Hi, this is Wayne Brown from Life Back On Track.

Welcome to the latest episode. In this one, I want to talk to you about something I find is a challenge for a lot of people. I know for myself and my journey, this was something that I battled with early and occasionally pops up in my life still.

The good thing is, I'm now aware of it and that is the difference between masculine and feminine. Now, as a young boy growing up, I like a lot of men was taught, you don't show emotions, you suck it up, you're stoic, you get on with it, you build a bridge. We're also taught not to show any sort of softness. The problem is is that that cuts off a part of you.

I found that as I grew older, it was harder to empathise with people's situation. It was harder to sympathise, It was harder to understand, to see their point of view. The other thing that I realised and this is what started this particular part of my journey, was when a partner was going through a challenge of some sort, like a parent dying or particularly bad day at work, something where they were really emotionally raw. I felt disempowered. I didn't know what to do. I felt useless. I felt that I didn't have any ability that I could be for them, who they needed me to be at that time.

I realised that not only was I selling myself short, I was also selling them short because they weren't getting all of me. And that meant we both lost out. So for me, part of my journey of becoming whole and complete was not only exploring my emotions, but also looking at this masculinity / femininity thing. The challenge is that we often tie masculine and feminine into gender. So masculine is man and feminine is female.

This isn't true because masculine and feminine or masculinity and femininity are energies, they're attitudes, they're aspects. Now that I've become healthier in my completeness, if you want to use that as a phrase because I've done that, I find that if my wife is in a situation where she's struggling with something, it's a lot easier for me to step into my feminine energy and to be able to nurture her, and comfort her, and empathise, and to be able to listen and be there and be present.

I feel that gives her a better version of me and allows me to feel like I have some use in those situations. One of the big challenges I see today and it's been like this for decades, this isn't anything new. However, at least these days we're becoming a little more aware of it is this, you know, men are able to step into their feminine. Women are allowed to step into their masculine and that means that we become more whole, more complete, and we don't need to find someone who completes us or makes us whole because we're doing that for ourselves.

It's a healthier way to do it. So what I would encourage you to do, is a little exercise for you just made this up on the spot, is do a list of aspects of our humanity that you feel are masculine and that you feel are feminine and just write down these two lists.

So, like masculine could be things like confident, aggressive, strong, powerful, and feminine could be nurturing, soft, enveloping, so things like that. Then ask your self at the end, obviously, where do you spend most of your time? We usually go with our genders, we tend to sit men in the masculine and women in the feminine. That's okay.

The part where we do ourselves a dis-service, where we do our partners a dis-service. Our family a dis-service is when we're not capable of stepping into the other side of the list. So ask yourself, where are you letting yourself not be complete, not be whole, where you're not allowing yourself to sit?

We usually don't sit there because there's a fear involved. I don't know, for me it was a, you don't want to be seen as girly or weak or soft, but that was just my upbringing. That was my conditioning talking to me. So now I'm more comfortable letting people see me cry. I am more comfortable talking to people about my fears, my doubts, my concerns. I'm more comfortable being that soft shoulder for someone.

That allows me to feel more comfortable within myself, but I hadn't moved past that fear of judgment and I want to  get you to look at yourself and when you look at the parts that you're fearing and staying away from, what is it that's causing that? What is it that's contributing to you, not allowing yourself to be whole?

So that's basically today's podcast. It was just a nice quick one. It was a, get you to look at something, so that you can become happier, more complete, more capable. That's what this is about. As you become more whole, more complete, you become more capable, you've got more things that you can bring to the table as a partner, as a human being, as a parent, as a friend, as a confidant, as so many different aspects that you can be more of just by allowing yourself to feel the other side of the list.

Anyway, you have a fantastic day. Look after yourselves, Thank you for listening, I'm slowly building up listeners around the world. I've got quite a number of countries now, which is fantastic. I like to think that there's people out there listening to me each day and learning something about life so that they can be happier. So I end with this as I often do, here's to a good life.

You can listen to the Life Back On Track podcast on your favourite platform by visiting our podcast website. Click HERE to check it out.

 You can also listen to my radio show “All About Relationships” which has its own podcast on your favourite platform by clicking HERE

Thanks for listening.