves up these questions and how she curates the conversations who you know and the men that flow through the door to echo them or to serve them as well. So I just want to situate that for our listeners and viewers. You know, it's really expert how you weave that all through.

7:43 Well, thank you. I just draw upon wisdom traditions, whether it's logo therapy or kabbo law or other. As you said, I'm a spiritual mud so I got a lot of traditions, great traditions that have come before me. And so this is just a spiritual principle. You know. She represents the divine feminine and the men that I to work with at midlife are ready to embrace their divine feminine to learn from it. And so it's a guy at midlife and it's almost like she's like the queen bee and they're sort of hovering around the hive and she's calling the shots but letting them find their way, and I just really do believe it's a spiritual principle that makes that work. Thank you for saying that. I didn't catch that she was the divine, feminine energy. I just saw her as kind of a catalyst, sort of a you know, a wise sort of sage. So I love that that nuance in there too. Amazing.

8:34 Yeah, I had to really decide what this book wasn't because I was trying to be all things to everybody. That's why it took me so long. You know, first it was memoir. Next it was a fictional narrative, and next it was a teaching on the Enneagram Loco Therapy handbook. And the editor said, like, dude, you got to kind of consolidate it, and so I made some choices and some of it becomes implicit. I'll give you one little sort of behind the scenes. There's six chapters. There's six kind of different types of men that show up in each chapter, and they're based on the aneagram, which is another love of mine, and so each one represents an aneagram, which is that for your listener, it's kind of like a personality roadmap. And so they're the six fundamental Lisually nine any gram types, but I boiled it down to six, and so there's lots of hidden motifs and fun things behind there. And you know, i'd like to think that it's readable.

9:28 Now I didn't catch that either, And now I have to go back committed again and find that because you know, I'm an anagram freak as well. I'm a seven enthusiast. You're an eighth the challenger. So now I got to go back and read it again. Happy to do that. Thanks. After three, I think is the anagram seven, but you'll figure it out. Okay, thanks for the little tip. Okay, So I thought it was profound that your grandfather gave you the Guy in the and the Glass poem, and you know, obviously the impact on you is incredible. I had never encountered that poem before, and I don't know that we need to read the whole thing, but if you want to situate a little bit about what the poem is about and why it was so profoundly impactful for you. Yeah. It was written in nineteen thirty four by a man named Dale Wimbrough, and he was writing it in response to a young reader who was writing into the American Mercury magazine. He was struggling with a moral business dilemma, and this was poem was of the response to the young reader, and it's all about going to the mirror, the guy in the glass, and it's written in nineteen thirty four language, so it's a little archaic, but I think it to me it makes them meaningful, kind of reminds me of my grandfather, kind of reeks of grandfatherly wisdom, and so it was appropriate. My grandfather gave it to me later because I was that young man in my life and he saw me going off sort of the moral crossing moral lines or you know, just the twenty somethingter version of me. He gave me this poem. And I also think he watched my dad, that was his son in law, very much going off the rails. And this is a poem about going to the mirror. And

10:59 at the end of the day, if you don't like, if you don't respect the guy or the gal staring back from the glass, then you have nothing. And the men that I work with, in particular, have spent their entire life learning to be whatever everybody else wants them to be and learning to climb the ladders of success as it says, to find his leaning against the wrong wall. And they don't know. They don't respect the guy in the glass. And so you have nothing if you get if you don't have him. And I appreciate how you share in the book. I forget which character it is that can't actually look into the mirror. Can't can't look into the mirror. It's not ready to see himself. It's not actually a character. It's about twenty percent of the men that I give this assignment to do this I call mirror work or mirror moments. I tell them to go to the mirror and look at themselves and not like, you know, just comb your hair, but to yeah, I mean that was a joke, but it was to look yourself in the eyes, to stare. And so many men, maybe women too, I don't know. I haven't done it with them, can't do it. They won't do it. It's heartbreaking to hear somebody can't look at themselves in the eyes.

12:05 That's a true, it's a reality. There was just so much in there. As I told you, I've a couple of dear male friends that I've already got copies of the book for because there's so much in there that I know they'll really appreciate on their own journey of learning and growing and trying to underunderstand themselves and accept themselves and celebrate themselves. So, and you know, what's what I appreciate to about this work be is that you know, when we help more men heal, everybody needs to heal. There's not a single human walking the planet that isn't walking wounded. And when we help more men heal, we help so much of the world get better simultaneously. And I just really appreciate that work. Yeah, I've gotten challenged a bit by my female audience or friends or family who so why did you not write it for women? I say, I did write it for women because you have a father's son, husband, brother, colleague, boss, employee, and better men as you just describe, make a better world.

12:59 I mean, if you look at a good percentage of our problems, you know, I don't think it's a stretch to say involve a Y chromosome. So if we can help those with the Y chromosome, we help those with x X chromosome too, one. Hundred percent, maybe one thousand percent. I also noticed I've found I got more just so you know, b I got some more insight even into some of the men in my life that are I've been close to, and got oh, I better understand those choices and some of those reactions, which is where I want to go to next. You and I both being Victor Frankel fans from our that's the creator of you know, the logo logo philosophy, logo therapy for listeners of viewers if you don't know that. But of course he warns that when reaction becomes a way of life, freedom fades. So when we when we're driving our lives and we start to be driven by emotion, fear, et cetera, now we lose all this choice in this freedom.

13:49 And so I appreciate again that you're talking about how we can free ourselves from what you and I think doctor Victor Franko called the inner concentration camp. And if that doesn't just help you really relate to that world, I can relate to that world. Well, I don't use the term lightly. I have written all over my body in tattoos family members' numbers who were murdered in the Holocaust. So it's personal to me. I am a rabbi and I'm a student of Victor Frankels. I wear his number one one nine, one zero four on my arm, and so I don't use that term lightly because I've been challenged on it before. You know, that's reserved for the special unique. No, it's not. Because my father was in a concentration camp. How do I know?

14:30 Because he sentenced himself to death. And if that's not a concentration camp, then I don't know what we're talking about. And his world became riddled with self accusation and hatred and condemnation, and sounds very similar like a Holocaust, like a Nazi concentration camp, and to a person in suffering, there's no distinction, and so I take it very seriously, and my job is really to help people break out of those concentration camps. I don't know about to be but one of the reasons that I am so drawn to logotherapy love for philosophy is that to me, it's empowering, right, And so you talk about it in your book that you know, to react as ordinary, to respond, to react as ordinary, to respond that's different is extraordinary, and it is the mark of the man who has met his own soul and refused to bow before circumstance. Frank will call this the defiant power of the human spirit, the capacity to face soul crushing pain and still draw a line in the sand, declaring, I will choose who I become.

15:32 Amen, sister. So powerful. All of Victor Frankel's work, in my humble opinion and certainly my life'losophy comes down to his famous statement, between stimulus and response, there is a space, and in that space lies our power to choose our response, and in our response lies our growth and our freedom. So between stimulus things happening, I will curse here, it's your show in us reacting. There's a space and that space. The question is what kind of space have we cultivated that space? Do we are we're living in an expanse of life or we're living in that constriction, that narrowness of thinking, of feeling, of being in the world. And so when a man, when a person expands that space, they don't react, they start choosing their response. It's simple formula. It's not easy to do, but that's it.

16:21 That's right, one hundred percent. Get it. Yeah, And I appreciate that and continue to practice it myself. So it's it's a lifelong deal. Let's grab our first break. I'm your host, doctor Release Cortes. We've bru on the air with doctor Rabbi baruk Bi ha Levi, who is a trained logo therapist, men's coach, endeaogram teacher, and spiritual guide who helps men rediscover who they are, why they're here, and how to live it fully. We've been talking about the real issue, the problem here of men's mental health and just how tragic it can it can unfold. After the break, we're going to get into these six magical questions that Be talks about in his book. We'll be right back.

17:09 Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author. She helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at Elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is working on purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Elise Alise at Elisecortes dot com. Now back to Working on Purpose.

18:01 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Elise Cortes, as I am dedicated to helping create a world where organizations thrive because people thrive and are led by inspirational leaders that help them find and contribute their greatness, and we do business that betters the world. I keep researching and writing my own books, so one of my latest came out, The Great Revitalization, How activating meaning and purpose can radically enliven your business. And I order to help leaders understand today's discerning workforce and what do they want and need from you to be able to give their best, and then I provide you twenty two best practices to equip that in your leadership and your culture. You can find my books on Amazon or Atlas Cortes dot com if you are just now joining us. My guest is doctor Rabbi baruk Bi Halevi. He's the author of Spark Seekers, Mourning and Meaning, and the one we're talking about today, The Guy in the Glass. Six Questions to see the man you could be. He also hosts the podcast thirteen Minutes Why every Man Needs a Why. So, before we get into the questions B, I think it's important send so much of the audience that you serve are mid in the midlife part of of their lives. I appreciate very much and can relate myself that you talk about how midlife isn't a crisis. It's a reckoning. It's a shattering of identity, expectations and the quiet loneliness of performing a life that no longer feels real or true.

19:20 Yeah, I believe deeply you know you're not at midlife When you get to be my age alis you'll know that invitation. I really think we live in a youth obsessed culture. I love this midlife juncture. I'm probably north of midlife. People always say midlife it depends how long you live, but like, let's take the bell curve the average you know, to me, it's like a forty to sixty space in there reimagining who are we? You have enough life experience, you have enough wins and losses, and you start to see through all the bs and if you treat it as a reckoning and as an invitation. I think it becomes the most exciting time in life. It certainly was for me. I wouldn't say it was fun.

20:03 It was certainly very messy and very chaotic, but boy, what was what's emerged on the on the other side and continues to unfold is incredibly powerful. I definitely wouldn't use the word fun, and I definitely wouldn't wish it upon anybody. But when you're in it again, excitement, aliveness, vitality totally. That's where meaning is found on you know, the mountaintops and in the valleys, and it's all there in the midlife juncture. Chewiness for sure, man, that's that's for sure. Okay, So what I would love to do is just we won't be able to treat all of these questions, and we shouldn't because that's the purpose of the book and the usefulness of the book. But I would like to at least introduce the six if we can. And what I appreciate it is. I first, when I first cracked up on your book with the table of contents and I saw the questions, I went, those are those are wait a minute, those are standard questions? What is he doing?

20:53 I know? Be better than this. There must be more to it. So the first question is what's your name? I'm just going to They're not standard question they're bar questions. They pick questions, Yeah, okay, bar questions. Yeah. They're everyday shallow conversations. Shallow, the worst of the worst. Ye, what's your name? What do you do? Come here? Off? And are you single? What's your number? How you getting home? And it does sound like a pickup line. And the previous incarnation of this man at the bar, which is me, it's every man, it's every person that these every questions are not what they seem. Right, nothing is what it seems, And if you want to go deeper, you can go deeper. And that's what this guy at the bar is finally doing in his life. You know, his wife says, don't come back.

21:37 My wife said, don't come back to you figure your shit out. That part is true pretty much every day when I go off to the office. You know, you can take it seemingly ordinary and it becomes extraordinary. And that's what I love about it. And I also love that these are ancient wisdom teachings. You know, I draw a lot from my religion of birth of a law of Judaism, And you know, what's your name? Is the first question that's asked by Moses of God. You know what's your name? It's literally it's like a pickup line. What are you kidding me? This is a pickup line. No, it's actually a necessary starting point if you want intimacy with somebody, to know their name. And of course it's not the name tag, it's not the name on the screen.

22:20 And we dig into that in the chapter. And I think, if I have this right, I think one of the men that you would talk about in the book who you know? I think he's one of the men that his father tells him how he's worthless all the time, and just you know what, a what's his you know, what's his value? Kind of thing? And a lot of us get that, and certainly a lot of men get that too. And if I have this right, be he in his work with you and in the book he decides and discovers that his name is I am worthy? Is that right? Yeah? And it comes from the you know what Moses or what God's response to Moses? What is God going to say? Like g O D. It doesn't exist in the Bible. There's Hebrew and it says a shareh, which means I am that I am.

23:01 And so that principle is every time, as a human being we say I am and we fill in the blank, we're making ourselves static, stuck, limited, and more often than not, they're not pretty descriptions, they're not liberating ideas. Right, I'm stupid. I can't do that. I am this, I am that. And so the idea is, can we start expanding our consciousness our identity? And that is a name beyond just you know, a little name tag mm hmm. Well, as an identity researcher, you know that you're speaking my love language. So I really really appreciate the profundity of that and the work that I've gotten to do help to help people expand their sense of identity and reject or remove some of those labels that they have spent their whole lives with that are so limiting and demeaning.

23:50 And almost always I say, you know, people, what's your name and they tell me their first name. I say that's your whole name, and they're like, yeah, that's it. Do you have a middle name, do you have a last name, do you have a maiden name? Do you have title? Do your kids call you by your first name? Like all of a sudden, you realize we have so many pieces of our identity and we've just boiled it down to a little you know, fill in the blank. And there's so much more there to that person, just like there isn't a second question. The second question is what do you do? This one's an interesting one because I've noticed it more and men. Maybe it's changed a bit, but I still think it's a very male dominated loaded question. What's your name? That's always the first question at a barbecue or a cocktail party, and then the next question, at least for men, is what do you do? And they always say, I'm a lawyer, I'm a doctor, I'm a teacher, I'm a whatever.

24:39 I'll say to them now because I just love disrupting cocktail parties. I didn't ask you how to make money? What do you do? And they're just like, You're like, what are you on? What are you talking about? You're a father, you're a husband, you're a son, you're a gardener, you're a poet, you're a basketball player. I didn't ask you how you pay the bills. But almost invariably particular men tell me how they make money. That is a problem, you know. Years ago, B, I stumbled up honesty. And part of it came because I live here in Dallas, Texas, and a lot of people, especially women, don't necessarily pursue work throughout their whole entire life. So it became awkward to ask what do you do for both men and women, but certainly women. So I devise the question of what do you pour yourself into that lights you up? And I like that. Then people can say sometimes they say that they love the work, but very often they're telling me about, you know, the canvas of their lives, that all these things that matter to them, that are a part of them.

25:36 And that's where the question we needed to go. I just took it at sort of the base level, and you raised it up. And that's the whole point, right, Can we raise our conversations up to, you know, from the ordinary to the extraordinary? And that's what one of the many reasons I've always loved you be because you live on that beautiful level that is real and deep and chewy. And this is what the world needs, my friend. So just need more, B. Thank you. Okay, So next question, and this cracks me up to you know, you're in the bar? What brings you here? Right? Yeah? It starts in the chapter to come here often? But then I, you know, translate that pretty quickly into you know what brings you here? And then it of course takes you into a deeper not hear the bar here, into this life, which takes us into, of course, our beloved teacher Victor Frankel's life thesis. Those who have a why to live can bear almost anyhow. And you don't know how many times I ask guys, what's your why?

26:35 And they look at me like, what do you mean? And then they start scrambling and they start grabbing basically Hallmark cards from the Hallmark store in their mind and they start reading them off about you know, dad and a son and a husband and bs like what's your why? What drives you? What lights you up? And you want to pour yourself into, like you said, And so few people they know it for their business, they know it for their profession or their religion. They don't know it for their life purpose. You know, one of the things that I thought was so powerful is in that chapter you feature Aaron and he's so angry because his loved wife, Emily has died, and so you talk about how he was able to take all of that anger, that of her leaving and feeling helpless and so sad, into into really more of a mission to help other people going through similar things.

27:26 He found himself coming back to the same hospital that he'd gone to to visit her and was helping the people that were also visiting their loved ones. And I thought that was a really powerful depiction of just where purpose can come from. Yeah, one of the things I wanted to accomplish in this book and in my work is to help the world better understand men in particular, and that means all of them, not just the pretty parts, right, not just the pleasing parts, not just the socially acceptable parts. You know, in our society you say somebody is a nice guy, and it's a compliment. Right, It's not a compliment. It can be very hurtful. And being angry is not a pejorative term. Because Martin Luther King was angry, and Nelson Mandela was angry, and Winston Churchill were anger. Now they learned how to harness their anger and you use it on purpose. And I meet so many men who have been made to feel or have felt bad, less than wrong for something like anger, No, what do you do with it that determines demand?

28:30 Well, I can tell you I've gotten a lot of shit done in my life on anger. I really have so because it's energy, right, All of our emotions are energy in motion. And if we can learn what they're trying to tell us, what is it they're communicating to us, then we can do something with that in a more productive, effective fashion. Yeah, you know, reacting is never good, and so if you're reacting from anger, no, But if you're responding from anger right to bring justice coming from a place of harnessed anger. Yes, Martin Luther King didn't, you know, make his point by getting up there and being a nice guy. Right, He had a dream and it was fiery and he was channeled and it moved the world.

29:11 Right right right? Amen? Okay, so let's grab number four here before we grab our next break here. So the next question which cracks me up just thinking about this. You're in a bar and you would ask somebody are you single? Are you being single? And the answer is yes or no? But the truth is it's never no, right because we're only thinking about dating apps and we're only thinking, excuse me from a shallow perspective, but it maybe my profile has been married for twenty seven years. But I have my kids, I have my friends, I have my community. And that's the point helping men people in general, men and women, especially midlife. And this has come up a lot when I counsel people who have gone through divorce, who are now single, and we have to really challenge that who are you in relationship with goes far beyond just you know, a marital status.

30:04 I absolutely love and from all the years I've known you, I love that you really helped me understand the idea of answering the question who do you belong to? So powerful? Yeah, you know one of the challenges I see. I live in Denver Boulder area and it's pretty hippy dippy spiritual out here, and there is a lot of who am I kind of conversations and searching for it, and I do see the limits of that. You know, Victor Frankel said, if you really want to know who you are, figure out who you serve self transcendence. So it's not who am I, it's whose am I? And I think that is such a powerful reframe because a lot of people. You know, there's a we have a loneliness epidemic, as you well know, we have a depression epidemic. And when you can start to see one, there are so many people who you do belong to who so there's plural And two to your other point, when you just take a little bit of time, one moment to go and help some in something small, it could be something very small, suddenly you're not focused on how you feel or feeling alone. You're part of something bigger than.

31:07 Yourself, especially men, especially a midlife who have only defined relationship intimacy with a significant other, a partner. And you know, I'm very passionate about bringing men to true intimacy. Wayne Dyer teaches into me c to see and to be seen? Can you be see by another man in a platonic loving relationship? Can you say I love you? Can you have that connection that saves lives? And just quickly to celebrate that you know, of course you know. Your forward is written by doctor Dan Frantz Friends, who is a dear friend of both of ours, and even just the way he writes his forward, listeners and viewers is a direct expression of the love that be and Dan have for each other as brothers, and that's what I think is so beautiful. And your book opens with something that many men have probably never experienced.

31:58 Yeah, Dan and I are running men's peer groups and it's teaching men how to basically be in intimate relationships from this deeper soul level and to see and to be seen. I know we got a break, but only two common threads I know in suicide is number one loneliness and number two meaninglessness, and that issue solves both of them. Indeed, let's let our listeners and viewers think about that as we grab our last break. I'm your host, Doctor Relis Cortes. We've got on the era of doctor Rabbi Baru b. Halevi. He is a trained loco therapist, men's coach, enneagram teacher, and spiritual guide who helps rediscover who they are, why they're here, and how to live it fully. We've been talking about some of the four so far of the questions he talks about in his book. After the break, we're going to talk about the remaining too, and then hear about his own story of his Dark Knight in the woods.

32:51 We'll be right back, Doctor Elise Cortes is a management consultant specializing in meaning and purpose. An inspirational speaker and author, she helps companies visioneer for greater purpose among stakeholders and develop purpose inspired leadership and meaning infused cultures that elevate fulfillment, performance, and commitment within the workforce. To learn more or to invite a lease to speak to your organization, please visit her at elisecortes dot com. Let's talk about how to get your employees working on purpose. This is Working on Purpose with doctor Elise Cortes. To reach our program today or to open a conversation with Elise, send an email to Alise A. L Se at elisecortes dot com. Now back to working on Purpose.

34:00 Thanks for staying with us, and welcome back to Working on Purpose. I'm your host, doctor Relis Cortes. As you know by now, this program is dedicated to empowering and inspiring you along your journey to realize more of your potential. I mentioned in the last segment that my book The Great Vivitalization came out. What I did for you is I created a simple three page assessment that you can pull off my website gustodeshnow dot com. To help you determined the extent to which you are meeting the discerning needs of today's destination workplace desires. If you're just now joining us, My guest is doctor Rabbi Bardo Bijlevi. He's the author of spark Seekers, Morning with Meaning and The Guy in the Glass. Six Questions to See the Man You Were Meant to be. He also hosts the podcast thirteen Minutes Why every Man Needs a Wive. So let's cover off on them the last two questions you're in the book to give our listeners and viewers a flavor.

34:45 Here favorite next question number five is what's your number? Well, that sounds pretty obvious, doesn't it? Can I get the digits? And then you start to think about back to the personal concentration camp and how many men like my My father had a lot of reasons why he said he killed himself in a suicide note. But the what he didn't say and I found out afterwards, was a mountain of debt. And when he looked into the mirror, I say his number was zero, right, because zero times anything is nothing, And no matter how much he had, it was never enough, because he was never enough. And so you start to think about numbers in a different way. You know, when I was growing up, I was the fat kid, and numbers literally almost crushed me. You know, the numbers on a scale and all of that represents people get into IQ, you get into zip codes, you get into there's just endless amount of numbers and numbers, as Victor Frankel said, or would reduce the human being literally in the concentration camps, and they reduce individuals. And so it challenges us to think about how are we imprisoned by our numbers and what's our number?

35:53 I thought that was such a powerful awareness for me, and it's sort of an insight for me to the numbers is really really important, you know, age, all these kinds of things, you know, your net worth, everything, it's just so much to it, so much heaviness to that. I just counseled a woman who doesn't have a child and her number is zero, and she looks at her friends who have one, two or three. She sees the world through that number. And we're just working on can you break free from the number? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, last question, which really kind of cracks me up, you know, so you're not keep in mind listening viewers who've been at the bar for a while. So now the last question is how are you getting home? Are you getting home? That's the magical answer usually back in the day, but in this case it's much deeper question, as they all are. And it's ultimately like home to the guy in the glass, to the man or woman staring back to your true self and you know, not giving too much away, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to love. When I was a rabbi did five hundred funerals, many of them were uber successful on the outside, but they weren't successful on the inside because they didn't have, or they didn't give, or they didn't receive enough love.

37:07 M can you just say a little bit more be because I can imagine that most of the listeners, maybe the listeners really don't understand this idea of coming home to yourself. Yeah again. You know, my grandfather gave me that poem the Guy in the Glass when I was a young man in my twenties, just heading down the wrong path. And you know, in his wise way, by the way, he carried this poem with him through World War Two. It was very important him and it was on his nursing home wall when he died. So it has a lot of meaning for me, but one of which was he was calling me back to the mirror, right the reckoning, the accounting, like, yeah, you can go down this path and you can have all you know it says in the poem you can. You know, you can pats on the back as you pass, but your final reward will be hearty in tears if you've cheated the guy in the glass. And I have sat with so many at the end of our people, at the end of their life and their deathbeds, and you just know when you've been with somebody who's cheated the guy or the gallon the glass, and that is if there's a hell, that's it.

38:12 Thank you? That was I think that brought it right home for everybody. Okay, now I can't let you off the show without talking about you know this your own There's so much about what you sprinkle throughout the book that's just raw and intense about you and your own life. But that whole experience of you know, your deep dark Knight in the Woods is really powerful if you want to how are you going to situate setting that up at what that was about and what you got from that and maybe before you went into it, why did you know, why are you fighting with your wife in the first place? What were you struggling with? For me, it came down to my title. My name was not b or Bar, it was rabbi. You know, there are certain professions that come at a cost, and I think clergy is one of them, not the only one.

38:58 And you, no matter how ad I try to, it's not what I did, It's who I was. And I started to believe my own bullshit. I was Rabbi b that was the stage name, the persona, and I lost myself. Literally, I'd go to the mirror and I just didn't recognize myself anymore. And this was, you know, over a fifteen year period when I was a congregational rabbi, and I just got to this place where I knew, if I did not get out from under this mask, this persona, I would be my family's number three. I would kill myself. And so you know, long story short, I ended up in the woods by myself, and I wrestled till the break of dawn, and I liken it for me to Jacob in the Bible, who wrestles through the dark Knight, and he's transformed on the other side of it, and his name has changed. He's changed, but he limps forever because a lot of wounds, a lot of damage, and it doesn't go away. But you know, I started to take responsibility for it, change who I was, or maybe return to who I was, the guy in the glass, and that was sort of the catalyst for the next chapter of my life.

40:05 I want to dig down into a couple of things there be so one, like I said, I learned things about you in your book that I didn't know, and I've known you first several years, and one of them was, you know, you were profoundly successful as a rabbi. You were well paid, well compensated. I was amazed to hear that some of the congregants would just simply send you new cars which you open your driveway. I mean, I can't even imagine that kind of a life and what it takes to walk away from that kind of a life. So part of your experience of going to the woods is if I have this, if I remember this correctly, as you got lost too, so that's part of the whole processes. You got lost while you're out there. Yeah, I mean, what happened in the woods is what happened in my life. I was lost in my darkness and losing my identity myself. And yeah, I was at the top of my game. I had a lifetime contract.

40:49 I had a serious compensation package, and again, more than just the money, it was the status right and walking away from that, I ended up going out into those dark woods. And that was just the beginning. I didn't have a dark night at the soul. I had a dark decade of the soul. It took me ten years to work through it. We moved to Israel, to a mountaintop in the Middle East. I barely spoke the language. I couldn't be a rabbi. I was sweeping literally, I was in a synagogue one day and I was sweeping up and the rabbi was getting all the accolades. And that was my process of really shedding the mask and getting back to the guy in the glass. Well, you know, there's so much to learn from that, to be inspired by that and to relate to that be and I just really one of the many things I appreciate about you book is You're just you really are piercingly raw in it, which is I think the only way that you can really help access and give access to the readers, to you know, as they struggle through trying to understand and make sense of their own lives and who they are. Who's the guy in the glass.

41:50 Yeah, when guys come to me, and I don't even call myself a therapist anymore because I'm just so you know, we just sit and we work together, and I just say, I'm just another banged up brother. And ramdas teacher of mine, said, we're all just here walking each other home, and that doesn't happen when you're a you know, a stage on the stage, and I'm not just a banged up brother walk another men home. Well, I appreciate your humility because, like I said, I didn't know about all of this, and you know what you had really walked through to get to where you were. I only I only knew Bee as I know B today, So I didn't know about all of this other previous story. Now it makes me even respect you and appreciate you even more. B So, anyway, so let's do this. Let's it would be great in our little bit of time together here, I think our listeners and viewers would really like and benefit from hearing maybe a story or two about someone that you've helped, a man that you've helped through through your work. What was he dealing with and how did the two of you work together or daughter they were together in group if it was Yeah, this one just happened.

42:48 This past month, I met a man named Wally who's late stage dementia, and he's in the seventies and he's going to be taking his life at some point. And I've spent most of my time I wanta trying to talk him out of it, but trying to talk to him about what there's always meaning in life. But I respect a man enough to know that, you know, that's his choice. And we have been digging into his dementia as the most meaningful time of his life. As he said, he is not thinking less, he's feeling more, and he has approached this and that has been At first, it was a personal concentration camp when he was sentenced to you know this for the rest of his life. And over the past few years, not me, but on his own, he has been finding the meaning. And so we're really kind of tying up the loose ends of his life, framing it, capturing it so that it can be a legacy for those who follow after him. I'm proud of the work that we've been doing together in that space, and that is Victor Frankel.

43:50 One on one mm hm. We have time for another if you if you have another one to share. That was hard to follow up, Alice, I don't know. I know what you got. You got a lot basket. I know that. Let me say I've shifted more out of one on one counseling and coaching to men's groups and our friend doctor Daniel Franz and I and another guy started men's peer groups and go to Men's peer groups dot com. Because this work as men has to happen in community. You know this, John Wayne, go to loone. Bootstrap mentality is part of what got us into the suicide statistic and so the only way out, a way out is to bring men together in community and commitments, authenticity, vulnerability, because it's one thing to do with a therapist or even with your partner, but it's another thing to do in the community of men, and that has been transformative.

44:38 My co author, doctor Arthur Serah McCauley also does group work like that too, and he's you know, he says, of course, and it's peers. So then your peers are helping you also to see you find them near and see what's in it kind of thing. And I agree with you, and certainly I can't even imagine how powerful that must be to be able to help those men have real, vulnerable conversations in front of each other and with each other. Yeah, that's transformative. I have seen more men grow because of that than anything else I've ever done in my life. And I guess I can't help because I know for me, some of my most fulfilling moments in my work are when the spouse of someone that I've been working with inside companies reaches out and says, I don't know what you're doing, but thank you. Are you getting that kind of communication.

45:22 Yes, we get a lot of partners, usually women, not always, who are reaching out to us. And I've done some videos, I mean, some podcasts with them just interviewing the transformation and their marriage. I think it's saved a lot of marriages because of the work they're doing, not because of anything we're doing. But that's the nature of it, right, A man doing his own work in a peer context nobody tells each other what to do. We just share our experience and in that process, men are becoming better men. And so what would be like a couple of other ways that the listeners and viewers have recognize, you know, these improvements. So a saved marriage is one the wife didn't walk out. One of the things we do in our peer group says we have a clearing So you go around the table and you say, Joe, I'm clear with you, Jim, I'm clear with you. John, I'm not clear with you.

46:06 You didn't email me, and that hurt. And learning how to hear hard things and say hard things and not react because so many men, I know this is shocking. They wall up, they take the ball in their go home, or they come after you. They turn it around. To learn to how to hear hard things, say hard things, not react, just hold the space is transformative in the work of men. Well be. You know I'm a fan and you and I've gotten to do work together over the years, and I really tremendously appreciate and respect and applaud what you're doing. I thank you for that for helping more men become whole and to love themselves again. Thank you for coming back on working on purpose. Thank you, doctor. Else, we have time for just one one thing, one takeaway.

46:50 What would you like to leave our listeners and viewers with, those who. Have a Y can bear almost anyhow, right, spend as much time on digging into what is my why? And it doesn't have to be static, it can be evolving, It should be evolving, but as much time as you do on anything else, because again, those who have a Y can bear almost anyhow. So incredibly true and that certainly allowed me to persevere to through my hard years for sure, one hundred percent. Listeners and viewers, you are going to definitely want to learn more about doctor Rabbi a bat who could be high Leve and his books, his podcast and the work he's doing coaching men and in peer groups. You can start by visiting his one of his websites, it's just simply B the letter B and his last name ha Leve.

47:35 So it's B H A L e v I dot com bhalv dot com. Last week, if you missed the live show, you can always catch it be recorded podcast. We were on air with Sherry Jacobs. She's the author of the Unexpected Power of Boundaries. And an innovation strategist who helps organizations unlock their creative potential by rethinking boundaries, risks, and leadership. We dove into the three key areas of boundaries, voice, and permission she situates in the book to help leaders unlock and unleash more innovation. It was surprisingly very attentive and accessible, useful across the whole organization. Next week will be on the air with Warren Cornblum. He's a former global chief marketing officer and the author of Notes from the Brandstand Thoughts on emotional branding From someone who has fought for customer attention and one, you will be surprised how much his work and what we talk about can be used to inform and improve employee and customer experience as well. See you, then, let's continue leaning into discovering how to elevate your operating system as a leader and create destination workplaces where legendary business takes place. Let's work on Purpose.

48:43 We hope you've enjoyed this week's program. Be sure to tune into Working on Purpose featuring your host, doctor Elise Cortes each week on W four C. Why Together We'll create a world where business operates conscientiously. Leadership inspires and passion performance and employees are fulfilled in work that provides the meaning and purpose they crave. See you there. Let's work on purpose.