Are You Man Enough to Be Trustworthy To Anyone and Everyone?

As a man, it can be frustrating, even infuriating, to be lumped in with the rest of the “usual suspects” after we do something with perfect intention. But with good reason — men don’t exactly have a lengthy track record for doing kind things, pure of heart. When it comes to motive, people often assume the worst.

So what’s in it for you? they’re thinking, eyes squinted in skepticism.

More often than not, we see men in the media who do good things for the wrong reasons, or at best, doing something helpful to society that somehow leads to personal gain. Brands whose own ads are built purely around showing consumers that they’re the “good guys” so you’ll buy their car instead of the other guy’s. A lot of the times when men do something seemingly pure of ulterior motive, the knee-jerk reaction for anyone is suspicion. Not to be trusted, and rightfully so.

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot. When you see someone, especially a person of privilege, go out of their way to help someone and you can’t find a single attachable reason other than human decency, tell us you’re not thrown for a loop like we are, especially in our social media-driven age of record-first, help-later responses.

So how do we, as men, rid ourselves of this suspicion? Frequency and universality.

Man Enough to Care

By that, we mean tipping the scale from uncommon acts of kindness to regular, recurring activities. Little things like holding the door open for someone — we’ll hold a door for someone 100 yards away, we love it — or bolder acts like going well out of your way, completely unprovoked, to check in on someone, buy someone flowers who just celebrated a major achievement, send meals to a distant friend who just had their first kid, anything for anyone who looks like they can use a hand. Or even a simple “hello” to a perfect stranger passing by.

PREORDER JUSTIN BALDONI’S BOOK “UNDEFINING MY MASCULINITY

By universality, we mean don’t just be of service to beautiful women or people you’re attracted to in hopes you will receive something in return. Do things for people who would never expect anything from you, as well. You see an elderly woman carrying her groceries, offer to help. You see a guy stranded on the side of the road, offer directions or the number to AAA. Become the universal friend, someone who is ready, willing and nonjudgmental for everyone they see.

Do it often, give to everyone and suddenly the trust wall begins to build, suspicious brows are lowered and we become a community that heals itself. After the year we’ve had, being of service should be something we jump into oncoming traffic to have the chance to do (don’t jump into oncoming traffic).

Leading By Example

Acts of kindness are the biggest dopamine hit, so even if you truly are being pure of motive, there’s always going to be a major plus in it. The point is to get to a place where kindness is second nature and worrying about motive falls into the rearview. By providing a good example to our sons and daughters, we free our boys of the scripts that say things like motive has to be tied to kindness, allowing them to be trustworthy. And we protect our daughters in the process, allowing them to trust more.

To see them pass that on to someone else later, well, that’s a thing of beauty. That’s the ultimate act of kindness, something that continues on and on, down through generations.

In the past, I’ve told the story about how I once saw a homeless man trying to get his cart of belongings up a curb, only to watch it tumble over. All I could do was watch, sitting there motionless with my morning coffee like an absolute pud. Historically — OK, once — reaching out to help the homeless with their belongings hasn’t fared well for me so I just continued to stare while a man, younger than me, went out of his way to help. I was so embarrassed by myself and yet proud of the young man for embarrassing me.

Ever since seeing that act of kindness, there is no hesitation from me. It’s worth it to put yourself out there for others.

Now, if your knee-jerk reaction to that is “so what,” then we both have work to do. We should all be willing to make the mistake of trying too hard to help, as opposed to not trying enough.

The Challenge

So what will you do this week to be pure of motive and completely trustworthy in the service of others? Look up from the phone and be observant to the world around you. There’s people in need everywhere you look and in so many ways. As we begin to move towards public life again, see where your helping hand, open ear or shoulder to lean on can be useful to others in need.

So what’ll it be, are you man enough to be trusted?

Preorder Justin Baldoni’s debut book, Man Enough: Undefining My Masculinity here.

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Are You Man Enough to Own Your Biggest Embarrassments This Week? 

This month — OK, year — has been an embarrassment of humanity, but that should not stop us from focusing on improving ourselves. In fact, it seems like the best parts of 2020 are yet to come, and it starts with you. Most of us aren’t great at being “man enough” to show our flaws, admit our wrongs or surrender our opinions. No, we’d much rather cram them down deep, let them fester and manifest into toxic little balls we can regurgitate and spit in each other’s faces. But it’d be much better, although not as easy, to own our embarrassments, especially in light of everything happening now.

If perception is reality, then the flaws, flops and failures are what we hide in pursuit of perfection. But the reality therein is a fake, which is why we encourage you to embrace the bad with the good, be comfortable in your faults and use all parts of the buffalo by showing off that you’re man enough to look like an idiot every once in a strawberry full moon wolf eclipse.

Maybe you cross-dressed as Cruella DeVille one Halloween and made your cocker spaniel into a Dalmatian and you’ve spent every moment since then shredding the evidence. But maybe hiding isn’t the answer. Maybe we need to take a good look at our ridiculous attempts to wear fake eyelashes, appreciate what women do in service of their bodies, then have a good laugh at our regrettable decisions, shake it off and move forward.

Our Man Enough challenge to you this week is to own your biggest embarrassments. It doesn’t have to be the biggest skeleton in your walk-in closet of personal horrors, but it should be something outside of your comfort zone. Don’t be afraid to go deep, as long as it’s not too offensive or destructive to anyone but yourself (or anything that’ll get you fired or your dog surrendered).

Just be man enough to say, “Hey, this is me when I screwed the pooch. I’m better now.”

The more of us who are willing to come forward in this sharing circle and blow off some steam is not only going to make us feel better about ourselves, we’ll lift each other up and stop sweating the small stuff that weighs us down.

If we are to move forward together as a community, we’re going to have to get our hands dirty by digging up our past. And while we support our women in our collective march for equality both in race and gender, we have to remember that condemning one another will not be a lasting forgiveness. We have to let it go, learn from it and grow together, and there is no better place to start than with DIY haircuts, uncomfortable short jean shorts and that time at the water park when you didn’t realize you had on see-through shorts.

Let the purge of embarrassing riches ensue, we’re right there next to you.

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