#ManReBranded: Why modern masculinity is fundamentally flawed. | Rob Mitchell-James | TEDxNantwich

[Applause] if today were an average day in the UK thirteen men will kill themselves that's probably to people while you're Sahara this Tet event the harsh reality is that modern day man is fundamentally flawed and there's not one person in this room who isn't directly affected by him so just imagine for one moment if we could take what man and masculinity represents in its current format and rebrand it completely would we make him think and behave any differently would we change anything at all well we need to because it's all just a little bit outdated and it's having a huge impact the current perception of man and masculinity has been developed through sustained periods of hard labor of conflict and industrialization and even modern-day capitalism has had an impact by encouraging and fueling our natural competitive tendencies and so for years through decades of gender stereotyping man has learned to develop a thick skin and build his walls and become stoic man who never breaks down now stoicism is defined as the endurance of pain and hardship but without the display of feelings or complaint it's how we've been conditioned for years and we still live with that same mindset even now how many times have you heard the phrase man up or the more anatomically targeted version of grow some balls but just think about the impact that that has on men on their relationships on their professional development on their children on you this shallow emotionally disconnected approach to masculinity is so outdated and out of touch with the demands of modern society and it affects every single one of us up until 2016 I was that guy who had absolutely perfected the art of Manning up because that's what I believed was expected of me I was working as a TV producer at the time and so I had all the usual pressures of budgets and deadlines and I experienced stress on a daily basis so I developed and perfectly honed the ability to withdraw into myself to cut myself off as a means of dealing with it and I completely mastered the art of using silence as a coping mechanism because I thought that's just the easiest way to deal with stuff and sometimes I'll be gone for days not physically because I was still there in the room but emotionally I was completely detached to what was happening right before my own eyes and what was happening was I'd started to fail I was so focused on being that self-sufficient hero the provider the hunter the protector the stoic that I'd lost sight of all the important things in life I was conforming to expectations and as a consequence all my work suffered my relationship suffered and my health suffered at 3:00 a.m. one morning as I laid in my bed drenched in a cold sweat and physically shivering from the breeze that was coming in through the open window and my heart rate going through the roof I learned my lesson and I learned that being that self-sufficient here isn't in the slightest bit heroic at all on the contrary stoicism the stiff upper-lip the thousand-yard stare all of those traditional masculine traits that we used to define man are in fact the fastest route to depression and isolation and loneliness Newton's third law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction which suggests that if we refuse to deal with our pain and our hardship head arm it will have an impact they might not be immediate but it will happen and it hit me really hard so on that morning in 2016 I slipped into the longest and most crippling period of depression I'd ever experienced now the first time I had depression I didn't have a clue what was going on I had no energy and I was confused and even the simplest of decisions I couldn't make and It was as if all of those vibrant sights and sounds and colors and emotions that we experience in a non depressive state just completely drained away and at the time I hid it because that's what we do the second time I had depression I was looking because I understood and I learned to not hide it you see traditionally man has placed rational goals ahead of his own emotional development we conform to expectations and so we embrace competition and we seek out performance and profits and efficiencies and results and while we're doing that because of the way that we're conditioned to think we are less focused on those areas that develop our own emotional intelligence it's a fundamental flaw of masculinity and it drives what I call hollow success hollow success is a material wealth and it's really short-lived and it's meaningless and hollow success is the perfect contradiction because we can all appear successful to the outside world but how emotionally rich are we really and how low success is a false castle that we're all living in and it's built on really flimsy foundations and all it takes is a little breeze to come through the window for all to come falling down and here's the evidence the biggest killer of men under the age of 50 isn't cancer or smoking or road accidents or alcohol it's themselves tragically suicide is the biggest killer of men under 50 and here's something else for you to think about why is it that when the gender population split is give or take 50/50 male to female that 70% of the homeless are men 96% of the prison population are men and 76% of all suicides are men well there are several contributing factors but the biggest killer here literally is cognitive conditioning and the way that we are brought up that's the biggest killer here everything from what we think to what we say to what we do to our emotional responses to these are repeating patterns of behavior based upon the way that we've been conditioned and it stems right back to early childhood from a very early age girls are conditioned to be caring and sensitive and emotionally aware and that grows right through into adulthood but boys are conditioned down a different route and you only need to browse a toy store or a bookshelf to see it and the differences are really stark from pastel colored unicorns and rainbows one moment to aggressive weaponry and camouflage in masks next all in the blink of an eye and yet we're all human what starting to see a shift now in the way that females are represented away from the traditional Disney Princess to a much stronger more independent character and that is brilliant to see but I was seeing an equivalent shift in the way that men are represented absolutely not man always has been and still is the aggressor the stoic the mask wearer and it's always his problem to solve and his problem alone for example when was the last time you saw a guy stop and ask someone for directions because I guarantee that if you do see it he won't be listening to the answers because despite having had the balls to ask he'll still be in his own head trying to find his own solution so if we apply that back to the statistics the percentages are as they are because women are conditioned to seek help and support a men are conditioned not to because it's still seen as an admission of weakness up until that morning in 2016 I was conditioned to think and act and behave in a way that was expected of me and I've continued to do that even though I knew deep down in my core that what I was doing wasn't right for me and I continue to do it right the way through to the moment I realized it was having a negative impact on my own health now I didn't want to become one of those statistics that I just gave you so I decided to make some changes I walked out of what was the best paid job that I ever had without having a thing to go to and most people put me on a scale somewhere between boldness and absolute madness admittedly most people slotted me on to the madness end of the scale but I did three things I reviewed I've refrained and I rebranded I worked out what it was that I wanted to be as opposed to what it was I'd been conditioned to become and I learn new skills and I systematically said about making it happen and so now I don't drive the same route to work every day and sit in the same office with the same people doing the same stuff now I'm a successful film and TV actor I'm a public speaker and I'm a coach so no matter how far away we are from where we want to be change is absolutely possible firstly by being aware that we can be different and secondly by having the confidence and the courage and the commitment to change to change our perspectives on man and masculinity we need to face up to traditional man and we need to sit him down and question him and we need to question his authority his choices his decisions his wisdom or lack of and we need to show him a compelling vision for how his future can be as opposed to basing it on outdated versions of his own past and he'll argue and you'll no doubt tell us that were mad and it'll absolutely tell us to man up that's to be expected but we shouldn't be fearful of that on the contrary we should embrace it because if we're rebranding what we mean by a man and masculinity surely by definition we're also changing what it means to man up and that is where we need to start because we live in an era of broken families of absent or surrogate fathers and where are the decent role models that our children can look up to and respect and admire for the right reasons not because they earn millions from kicking a ball or because they've run some talent show but because they exhibit the real values of emotional intelligence and self-awareness and compassion and because they are aware of their own vulnerabilities and they have the courage to deal with them so the next time you're told to man up I've encouraged you really strongly to pause and to really think about your responses to that will you fall back into your old conditioned behaviors and do what you've always done or will you really man up stand up and open up [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 22,380

Rating: 4.2434459 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Learning, Mental health

Id: rH0ZE8b_JZY

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 05 2017