5 Things Men Are Sometimes Afraid to Be — Plus How to Grow

Men are a key part of our world. Men are necessary in families, communities, workplaces, and relationships. Men bring advantages and sociocultural skills to our world that women and children cannot.

Yet men suffer from underperformance and a lack of performance. In 2017, one in seven working age men (25 to 54) in the US weren’t working. As of 2021, that number had risen to one in three. This is due to several factors, but leading reasons include lack of education, being on disability, poor paying jobs, or simply no interest.

The average man today is going through the motions, doing what was taught of him by his peers and the world, and sometimes his family. If men have valuable means by which to learn about the world and their responsibilities in it, they will be ahead of the norm. But too many are not.

Men also don’t always see the potential they hold. Some believe that as long as they’re putting food on the table and going to work, that’s all that’s needed. Yet, men’s lives and relationships can reach much deeper capacity if they know what to focus on, and why.

This article entails five characteristics men are sometimes afraid to be — and why men need to embrace them in greater numbers. Stepping beyond the fear and living into your true potential as a man is vital for a better world. Let’s dive into the first one: compassion.

Compassionate

Compassion is often viewed as a woman’s job. Many of us have been brought up to believe that nurturing and grace are skills only females are capable of.

It’s often overlooked that men can be compassionate, too. In fact, male compassion can exist in ways that complement female compassion.

Too often, we think that compassion is just comfort and consolation. While these are parts of it, deep compassion requires understanding and even accountability. It requires putting oneself in another’s shoes, but also inspiring others to take up their own causes.

Pity is just feeling bad for someone and possibly “slapping a Band-Aid” on the problem. Compassion is taking the time to understand the situation someone is in, and helping them get out of it.

A father can do this by not just being present for their kid after a playground injury, but encouraging their child to think about what happened. Is there a smarter way to move in the future that minimizes injury risk? Was it a pure accident and therefore their kid shouldn’t feel bad about it? These are the questions and insights a father is great at.

How can you become more compassionate?

If you’re ready to improve your compassion, there are simple ways you can do so.

1. Slow down and observe more often. Given how busy so many lives are today it’s no wonder men can be poor relational observers. In order to see something you need the time and space to notice it. Simply take a few moments to observe your loved ones each day. See and hear what they talk about and what’s important to them. It can change your outlook.
2. Ask questions. Asking a question is a form of personalized attention, which every single person on Earth loves. Learning more through questions helps you know things you otherwise wouldn’t have thought about. It’s also a humble reminder that your perspective isn’t the only one out there.
3. Think about what you would want in that situation. Compassion is ultimately putting yourself in someone else’s position. Did your wife have a rough day at work? Give her your support and listening ear. Does your child want to vent about something? Take a few minutes to understand what’s going on. Small gestures like these have massive impacts.

A Listener

Listening is a superpower. Listening has the power to change relationships, remedy hurts, and grow friendships. So why can listening be so hard?

Psychological research indicates that both men and women view men as poor listeners on average. Men tend to be time-oriented in their listening approach, meaning they only listen to get the information they need. Women are more relationship-oriented when listening, meaning they listen for intent and to understand the meaning behind someone’s words.

Reality is, listening is tough. It takes energy and focus. It’s often asked of us men after a workday or when we’d otherwise be tuning things out.

But listening is crucial. It’s how relationships are formed and cultivated. It drives trust and repairs it when it’s broken. Men can become better listeners by understanding the power it holds.

How can you become a better listener?

1. Listen first, then speak. Listening is always best practiced first. If you always want to be the first to speak, people will take notice of this. They’ll start to see you as a prideful know-it-all. If you listen first, you’ll understand where others are coming from sooner. They’ll also want to hear from you more often if you’re the first to listen. It’s funny — most people love to listen to you if you listen to them first.
2. Know that listening is the ultimate path to influence. If you want to have an excellent relationship with anyone, it will involve plenty of listening. Men often want to hold influential positions, whether that’s at home, work or among friends. By listening authentically and deeply, you’re showing other people they matter to you. You’re putting their needs front and center. That’s powerful to people and they’ll respond well to it.
3. Listen when you’re in conflict. This is one of the hardest skills to practice and accordingly one of the most powerful. Most people don’t want to listen when they’re pissed off, myself included. But taking just a moment to listen more intently can change your circumstances. People get angry because something in them hasn’t been heard. If you hold enough mental space to hear what your speaker is trying to get across, you may be surprised. Often, conflicts aren’t the effect of an unresolvable issue; they’re the result of people not understanding each other. Listening harder is the path to such understanding.

Wrong

It’s long been the butt of jokes, but men’s sense of self is often tied to pride. Men hate admitting when they’re wrong, even when they are.

Research from the California Institute of Technology revealed that testosterone is partly what’s behind male reluctance to admit wrongdoing. It turns out testosterone drives snap decision making and promotes a lesser degree of cognitive reflection.

To a man, admitting that he is wrong psychologically feels like a loss. He would rather save face and at least get the feeling of being right than admit the error of his ways.

This lack of humility can cause strife in relationships, stunt personal growth, and prevent men from seeing new perspectives. Thinking you’re always right on things automatically limits your life to existing experiences and knowledge. You can’t grow, improve, or enjoy life beyond now if you aren’t open to new information.

Accepting that you’re wrong from time to time enhances your life like few other factors can. So what does this look like practically?

How can you accept when you’re wrong?

1. Just recognize it. All that’s needed for humility is exercising it. People forget things, they have skewed perceptions, and it’s impossible to know everything — including you. It’s also possible you may have had poorly informed reasons for believing something for years. Rather than take a loss and drag your ego down with it, simply accept that you discovered new information. It can improve your life.
2. Welcome the opportunity to learn something new. Some men believe admitting they were wrong is all that’s needed. Unfortunately this does little more than smooth out conflict in the moment. The real value in humility is discovering new information. If your being wrong means you can benefit from a new way of thinking, that’s worth embracing. Change is never easy and usually takes time to stick. But it expands your knowledge, and — incidentally — makes you less wrong next time.

Bold and Courageous

You don’t need me to tell you that the world is full of problems. Crime, rape, corruption, moral apathy, and deception plague the society we live in.

While no human can save the world, it begs the question: what are people doing to stop bad things in the world? Of course, there are thousands of organizations working globally to right wrongs and serve justice — dozens of which have many men involved. But research shows there are discrepancies between male and female involvements in these matters.

Across generations, women are more likely to donate to charitable causes than men. Women are also more likely to volunteer for tasks that won’t lead to career advancement opportunities, meaning men focus more heavily on opportunities that provide personal benefits.

Globally, women tend to accept about 57% of volunteer work. While 43% isn’t bad for men, it shows there is room to grow.

Volunteer work is just one side of human-to-human involvement, too. Voting, supporting social causes, and spending more time with their kids vary among fathers depending on whether or not the men live with their children.

96 to 98% of fathers whose children live with them eat meals with them and engage in recreational activities with them several times a week. Only 30 to 39% of fathers that don’t live with their children do the aforementioned activities multiple times per week.

How can you become more courageous and involved with your family and community?

1. Put family first. No matter what cause you’re considering getting involved in, family should stay first. This is easy because family is already a priority for most men, but if you’re concerned about it, you can breathe easy. You can’t give your best to a secondary effort if your family doesn’t have their needs met. This includes time, attention, support, and financial resources. Make sure this part of your life is running smoothly before you accept a new challenge.
2. Identify something that’s important to you. Sometimes, men can find it hard to get involved in causes until it’s personal for them. I remember reading a story of a father who previously didn’t think much about human trafficking, if at all. Then, when it was discovered that a predator was messaging one of his daughters in an attempt to lure her into sex trafficking, this issue became all-encompassing for him overnight. This makes sense — a loving father would do anything to keep his children out of the hands of perverts and criminals. You can use the same mindset to discover what’s important for you. That doesn’t mean human trafficking will be your issue or that it applies to your context, it’s just an example.
3. Commit to small, but consistent actions. Many people never get involved with something they claim is important to them because of the time commitment. No one has unlimited time of course, and in fact, time is the most precious resource you have. But that doesn’t mean you need to give up everything to make a difference. All you need to start with is one action you can be consistent with. Don’t have four hours a week to volunteer? You don’t need that much. Look for something you can do in 30 minutes if that’s all you have. But make space for it and be consistent over time.

Truth-Seeking

We live in a world full of easy answers and convenient solutions. This affects just about everyone, and that includes men.

Finding the truth is not a simple or fun task. It requires thinking, research, honesty with oneself, and verifying information. When you find information that you wouldn’t otherwise want to believe, it’s normal to want to push it away.

Why is the truth so hard to swallow? Why do men seem to struggle with this more than women?

One reason is because men don’t like change. There are thousands of articles and dozens of relationship books that have been written on the immovability of men. It’s true — 73% of men would rather live a shorter life than give up eating meat. If that’s not blind stubbornness, I don’t know what is.

Of course, I’m a guy too, so I know what it’s like. And it doesn’t mean stubbornness towards everything is bad. If a man were fighting for his kids or standing for the truth, I’d expect as much stubbornness as possible. But life is rarely so black and white; much stubborn behavior is a result of pride, not persistence.

A second reason is because the truth can reveal parts of your life that aren’t healthy. If your family raised you to believe that screaming matches are a good way to resolve conflict, the truth doesn’t shine warmly on that. It’s hard to accept that your previous life pattern doesn’t serve you as much as you thought it did. Simply acknowledging that feels hard.

So, how can you better seek the truth as a man? What are practical steps towards a life that honors the truth?

1. Learn to recognize the truth. In a basic sense, truth is anything that’s real, or anything that responds to what is real. This is the definition that philosophers, theologians, and all kinds of thinkers have used for centuries. In order to understand what is real, you must have an acceptance for it. In order to accept something, you must be open to the fact that reality may not be what you want it to be. Thankfully, there are several means to test what is real.
2. Seek the truth through trustworthy means. How do you know what’s real? Anything that’s real holds up to logical scrutiny, and it can be tested and proven through other sources. For example, you could say “I have a notebook.” That could be the truth, but it might not be. In order to verify your statement, I’d need to find out if the notebook exists — preferably through someone else. The reason this is important is because truth is verifiable through credible sources. If you’re a trustworthy person you wouldn’t lie about the notebook, but the way to know for sure is by asking a friend, family member, or doing an independent search. You can treat the quest for truth in life similarly. Third party sources of the truth are always the best.
3. Align your life with the truth. The truth is of little value if we don’t honor our lives with it. This is similar to the fact that the sun bears little relevance in our lives if we don’t derive some kind of value, joy, or function from it. An example of honoring the truth is recognizing that there’s a limit to the extent one can invest in work and still get out of it. In other words, work is not like a relationship, where you have the potential to reap unlimited rewards. Work is inanimate, meaning you shouldn’t sacrifice everything you have just to get more money or success. These are great rewards but they can’t replace the most important things in life, like relationships, family, truth, and freedom.

As a man, I’m familiar with how much men have accomplished. I have a firm feel for the great things men have set in motion and the forms of usefulness we take on.

As a man, I’m also familiar with how far we men have to go. There are innumerable opportunities to become greater fathers, stronger husbands, smarter workers, better community leaders, and bigger supporters.

Men have opportunities that women do not, just like women have opportunities men don’t have. Right now, I look forward to the men who will rise up. The men who will take action and not let fear, apathy, or cowardice obstruct them from their potential.