Welcome to What Would Amber Do with your host, Amber Howard, your weekly dose of guidance, inspiration, and strategies to have your small business and whole life thrive. We bring you incredible guests who share their real life experiences of being an entrepreneur so you can have your whole life work. Now, here's your host, Amber Howard.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to What Would Amber Do? It is really my honor this morning to be speaking with Corey Guy Jonas. Corey is my first truly international guest on the show, being from Australia. And for those of you that know me, know being from New Zealand myself, it really is so great to be speaking with someone from, as I say, down under and kind of back home, even though Australia and New Zealand are, you know, hours and hours apart by a plane. It just feels kind of like I'm talking to someone from my neighborhood. Corey is a specialist in the field of rights of passage and a coach who works with young men and whose purpose is to create generational change. Corey facilitates in-school and camp programs that help young men create balance in all areas of their life and so much more. Corey, it's so great to have you on the show this morning.

Awesome. Thanks for having me, Amber. I appreciate it.

Yeah, the accent. Everyone loves the accent. It's funny when I when I facilitate and I instruct, I tell people I'm from New Zealand and I say, you know, I'm sorry I don't have the world's sexiest or coolest accent, which Australians might disagree with. But rumor has it, New Zealanders have the best accent.

Yeah, I don't know. I feel like my accent is um, I have a heavy Aussie accent anyway. It's a heavy Americans and Canadians seem to love it though.

We do. It's a great the Australian the Australian accent is a great accent. It's funny, Canadians often don't think we have one at all. It's interesting. There's just this perception that a lot of Canadians have that we don't have an accent. Um really neat. Well, thank you for being on the show and thank you for just uh making it work. The time difference is uh, you know, it's your evening and it's my morning. So you're kind of ending your day and I'm starting mine. I would love to hear from you, Corey. Like, you know, you used to work in business, and then all of a sudden it's like you you trans. I mean, I say all of a sudden it probably may not have been like that for you, but at some point in time you started shifting and your journey started shifting towards the work that you do today with young men and and and creating these experiences. What was the catalyst? What was that journey like for you? And what was the catalyst for that change?

What was interesting, I was, yeah, I was in business, but I'd always, I guess I had this. My my management style was to recruit young people who had no experience. So I'd recruit young ex-professional athletes, the kind of like the guys that I would recruit to bring into business, I'd train them up to do the job rather than recruiting people who had had skill sets. Um, so I've kind of always had this coach essence about how I've kind of worked in life, but I had this yearning to kind of go out and do this, but the money that I was earning in business was the I guess that was the hook, right? It kept me there. And um I call it a God moment. And um one day I went to work and one of my co-workers actually died in my arms, and that was really the for me, what actually happened in that moment was that my I just said my brain bubble burst, like the brain box, it just bursts, and then I guess through that process of healing, like I had PTSD, and I've kind of been I spent a bit of time not working, and then I started doing some volunteer work at youth centers and started building some programs around average youth and and stuff like that, and then this has kind of just evolved into where I'm at at the moment. So it was um it was I I talk about this in that I I can talk about it now without crying because six years ago, but it's um I guess that day it really changed my life in in so many ways. Like it was it was really a God moment for me to be able to not just look at how I could be of service to community, but it started out with like how can I heal myself? So I I really lived in this essence of really unhealthy masculine about chasing the money, closing the deal, aggression, ego, and that really rolled into all aspects of my life. So I struggled to keep keep friends, I would bounce around between jobs because I didn't fit in, and it was easy to be a victim and just blame everyone else in those situations, like but it always followed me, right? So at some point I needed to take stock of that and go, hey, I can be, I can be different. And it took it took that moment of Brennan dying. It was interesting because Brennan had followed me around my career, so he'd work with me at a company where I was a I was on the tools and we worked together, and then I became the manager and I had to fire him because he was an alcoholic, and then he came to another company to work with me. And I'm like, do not employ that guy, he's trouble. And then I shifted to another company and he came there for a job. And the production manager came to me and said, Oh, this guy's coming applied for a job, you know him. I said, Yeah, I don't want to get involved in the decision making. Like, you interview him, getting to do what you would do normally for an interview process, and Brendan ended up getting the job there, and then I would walk down the factory probably once a day, and I would always say, Hey Brendan, how are you going? So I kind of had this relationship with this guy, and the day that that happened, like Brendan, the operations manager was off sick, and I'd gone into the factory and said, Hey man, we need to move XYZ steel from this place to this place, and he got crushed underneath that steel. So I'd kind of put these dots together that it was my fault. Like, I didn't stop him from getting the job. I made him move the steel in the morning, and it was all about uh, and that really became the point for me to go, you know what, like this guy lost his life because I was trying to please a client so they could make money, you know, and I just went, you know, I'm not, I don't want to do things for money anymore. I want to have a bit of a purposeful life, but it took me, I probably spent four years healing. So like I spent time healing what happened with Brendan and coming to an understanding that wasn't my fault, but then my relationship with my wife wasn't as good as I wanted it to be, and I still had a lot of aggression, a lot of anger, and I was with a psychologist, and she kind of said, like, it's not your wife's problem. I I was still projecting the victim mode, like, my wife's doing this, and that's making me do this. Like, I was very much in that in that state of victimhood, and she was a female, so in my head, I'm like, you're just you're just taking my wife's side. Like that was, and I just stopped going to see her. Like, I just went, you know what, I'm done with I'm done with this psychologist. I need to go see someone else. And then I ended up I ended up with a coach, um, Steph Safandos, who funnily enough, I was a personal trainer with him. We worked at the same gym like 20, 20 odd years ago, and he'd moved into like men's coaching, and I hadn't seen him for 20 years, and a post dropped up like chaos to clarity. And I worked with him for I don't know, probably 18 months, two years, like through just actually really healing that trauma. And because he was a man, I was able to go, like, he's not taking my wife's side, I was able to really listen to him and like start healing. And that was like a really an inner child healing journey, it was like understanding my relationship with my mother, my father, and myself, and like how all that is interrelated and all connected with each other. So it really it was about uh healing that journey. But um, I guess I have a an addictive personality, so I would do a person, I'd do an inner health, an inner child journey with him on a on a Monday, and I'd be going back to see him a week later or two weeks later, and I would I'd I'd have done two weeks worth of like inner child journey, like two or three hours a day. I would go and just journey, journey, journey, and we'd go back and like I'd done all this healing, and then it would be like so. The next layer would be like really deep, heavy layer. Like we were shifting things very fast, and I was healing lots and lots of um layers, and that's still been an ongoing journey up, and it still is, but up until recently, I hadn't we can we can when we talk about rights passive, we've got the space I'll share and experience around how it's difficult to kind of integrate the work when you're in a relationship. Um, but yeah, so that's kind of been my journey of shifting from I guess I had to go through a whole healing journey, and now I feel like I'm in a space where I've done all this healing that I can help men who have aggression issues, who have ego, who are chasing the money, who have no balance in their life. Like I've been there, so I feel like they're the guys that I can guide back to some sort of balance in their in their lives. Um, and teenage rider passage stuff is just an opportunity to drop in with teenagers and do that work before they become men, really.

So much in what you said that I'm like my brain is like, oh, I want to respond to all of it all at the same time. I love at kind of at the beginning where you you said, you know, it the the same things kept showing up. And I'm just reminded of this idea of like, wherever we go, there we are. Right. So we can change our circumstances. We can like we can get a new wife, we can get a new job, we can, you know, move countries. And no matter where we go, our mind, the those brain patterns, the conversations that we are about ourselves and about life, just they follow us. You could go to freaking Jupiter and your mind would still be there with you. So it's it's so great, Corey. You know, and and I really hear a lot in what you're saying about you know, that that experience with bread and dying, like, you know, you use that as an opportunity to take personal responsibility and really do the work over there where you were. Um and we never know why why things happen. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's only in the rearview mirror where we can really see and connect the dots about what what has us end up where we are in life in this in this particular moment. And um it's it's easy, like it's just natural. I think it's there by default to to blame circumstances, and and it's all circumstances, our you know, again, our wife, our kids, our boss, the dog. It's all circumstances. And then there's like, who do I choose to be in in my life, in this, in the experience of the circumstances that I'm having? And and I love this, uh, it's really important to me that people understand that they get to create their lives.

Yeah, I think a really powerful question to ask when you feel like something's happening to you. What is the lesson in this instead of why is this happening to me? Like there's when I coach people like, why is this happening to me? Is there is a question that comes up, or people have faith, why is God doing this to me? You know, don't I deserve better? And I've certainly had those conversations, you know. Um, but yeah, I think a better question is a better question is like, what is the lesson here? What can I learn from my kids shouting at me? What can I learn from my wife being upset? What can I learn from that guy who's tootin' his horn and right at my bum in my car right now? What's happening for him in his life, you know, like it's really living in a state of curiosity helps keep helps keep me centered anyway.

I find having an ongoing dialogue with the other drivers on the road helps, like just like not yelling at them, just being like, sir, I'm not that kind of car, you know. You can just like move over that that that helps me. I, you know, even language is so powerful, and and I I I love playing and and getting like like dancing in conversation and language. And even if you just changed one word in that, like so you so you want to engage with the why. Okay, fine. I mean, it's kind of natural. We all like to engage with the why from time to time, but you know, shifting it from why is God doing this to me to why is God doing this for me. Yeah, you know, like, and and I mean it's the exact same thing that you said, right? What's the lesson in this? Like, if everything, like if we choose to believe that everything is happening, unfolding for our greatest good. And and it's like I say to people, I I work on a lot of projects, Corey. And and so there's a lot of logistics. And I work like right now, I'm doing a number of projects in the construction industry. And for people who didn't know this, there is like a global chip shortage. So anything that requires a technology chip to work, washing machines, dryers, cell phones, laptops, monitors, yeah, it's becoming a bit of an issue due to due to COVID. And so we'll be on calls and people will be like people, the other stakeholders on the project will be like, well, we don't know if it's gonna come in on time. We don't know if we're gonna get whatever, like, and I'm like, I choose to be in life that I'm gonna get what I want. Because why would I be in life any other way? Right. Like, so why would I believe that life is not happening? Like, I mean, you could, but what value is there in being in life that it's not unfolding for my greatest good? And if life is unfolding for my greatest good, like if I choose to really stand in that, like a knowing, then everything that happens to me today is actually some kind of gift for me on that journey, even my kid yelling at me or me yelling at my kid, like all of it. It's all there, there's a lesson in all of it.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there's yeah, I yeah, I 100% agree. There's if I reflect on my journey, my relationship with my mother, my father, my stepmom, my you know, just just all of it. Like there's a there's a lesson in in all of it. And it's hard to like I had someone say to me early in the piece, it probably wasn't even early, it was probably two years after Brendan died, and they said everything happens for reasons. I was like, like the rave was like real, you know, like until you've walked in my shoes, man. How can you say that? But now, like there's there's a way to say it, and that's the way that that you presented it wasn't wasn't the the right way. But I say to people often that I coach at the moment, I say, like, you know, everything happens for a reason, man. You know, like and sometimes it's hard to see, you know. The mum, I know a mum who's got an autistic child, she's like, Don't tell me that everything happens for a reason, you know, she's not ready to see the lesson, right? That's like you can walk a horse to water, but you can't make a dream the same thing, right? We can say to someone there's a lesson in this experience, but until they're ready to hear it, they're they're not gonna see what that what that lesson is.

Well, and you know, it's interesting as coaches, right, Corey. I don't think, you know, I'm beginning like I used to be someone who tried to force outcomes with people, right? Like I used to be like, I would see a possibility for someone, I would see like an opportunity for them, and or I would see where they were stuck. And I was very attached to like that their life be great, and that I was gonna drag them, kicking or screaming to my my possibility for, you know, because Amber, Amber knows best and Amber's all seeing whatever, right? And and as I've gone on in my own development in time, like it's less about um, and and I I will I think this is a perfect segue into something that I know you really love to talk about. It's less about trying to get anyone anywhere, right? And more about like creating safe spaces for people to to be where they're at on their journey and then inviting them into, you know, like what if you tried this on? Like I, you know, and in and sometimes what's like honoring wherever they're at in their journey of their own discovery and development, because I think I've discovered for myself, it's not like there's one journey that we're all on and we're just at different points in that journey. I used to think it was like that, and now I understand that there's like eight freaking billion people on this planet, and or however many people there are on this planet, and we're all on our own individual journey of discovery, and we're at different places on our own unique journey. And it's not about all of us trying to get somewhere, it's about my who could I be for another human being in whatever capacity I'm engaging with them at, whether it's in my work as a consultant or a coach or an instructor or a friend, to really just like honor where they're at. And and I was in a I'm reminded right now in this conversation, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine yesterday, and she wanted to gift something, like a gift and experience. Like she's getting trained and manifesting in abundance, and she really wanted to gift something to someone else, and they were resisting accepting the contribution. And I said, Well, you can offer, but at some point in time, you got like try on that they're not ready to receive that contribution. And uh, if you force that contribution on them, like that's not honoring them and where they're at in their journey. And I think that like for me anyway, in that discovery, something else became available, like a next level of honoring other people and their journey. Like, we're not it's not like, yeah, maybe I'll stop there.

Yeah, Victor Frankel talks about it. I'm listening to the um The Meaning of Life, Victor Frankel from the Holocaust, and that's where you're really just super powerful. And he talks about that, like he created this theory around, like he had an example is a guy come in and he was like, Oh, whenever this happens, I just sweat so much. And he goes, Okay, the next time that you're in a situation where you think you're gonna sweat a lot, you should tell the people you should look and see how much I can sweat. Like, I can I've just worked out, but I can sweat. Like, you just watch, and the sweating stopped instantly, you know. And um, and he shared a few examples around how I had a woman who couldn't sleep, and he goes, Okay, when you go to bed, I want you to say to yourself, I'm gonna stay awake. And 10 minutes later, she was cold, fast asleep, you know. So it was like this paradox of opposites, you know, like it's um we we create a story and we we get the magnifying glass, you know. Magnifying glass can be a powerful tool, you know. We can um you know, I use this with my with my 12-year-old son, he's had some problems in school where people have kind of he's perceived as being bullied. And I've said to him, and he often doesn't talk about it initially, but I'll just say, Hey, what's up? Like I know something's kind of up, but I know by press he'll retract. So I just kind of ask the question, then I let it go. And then normally after swinging the car, he'll go, Hey, you know, when you ask what's up, this is what's up, and he'll share the story around I'm getting bullied and this is what's happening. And I just said, Oh, you know, like if you were to jump in a helicopter and just fly up, you know, 50 meters, like, what does it look like? Who what else is that boy saying? Who's he interacting with, and and what does that look like? And he's like, Oh, actually, he's saying that to this kid and this kid and this kid, and it's not just for me, right? So, like with a magnifying glass, we can get down onto an air and we can light or a leaf and we can light a leaf on fire with a magnifying glass, right? We we intensify our intentions and our energy into something enough. So if we believe we're getting bullied, then we can intensify energy on that. Whereas if we can just hover out and look at it from a helicopter perspective, we can start seeing a bigger picture, and that it's not all about, and it becomes being not all about us, you know. I really encourage my boys to think about when something's going on in their world with another child to say, well, what's going on in his world? How is other people interacting with him? What does that look like? Like, can you can you look at this from an angle of compassion rather than from an angle of of anger?

It's beautiful. It's so freeing when you can get it's not personal. Like it's they're not responding to me, they're not responding to you. You know, whatever people are doing in life, whatever they're saying, even if it's like it occurs like it's directed, even if they say it in such a way that it is directed at you, it's not actually they're not actually responding to you. They're responding from some past conversation that they have or fear or or whatever. And and then it like for me, it's just been like the more I like dwell there and get that, it's like this this beautiful experience of my heart just keeps growing because I just have so much space to be with people's humanity. And um I was in a I was in a training yesterday, and we were talking about resignation and how when people are resigned about something, and for anyone listening, like just look in your life right now what's an area of your life that you might have some resignation about, right? Like it lives for you, like it's always going to be that way, or you Whether it's like you get overwhelmed or it's hard or whatever that is. And when we're inside of it, it lives like that's the truth of it. For me, this is like my dating life. I've been single for 13 years, Corey. I've dated, I've been in and out. I really want to be in a relationship. And so I did this collage yesterday as part of the course about like what is my experience of the resignation around dating like? And I really got like it's like hopeless. There's this like hopelessness to it. Like no matter what, it's not gonna happen for me if I'm really honest about it. And but then the leader of the course said something really powerful. He said, three small words. You know, it seems like it seems like it's hopeless. It seems like I'm never gonna find him. It seems like it's hard, it seems like it's overwhelming. With those three words, whatever it is in life, and I invite everyone to take this on this week, try it out in your life. Like it goes from being the truth about something to my occurring of it, my perception, my context. And then all of a sudden something else becomes available. If it's not the truth about it, well, what else could be possible in that area where I'm feeling resigned? And I it I just uh makes me love like just the power of language.

Yeah, it's even it makes me think of like I am angry, like I had this I had this belief that that anger, I I was anger, and that I would always project anger, but I just believed it wholeheartedly, like it was just in embodied in me, and now I just say I feel angry. And it was only probably like six or eight weeks ago that I come to that realization. I had like another God moment, you know, I was on a ride of passage with two boys, and on the second day, one of the boys refused to eat the food. I had um dehydrated food and he refused to eat it, and even though it was like super organic and had all the nutrients and everything they wanted. Out of all the things he didn't like, it was berries, you know, and this this particular this particular breakfast tasted like strawberry jam in a bowl. Like it was it was delicious, you know, and he just refused to eat it. And I was a bit stuck in just eat the berries, and he was like, Why are you attached to the berries? So there was kind of this battle going on, and I meant to be facilitating and holding space, and in the end, I ended up ringing his dad to have a conversation because I couldn't get him to shift. And the 17-year-old boy that was with us, he got him to eat a Mexican dish, right? So, but we basically ended up spending, we ended up spending about 10 hours covering 10 kilometers. So we kind of I stopped at the we there was a pub on the course on the um well, we detoured to a pub and we went and had a hot chocolate and a muffin and kind of just took it as an opportunity to reset, and then we jumped back on the trail. We got to the camp, and I'm like, all right, boys, we're at camp. If we stay here tonight, we're gonna head back to Calamunda tomorrow. If you want to keep going on to where we said we want, because we wanted to cover 80 kilometers over four days. If you want to push on to the to where we were gonna go down Brookton Highway, then we need to jump another camp tonight. It was already 4:30 in the afternoon. At five o'clock, they come back to the camp and said we want to go again. We had to cover 12 kilometres and we're leaving at five o'clock, and it was already dark, so we've got head torches on, and at about 7:30, we're walking up this hill, and the boys are probably two or three hundred metres in front of me, and I'm just like walking up this hill, and I'm just like I had no energy like physically, mentally, or spiritually, I was broken. And I I talk about like I didn't have an opportunity to like phone a friend in that moment, like it was I just had to I had to like lean into my faith and like say to God, like I need I need your support right now. And the message I kind of got back, it was was I don't know, I don't I don't really understand the message, but I had this essence of Moses, like and the weight of the weight of him carrying the templates back to earth to say and share that message, like I felt that weight, and that weight was like attached to my anger. So I had to let go of that anger being me, like I'm not anger anymore. I'm I'm Corey, and sometimes I feel angry. Like that was kind of a shift that happened in that moment. But as I walked up to the top of the hill, one of the boys said to me, Are you all right, Corey? And I'm like, nah man, I'm not. Like, I'm and I burst into tears, like I'm meant to be facilitating and holding space with these teenagers, and I'm just crying and crying and crying. And he's like, Do you need a hug, man? I'm like, Yeah, I do. But the 24 hours earlier, he shared some stuff with me, and I was like, Can I give you a hug? And he's like, No, I don't hug. And I said, Look, I'd really encourage you to like let go of that story, like, I don't hug, like, and got him to like come in and give me a hug. But the next night he's like gone from I'm not a hugger to hey, do you need a hug, man? And like just holding space for me, you know, and we got to camp and everything was all beautiful and and perfect. And the next morning my spirits felt so full, but there's a whole bunch of stories to go with that. But it was just really interesting that like I was able to, like in that moment, like just say to God, you know, I need your support right now, and what does that look like? And that was the message he gave me, you know, and that was my interpretation of it, you know, like the anger that I'd just been carrying was just weighing me down, weighing me down, you know, like it just it just wasn't serving me in in any way, shape, or form because I believed I was angry. I am angry, you know. I had I carried that for so long. Like I carried it for, you know, 40, 44 years, or whenever I sort of started getting angry, it was probably 34, 35 years, you know, of just being angry from a child of not being able to express it and just like package it in a box and going, I'm angry, but I can't express it to becoming a young man, going to a gym, getting strong, and then just using anger as the tool. Like, yeah.

So many gifts in in what you just shared, and like that awareness to be able to get, like, we're not a fixed object. And I think so many people relate to themselves. Like, there's this this identity that we have. Amber's nice, Amber's rebellious, Amber's driven. Like it's like Amber stops being a like the possibility of anything and some fixed object that that I have to be those things. Like I have to be driven. And and then there's a way that that looks like in my life, right? To be able to get that, like there is no way that you have to be. There are just there are default ways that we be from our past because we have brain patterns for those. There are learned ways of being, strategies that we've developed over our life in order to be able to deal with whatever, you know, whatever circumstances are coming up or the people in our lives. And and like those are they're not necessarily going to go anywhere. We have like I have deeply rooted brain patterns for being nice. And I and I say, like, for those listening, they're like, well, what's wrong with being nice? You know, and when nice is like a fixed way of being, kind of like anger was for you, Corey, like it's as much of a straitjacket. I I, you know, I'm nice when it's inappropriate to be nice. I'm nice when what's a, you know, I I don't do this as much anymore. But there were times in my life where I wouldn't stand for things because I was afraid of upsetting people or what people might think about me. And I was more committed to being liked than I was addressing things that didn't work or bringing my leadership to conversations where I felt like there were things happening that weren't aligned with me or didn't work. And so it's like when you can get that there is no way that you are by that you that you are actually, you could create any way of being. And and this is why I love um like we we don't we don't teach people about beingness. We're human beings and we spend all of our life teaching kids how to do and how to have things, you know, the things that they should be doing or having. And and and we skip over this massive piece of what it is, the experience of what and the shared piece. So I'm just like really getting the circumstances of like what we do and what we have change it. But this concept of beingness is part of the shared experience of our own humanity. We all have that, it doesn't matter where you live, male, female, what your sexual orientation is. And so like I just think it's so great. And I I like one, the gift to you, like I heard in that in that sharing, the gift to you of being able to get that Corey can be angry at times, but that's not who you are. That's not that that doesn't define you. And then the gift to those young men. Because the more I grow in my leadership and the vulnerable, like opening myself up and being vulnerable, which is still a relatively new space for me. And it's still something I I bump up against, asking for help, letting people know when I'm dealing with things, um, being willing to share what I'm bumping up against in my journey in life. Um like that is that is leadership. And and when you you did that, you created a space for the for that young man to bring his leadership to the circle. You know, it was a reciprocal relationship. Yeah, you were there to facilitate certain parts of his growth, and he was there to facilitate certain parts of your growth. And then he gets to walk away from that experience, knowing himself as someone who can contributed to this powerful, strong man. It doesn't detract from your strength and power. Oh no, it doesn't at all. But he gets to walk away, knowing himself as someone who in that moment and he'll have that with him for the rest of his life. That now becomes part of his experience of who he is as a human being. And and to me, um yeah, I'm really moved by that. That's beautiful.

Yeah, and we oh I I always grow on any experience. It blows me away, I'll go away and coach young men and I come back different every time.

Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful. So let's talk a little bit about rites of passage, because uh before we jumped on camera, I was sharing with Corey, like I I know and I I don't it's funny, like we I I'm bringing to this conversation what I think you mean by rites of passage, and I want to hear what it kind of is for you because I know there is you studied this, you you, you know, you facilitate it. So uh I'm I'm excited to learn something new about rites of passage from the from the way you work with it. For me, when you know, Matthew, my eldest son is 25 now. I realized when when Matthew was growing up, like there's a natural kind of biological transition for woman into adulthood. It doesn't actually happen. It's kind of funny that way, because it typically happens around 12, 13, 14. But we we get our period, and then all of a sudden we go from being girls to these human beings who have the capacity to create life, and that's kind of like a rite of passage in and of itself. And I realized for myself that there wasn't really anything like that for men. What signifies uh what's what are the experiences or experience that kind of signifies for a young man that he's moving into adulthood or become, you know, moving from being a boy to a man? And so is that the kind of work that you're talking about? Or is it like, you know, that's my context that I have right now, and I'm excited to learn.

I mean, we the the organizations that I work with, we've kind of rephrased it as into adulthood, you know, like it's about taking boys, it's not just boys, it's boys and girls, there's males and female facilitators, but I just work with boys primarily, and it's about creating separation, you know, taking them away from their their parents and and having a conversation with them about what it means to to be a man. But like I I really love the initiation process on the first day, first night, I'll have a fire going, it's like five foot tall, and the heat coming off it is immense. And I've got a teacher that's like walking the boys back to the camp blindfolded. So when they they walk in, they feel this heat, and I just get them to go around the we walk them around the the fire, and then I say, put your hand up if you're willing to commit to this challenge, if you're willing to be a part of our tribe, you need to you need to step into a challenge, and they have to like buy in to being a part of the of the tribe, you know. I mean it's it's it's ritualistic, and I've got like a screw hat on and I've got a coat on and and drop into this real role play around it. So it's like separation and initiation are two really important aspects of rider passage. And then what we what we do is we we get them to we blindfold them and we walk them out into the bush and we sit them down one at a time. And then I say when you hear me shout out kooy or hit a drum, whatever it is, you come back to the come back to the camp. And depending on the group, it might be 10 minutes, it might be 45 minutes, but it with a teenager, it doesn't really matter because they 10 minutes of like just being quiet in their own mind, it's probably the first time for most of them that have ever had the opportunity to sit with their own mind with no thoughts, no questions, no guidance, just to kind of sit in silence, and then when they come back, okay, what came up for you guys? And it's really interesting to hear what boys will come back and open up about what's been going on in their life, you know. It's um, and you only need like a it's like you know, making an omelet, you know, if you crack one egg, then everyone cracks, you know. It's uh it's really beautiful. See this kind of, and it's interesting, you know, you can have the kid who's the the school jock, he's getting perfect grades and he's an amazing athlete, and he's like, Oh, my mum doesn't love me. Like, like it's just it's it's mind-blowing how open and vulnerable they can be when the when the right space is is created, created for them. And we go deeper and deeper over the over the three days, like we kind of have conversations around how to how to who do they how do they want to show up? If they have a daughter, how would they want their daughter to be treated? And is that how they're treating women? So we kind of drop into these conversations around what it is to be a healthy man in relationship, what it is to be a healthy man showing up within the family home, what is it, you know, what is it to be healthy amongst your mates, to have a conversation around what's really going on for you. We teach them how to communicate, like that is what it's that's what it's really all about.

It's so great that you're giving people and like having those conversations earlier on in life. So I've done a lot of, I've been in a lot of courses and done a lot of training with adults. And you know, one of the things that I've come to understand is parents, you're kind of like, and I say this in you know, not you're kind of screwed. It doesn't matter. You could be a great parent and like, but based on like whatever society standards of a good parent is, and I use that very loosely for those who know me. I, you know, I'm all out for us to create our own definitions of success and happiness. And, you know, it there's no no such thing as a good parent, but by society standards, give your children everything that you think you're supposed to give your children and and all of these things, or you could be on the other end of the spectrum, and your kids are going to make they're gonna have moments. We have moments as human beings where we feel rejected or we have the experience of rejection, or or we we didn't get what we wanted. We make things mean things. That's part of what it is to be a human being, that shared experience that we have. Uh and I I'll never forget I was in this course once back five years ago, and there was a 25-year-old man there, super successful, you know, had everything going on. And he had a great, like his parents gave him everything. And when he was a young man, his parents boasted about him at every family function. Like they would just go on and on to the family about how great he was and how you know he excelled in school and sports. And he created the story that his parents wouldn't love him if he wasn't successful. And so, in those moments in life where he was most needed support, where he was not succeeding, he couldn't reach out to his parents because to let them know of his failure would mean that they didn't love him anymore. And like that weekend, he really discovered that that was hidden from his view in his blind spot, and he called his dad and got into communication was beautiful. Like he got a whole new relationship with his father when he just got that he could be responsible for that all that happened was his parents were proud of him. And he made it mean all of this. Like there was this whole other world that got created for him as a child inside of that. And so when I say parents are kind of screwed, it's like it's not personal, it's not about your mom and your dad. It's about us getting that we have experiences in life, whether those are traumatic or not. And they live a certain way for us, and then they become the truth about us and about our life. And so, Corey, just thank you as a woman, as a mom, as a single mom who was raised by a single mom. You know, thank you for being, I really acknowledge and honor you for you for being the kind of human being that is out there doing this work. I think it is like hugely important. Uh, you may, there is a podcast interview that I did with a gentleman by the name of Andrew Harvey who talks a bit about this. You might find it interesting, but you know, he really talks about the role that women play being leaders in this space around masculine, feminine energy, redefining the masculine, not that women are redefining what it is to be masculine for men, but like the giving of permission, giving men permission to redefine the masculine and that women have been historically the leaders in this space. And the more I hear of other men, like men stepping into that space, creating um a safe space and giving, you know, offering the tools and the awareness for for men to take this on. Like I just um, yeah, just from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Yeah, it's interesting. Most teenage boys, they create their own, they create their own demons, right? Like they, you know, I asked them on the second morning, you know, what are their big emotions, you know, in their anger, depression, and anxiety. They're the three big emotions of teenage boys. And I um, and then we do an exercise, and you're talking about the feather earlier. So we do an exercise where I get one of the alpha boys in the group to hold a feather out. So he just holds uh holds the feather out in front of him, and then I'm talking and presenting to the group and and and his arm drops. I'm like, oh, pick your arm up, man. It's just a feather. And um, and then I go back to talking to the group and his arm drops and he starts making excuses. Uh, even if I didn't have the feather, my arm would drop. And I'm like, it's all right, man. You know, just just hold the feather up. And then at some point, I go, okay, we've been talking about emotions, right? So, like that feather, how heavy is it? He goes, Well, it's not heavy. I said, but you keep dropping your arm. He goes, Yeah, well, if you hold anything for long enough, I said, exactly. If you hold anything for long enough, then it's gonna become heavy, right? And that's the same with our emotions. If we hold, and that's the lesson that I had. Like, I used to hold my anger for so long. Something would happen, and I'd hold it and hold it and hold it, and then I'd just be like, reactive, reactive, reactive, reactive. And now I'm like, something happened this afternoon that we talked about, like two hours ago, and that's all done and dusted, and it's like packed away and it's it's gone now, you know, like because the feather, you know, like you can wipe it across your forehead and and give it a go. My wife, she doesn't forget as fast as I do. Like, I I go, yeah, I had that emotion, I've moved on, let's move on. In the past, I would be like really judgmental, and that would put me back in my in my state of being, right? Whereas now I go, yeah, I was angry, she's probably gonna need 24 to 48 hours to really kind of be over that, and that's okay. Like it's a dance, right? But with boys, we kind of have this conversation around well, A, we do the feather, but then we talk about like we I get them all to express like what's the face that you wear at school. Again, we draw on a piece of paper, a smiley face, and an angry face, and uh, like what's the face that you wear at school, what's the face you actually feel most of the time, and they turn it around, and it's never the it's never the happy face, right? It's the happy face is like this fake bravata they put on and they they don't express if they're having a bad day, they don't want to, they don't want to be a burden to their friends, like this is their the perception of their reality, you know, they they don't want to be a burden, you know, and that's really an unhealthy masculine thing, is that we don't talk about our emotions, you know. Like I do a lot of men's work and I'm always crying, you know, because man, you know, it gives everyone else permission to kind of um to feel and express and be be present. And I don't do it for that, I just do it because I think I don't know. I say that my my cry button got broken when Brendan died, you know. I cried and cried and cried, and I'm like, you know, I'm never not gonna cry again if something makes me sad. I'm gonna I'm gonna Cry about it. My wife's not a crier, but she has to hold space for me, she holds space for me when I'm crying, you know. Um, so it's really interesting that boys don't feel safe to have a conversation about their emotions, they don't feel safe to go, hey man, I'm not feeling good today. Yeah, they don't feel safe to go and talk to the school psychologist because their mates might talk about them, you know. But the school that we've been working in, we've been working in a school for two years, and the kids are in year nine last year, that went into year ten this year, there's been a 60% drop in kids that have gone to see the school counselor that have been through the program that we run. And they they said the only thing that's different is the program that we run in the school.

It's amazing.

I uh, you know, quite that's a little bit that's what the school puts it down to, you know.

No, it's incredible. I mean, you're you're making a big difference for those young men. And I the power of releasing emotion, I was someone who, and I've shared about this on the show before, but I dissociated my emotion through work. Like I dealt with a lot of trauma in my life. There were a lot of things that we went through and and experiences as a family and as a as a mother and a woman. And and my I would always make sure everyone else, like to the best of my ability, I would make sure everyone else was taken care of and that their emotions, like they had what they needed. For myself, it was like, okay, just got a soldier on, keep going. And like some of that masculine, like, you know, like that masculine energy of like just pushing through. And because I had things that I was responsible for, I, you know, I provided for my family and and my children, and and I just had to keep going. And then my friend, I had a friend die last November, funny enough. Um, not funny enough, but ironic given what you were just sharing. And and I just I'd been doing, I'd started doing some work on this emotional layer, and I literally had to call a friend and get permission to take a day off work to grieve my friend's passing. And that may sound ludicrous to people, but for me, like it just lived like that was inappropriate. It was inappropriate to take time off work to grieve the passing. And in, and every time I picked up the phone to call a client and cancel or reschedule, or I message my stuff, and no one had anything going on about it. Out there with other people, they were like, Yeah, of course, I'm so sorry your friend died. Let us know if you need anything. But for me, it was like call after call conversation after I had to break through that conversation I had about it being inappropriate. And I actually now get after I'm doing this course that I'm in right now, that conversation of things being appropriate or inappropriate is a very young conversation for me. Started probably around the time I was four when I was like a bad girl about something. I don't even know what the exact circumstance was. And so, like conversations related to being a bad girl have just run my life. And what I see now on the and and that Teresa's death sparked for me like I like just guttural sobbing. Like it was like decades of emotional, because I had I had processed the story of it, like ontologically in language. I had gotten it completed, that layer, and I hadn't released the emotional energy associated with it. And I and they're different, it's different, it's not the same. It's you know, you can you can really get, I could really get that things happened the way that they did, and it didn't mean anything about me, and it, you know, it wasn't personal, and and those were just the experiences. And yet still there was this like, you know, like it's all the it's like, yeah, you talk about healing the heart and the mind, right? That was all in the level of the mind. And I and I really did get like it was I'd forgiven my grandmother for the things that she did to my mom. I could really get like I could even express love for my grandmother, but on and on some level, I had not done, I just hadn't done the work. And it's funny because even language it like work, because I language a lot of things like work, but I just hadn't taken, given myself the freedom, the space to confr to just be with the emotional energy and the loss and the grief and the sadness over what had happened in my life and and not dwell there, like not hang out there for a decade or anything like that, but just like acknowledge it and then let it go. You know, just acknowledge it and release it. And and it's been very um, it is very powerful. And and there's still lots for me to discover and learn in this space for myself.

Oh, and then there always is, right? Like it's it's like an onion, you know, like you just you just constantly you're peeling away layers, you know. Like when Brendan died, I went to a um psychiatrist for the first time and I did EDMR with him. And even though I'd cried, it'd have been I didn't really know how to like wail and release and let go of Brennan dying in my arms, you know. I just I hadn't I just didn't know how to do it. Like and in that room, like I just I just cried and sobbed and screamed and hit pillows and just it was yeah, like it was it was guttural, you know, like it was deep from from beginning and it wasn't just like thinking about it now, it wasn't just Brendan, right? It was like just it was all this other stuff that had that had happened in my life that I haven't really talked about, but I just had years and years and years of of of of trauma, you know, and right now, like even right now, I look at my life and I'm like, I don't remember anything before my parents got divorced. It's like there's a there's a block there going, we need to keep you safe still now. And I'm like, so I'm in a space of like, do I need to like really do some stuff to go back there? Like, or can I just be happy that I'm that I'm moving through and and life is okay as it is at the moment, you know. Um so it's really interesting. There's there's always layers to there's always layers to explore, but sometimes I think you know, I've been a part of this community and it's all about personal development and bringing people in and doing perpetual personal development, and I've just walked away from it. I'm just like and the people in there are like, man, I can't believe you're doing that, but I just don't believe that we just need to process things when they come up rather than looking for things to be processing all the time, you know. Like I process a lot when they come up, but I'm kind of like, I need to stop looking for things to process. I need to kind of just be present to what the experience is and process that as it as it arises.

Yeah, you know, a couple things come up for me there. I mean, my mom would go through periods, like she went, my mom went through a like, yeah, I don't even know if there's words for it, a lot of trauma from infancy. And she would go through periods where she would go in and out of therapy at different times, and she would just you because kind of like there's a time for everything, and sometimes you have to let the ground go fallow. You know, sometimes I think it's important, and no one gets to this is again like more of that. There's some way that it the journey should look. And if you, you know, if you're someone who's like aware or awoke, or you know, you should be in some kind of program or doing personal development, it's like, let's just put away the should stick people. We get to create for ourselves. Like, what is my experience of this journey want to look like? I participate, like for anyone who looked at my life, I'm constantly in probably multiple courses. It's like my hobby. And it's like not necessarily to, I just love learning new things. And I love like I'm doing my pilot's license. Like I just love learning. And I happen to really like learning about philosophy and personal development. But I I do think like there's this great quote, and I can't remember it exactly, but this this um gentleman, Jeff Brown, talks about honoring walls, and that it used to be someone who busted through walls and his own and other people's. And he got that walls have a life of their own, and that sometimes, like that what works is to actually honor the walls, and that they'll uh I'm the same. I don't remember my childhood before coming to Canada. I was 10 years old. Most people have memories of their childhood before 10. It's kind of weird that I don't. And things were really there was a lot of trauma that happened when we first got to Canada, including the experience. Like we traveled through Haiti during the middle of during a civil war, and we were like in the airport and there were armed militia at the exits. Like even the journey to get to Canada was traumatic, right? Because I'd never left in New Zealand. I had no idea where we were going. I didn't know anything about Canada. All I knew that I was leaving my home and going to this other place. And then when we got here, you know, within a few months of getting here, my brother had gone back to New Zealand. I was here alone with my mom. It was not a good scene. And so, yeah, for whatever reason, my mind has chosen to block out uh like those experiences, like whatever I remember or know about those experiences came largely from other people. It's not my own memory of it. And I honor that. And I know that if I ever do need to process anything about it, it's gonna like there'll be a time for that. And I don't have to go like that. I guess for me, Corey, I don't know if it offers you anything, but my attitude towards it, all of that has been I don't need to go digging. If if if something's not there, like when I'm ready, when it's time, I I will have the resources, I'll have the, I'll know, and and the work will get done at that point in time. But I don't have to go, I don't have to be like a an archaeologist excavating my past for trauma, right? To heal.

No, no, absolutely not. I I think a lot of it lives in our subconscious mind, you know, like that that's just the the reality of what it is. And at some point, we just need to trust that our unconscious mind is kind of doing as long as it's not causing us trauma, right? Like for me, my unconscious mind like created anger. You know, I I put it, I listened to this podcast with Tim Ferris, and he was talking to um Richard Swartz around internal family systems with IFS, and he's he talks about how someone who has multiple personality disorders is that we all have multiple personality disorders, just most of us don't voice the voices that we hear. So, like if I was to give my anger, if I had a multiple personality, anger would have a name, you know, his name might be Steve. So I started like playing around with that, going, okay, I've got anger, here's a character. I've got asked, I don't just call it anger, I wouldn't give it a name. I go, okay, can you step aside? Like, what are you protecting? What are you protecting anger? And then look at underneath that, and he's protecting frustration or sadness or whatever, and then going, okay, what is he protecting? And then asking, giving all those inner child voices an opportunity to have a conversation with whoever was in that experience within uh within the bubble of a meditation. And I've yeah, it's a super powerful tool, especially for men to not have to relive their, you don't have to relive your trauma, right? Because they have an opportunity to be like strong in their trauma rather than I think traditional psychiatry or psychology, they kind of go, they get you go back into your trauma a lot. And I like kind of I like I don't like taking people back into their trauma. I'm very big on like moving people forward. So in this way, we kind of go, okay, you got this soldier who behaves like poorly, he's not really doing a very good job protecting you now, like back then, and then you kind of bring those characters up one level of time and go, hey, like we're stepping you out, we're we're retiring you, and we're gonna take you to a safe place, and someone else is gonna step in to do the protecting. And it's a really interesting way for I find men really respond well to that kind of process of having soldiers that that have roles within their life to protect them. And sometimes they're the right, they're still taking the role, even though the threat's not real. Like we're not gonna get eaten by a tiger, right? But we still have a that that's an analogy for like a child who experienced might have been whatever it was, and we we created this soldier to protect us, and that soldier then just keeps carrying on, carrying on, carrying on until you're retired. But you have to have the like go into your subconscious mind and go, Hey, you're not you're not required anymore. You know, you can you can step out, and sometimes you'll show up. And I kind of in those moments I just do inner child work. I'm like, hey, you know, like we'll just let you know you stepped in there, wasn't really needed, and like really doing doing that work on the fly in the in the moment has been really powerful for me to um kind of heal things as they are without going into the into the the the deeper stuff that might be sitting underneath it, but just to go, hey, don't need your anger, like you're not really serving me right now. We can go and express that later down at the beach. We can go in the beach and we can scream underwater, or we can, whatever it is, we can go in the bedroom and hit pillows. Like there's a lot of different ways we can express anger in a safe way that doesn't have to be at other people.

So I just finished my practitioner in neurolinguistic programming and my teacher from Scotland, Allie, talks about how like our subconscious mind is is for our good. Like it's a survival mechanism, so it's out to keep us safe. Right. And and what our subconscious mind thinks might keep us safe, and what our conscious mind desires or wants, sometimes they're in conflict. And but it I think it's great, like when we can get to that place where we can see like because sometimes I think we demonize the subconscious mind a little bit in personal development. It's like, you know, like our default ways of being like they're wrong or bad. It's like, no, like try on, they just served you to get to a certain, you know, there was something like for me, when you're a 10-year-old little girl and there are no adults around to take care of you, you know, there there may be there are people to put the food on the table and a roof over your head, but there's no one there to to to care for you emotionally, mentally, because they're dealing with God knows what they're dealing with. It's a really good way of being not to need anyone. That kept me safe for a long time. And I'm not a 10-year-old little girl anymore. I'm a 42-year-old woman. And with what I'm out to accomplish in life, what do I want to create? Doing so in community, asking for help, letting people contribute to me, all of those things are are going to make my experience of life and and things move much faster. And I have a choice to make. I can, and and it takes something though, because we have again, like over time, deeply rooted, grooved brain patterns for operating that anger, the the not asking for help, the not being seen, the not not being vulnerable, because it's not safe, right? And and so it's not that my subconscious mind is like trying to screw with me and like make me not be able to like work with other people or ask for help. It's that that that subconscious mind is still in a lot of ways that 10-year-old little girl who is trying to keep Amber safe, right? And and that in and of itself, that awareness, so powerful. Because then I just keep, I get to like, and it's you know, as I've been taking this on more in my journey, Corey, because I've really kind of reached the boundaries of what Amber can accomplish on her own. I've pretty much squeezed as much time out of a day, like I'm pretty effective. I get up to a lot. Most people are like, I don't know how you do everything you do. And there's more of an impact I need, I want to have in the world. And now I'm like, okay, community, people. And that means having to con like, and I say constantly because that's the experience right now, bump up against this conversation about like being vulnerable, asking for help, letting people contribute to me, letting people know that I need things. And and I choose right now, what I'm choosing to do inside of that is take it on with my like what I would call my originating circle, my closest group of people that I'm, you know, network of conversations that I'm in day in and day out or week in and week out. And then I'll get some like that's how I can do it in a way that's safe for me. And it's not easy, it's still not even easy with those people.

Yeah, we have a freeway, right? Like I have a freeway of anger that rolls over my brain. It's like six lanes wide. And I've been for the last six years, I've been going, all right, let's all right, we're gonna park you anger, and I'm gonna have like a little dirt road, he's gonna take a different path, and we're gonna take a different path. And what we do is we slowly start carving a new path, you know. This belief that our brain is um, I mean, the evidence is in the science that they believe the neuroplastic plasticity of a of a male's brain, particularly at 35, was like it, like it's locked in, but they they've actually proven that it's not, and then the brain can shift and change and et cetera, et cetera. So it's um it's it's just like stepping that path, like looking at it and going, okay, I don't want to step back, I don't want to step back. I'm I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go left, you know. And for me, that started in a car, you know. I just started like that was my safe place, right? Where can I where can I not be angry anymore? Where can I go? All right, where's this where's the safe place for me to practice not being angry when someone cuts me off instead of getting on the horn and screaming and shouting, where is a safe place that I can do that? You know, like I remember this story with my boys in the car. I was like, something had happened at home, and I was like so angry about it. And it was just, I was in the car and I was like, How dare you guys do that? And I just caught myself. I'm like, you know, when you watch dragons, there's like this dragon's card, and you know, I watch with the boys, and there's these like hiccup, and there's stoic, and there's this other character called Drago that comes in. And Drago, stoic is like, he he gets angry, but he's very stoic. He's he's the dad of the group, and he is the the leader of the clan, right? And Drago is this guy who comes in, and I just said to the boys, right now, I said it's not your fault. I said, but how I feel, I feel like I'm drago. And I started like rolling my hand around my head because he has this dragon stick, and he goes, Ah, and I'm in my car and I'm screaming this thing at the center of traffic lights and I'm waving my hand around my head, and the boys are laughing at me. And I'm like, you know, like sometimes I feel like Drago, and sometimes I feel like hiccup, because hiccup's this kid who's like incompetent, and everyone laughs at him and he's not confident, and etc. etc. You know, so like I kind of was able to like catch myself in the moment with the boys and go, you know what, like I'm this is how I'm feeling at the moment, you know, like I'm feeling like Drago, like it's not your fault, and I am projecting it on you guys, and that's not cool. And I just like turn it into this like little role play of characters, you know. And then we had a conversation with them about who they feel like at certain times and etc. etc. But yeah, it's just it's it's super hard to catch yourself in the moment at times, you know, like it really takes work, takes practice, you know, like you really need to be, and it's hard to be on, like when when you've got a super freeway of anger, it's hard to like be you have to be like I feel like I have to be on all the time, and I can't be on all the time. So I can go like I might be able to go two or three weeks and not have any incidents, and then something will come up that uh that lets me go. And usually when it happens, I'll usually have like three or four or five of them that'll kind of like roll into each other over over five or six days, it'll kind of become a bit of a theme until I can like get it get back on top of it, you know. But like the difference is like I'm not saying I am that is me. I'm just like I'm feeling I'm feeling frustrated, I'm feeling angry, like I'm I'm voicing that in a different way, even though when anger's expressed, it's expressed. It's um I'm able to kind of communicate, hey, what was actually sitting underneath that for me was this. I'm not saying it's your fault, I'm just giving my wife or my kids some awareness around what was what was going on for me. So they kind of go, not that being crazy, this is what's happening for them, you know.

Yeah, it's so great. The do-over, right? One of my mentors once called it a do-over, like in your relationships. It's like, can I can I take that back? Like, I'd like a do-over. Can I can I just like I I I got I said that and it had nothing to do with you. But like, can we can we start? How about we like, hey, good morning, how are you? Sorry, I like dove right with my kids. It's like sometimes I think I would wake them up with like, what do you do? Like, you're supposed to do this or you didn't do that. It's like, oh like, good morning. I love you. How are you? Did you sleep well? Not like, why isn't the garbage taken out, or why didn't you, you know, whatever it is? So great. Corey, I could like um, I feel like I could talk to you forever. There's so many things that I wanted to touch on that we haven't. I I you know definitely need to have you back on the show at some point in the future. Just thank you. I I've really enjoyed. Thank you for being my first international, like truly international guest on the show. Thank you for making it work to have this time together, despite the fact that we're 12 hours in, you know, in such different time zones. And and just thank you for the the man you are, the f as a father and a husband and and a leader and the work that you're doing with young men. Uh, you know, you you will never know the full impact of the difference and the contribution that you've made. Like it's like it's it's it's countless. Like you'll you'll just never know everyone's lives who who've been impacted. Um so just I, you know, I really honor and acknowledge you for for being someone who because I know that it takes something and it and it takes to be out in the world doing that work and and do so authentically. It actually takes being on the court in your own life, doing the work over there where you are first. And so, as someone who who knows what that's like, uh just to thank you. Thanks a lot, appreciate it. Yeah, you're so welcome. For those of you listening, you can check out Corey and everything that he's up to. And I know he's in Australia for my Canadian audience and people in North America. Who knows what's possible if you really feel aligned and maybe there's someone doing this kind of work here, or Corey, just get in communication and find out what's possible because anything's possible. Have a wonderful week, everyone.

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. For show info, visit whatwoodamberdo.com. And for information about Amber Howard and Associates' offerings and services, visit amberhowardinc.com.