Do you have a job or a profession?

According to psychologist and author Dr Ron Johnson, men should find a profession as soon as they can and never stay in a “job”.

In Ron’s latest book, 'Balls: Men Finding Courage with Words, Work, Wine, and Women’, he talks about why men need to find professions, how they differ from jobs, and how men can find them.

And in this episode, we get into the details of that topic. With real-life illustrations and anecdotes from his 50+ years of experience as a psychologist and psychotherapist, Ron outlines the crucial role of feelings in both finding yourself and your profession.

Find Dr Ron Johnson Here:

Website: MidlandsPsychological.com

Facebook: @MidlandsPsychological

Instagram: @MidlandsPsychological

YouTube: @MidlandsPsychological

Book: 'Balls: Men Finding Courage with Words, Work, Wine, and Women': https://pages.midlandspsychological.com/balls

Find The Akkeri Here:

Website: TheAkkeri.com

Facebook: Facebook.com/theakkeri

Instagram: Instagram.com/the.akkeri

YouTube: YouTube.com/theakkeri

One of the most basic things that we men have to come to grips with. What am I going to do in my life? Could be swinging a hammer, could be writing a book. It's one of the most important ingredients of being a male.

A job is where I make money. A profession is where I profess myself. I'm not professing some idea, I'm just professing who I am. So my work should be a reflection of who I am.

The biggest risk here that if I'm in a job that I don't like, I will find some addiction. Why would I do that? Because I will find someplace where I can be happy.

You are listening to the Akkeri Podcast, a show about men and masculinities, the challenges that modern men face, and how to chart a better way forward. I'm your host, Matt Howlett, mental health coach and founder of the Akkeri. In this episode, I'm talking with psychologist Dr.

Ron Johnson, who recently released a book entitled Men Finding Courage with Words, Work, Wine and Women. We are in the midst of a four part series with Ron on those topics and this one's about work.

We talk about the importance of finding professions rather than jobs and the difference between the two. How feelings play the biggest role in men finding that profession. A conceptual framework for making big decisions.

Why trash collecting can be a profession, and what happens when men find their professions and what can happen when they don't. I find Ron's combination of experience and straightforward approach to be very refreshing, and I hope you do as well. So let's get into it.

Ron, welcome back to the Awkward podcast. Thanks again for coming on. We are going to dive right into a conversation about work.

So your book is entitled Balls Men Finding Courage with Words, Work, Wine and Women. What does it mean for men to find courage with work?

I think it's one of the most basic things that we men have to come to grips with. What am I going to do in my life?

And the word do could be swinging the hammer, could be writing a book, but it's very, very important for me to display myself in what I do, make a living at what I do, provide for other people what I do, and enjoy what I'm doing. That doesn't mean I enjoy all of it, but roughly speaking, it's, if not the most, one of the most important ingredients of being a male.

And furthermore, many men don't ever find it. They never really find good work for them.

Yeah. So why do you think that is? Like, what is the main reason why men don't find good work. And what is it that you call good work?

I know in your book you talk about job versus a profession. Maybe you can speak to that a little bit.

Yeah, let me speak to that a little bit. A job is where I make money. A profession is where I profess myself. That's where the word profession comes from. What am I professing?

I'm not professing something else. I'm not professing some idea. I'm just professing who I am. So my work ideally should be a reflection of who I am.

So when you see Ron Johnson, you go, oh, Ron Johnson, he's professing himself. You may not use that word, but he's. Oh, I see him because he's talking and he's listening and he's writing or whatever he's doing.

And what is this about? This is about who Ron Johnson is. So a profession is very much different from a job. A job is where you make money.

Now, ideally, you have a profession and a job at the same time. Many people have a profession, but they don't make any money. I mean, we have the starving artist who is doing his profession.

He's professing himself in his artwork or whatever that might be. At any rate, he's not making any money. So the, the trouble here is that men fall into getting a job. They first think about making money.

They don't first think about who am I and how can I profess myself in the world? How can I make a difference in the world?

Yeah, there's probably a lot of reasons as to why that is the case, as to why men focus on making money as opposed to finding a profession. I, I like the example that you gave of artists, though. Obviously, you know, I'm a bit of a musician.

I've never been an artist as my, you know, vocation. I've never really pursued, like, you know, whether it's singer, songwriter, whatever.

But I think anybody who would want to start out on that path, or at least a certain percentage of people who want to start out on that path, they think, how am I ever going to make enough money? You know what I mean? So, yes.

Are you basically suggesting that you have to at least try, like, no matter what, like, you know, take the risk, take the jump and see what you can do and really get a sense of, does this actually align with who I am? Is this a profession? And then whatever money you make. That's just it.

Let me come back to that in a moment, because what happens here with men is that they have an idea of what their profession is and they're doing it in their head. Or maybe they're doing it on a canvas, or they see money and they jump right into money right off the bat.

And of course, what we're looking for is both of those. So I see men who have an idea of what they want to do.

I saw a guy who hadn't gone to college, and he came in to see me and he said, I want to be a doctor. Oh, well, that's good. You know, of course he hadn't gone to college. He doesn't have any money, and he just has an idea of being a doctor.

Well, that's nice, but. So how are we going to do that? Well, I don't know, but that just feels right. That's what I should do. Now, that's kind of the start of it.

But that's not even close to realistic. It's like, okay, first college, then graduate school, and then medical school or whatever.

And I have talked to young men who ask, what do they really like? Oh, they like gaming. So what do they want to do? They want to write games. Right? They want to create games.

How many people that play games actually ever succeed in writing and creating games that actually sell? I'm assuming one in a thousand. One in a million, maybe. Huh.

I have no idea.

Yeah. So just back to your question here. How does one do that? I think the task practically is both practical and theoretical.

The theoretical part of this is I have to know who I am, which means I have to know what I feel, what I value, what I do, what's fun for me, what's enjoyable, and of course, very importantly, what I don't like to do. And then put that whole thing together and go, okay, this is who Ron Johnson is about. He is about these various elements. And so that's a start.

And then to be able to look around and say, okay, what's out there where Ron Johnson could be Ron Johnson and be of some impact in the world, ultimately make some money and do something that's fun and that's interesting.

And so I say to a young man, or sometimes women, but you'll see young men, what you need to do is as soon as you possibly can, you need to get into your profession in some way or another. Whether you're sweeping the floor, you have to be with people who are doing what you say that you want to do.

Okay, so it sounds like there's a couple boxes that you need to tick there. There's the practical side where you definitely need to get some type of training, education, experience. But then there's the.

I guess the step behind that of what we talked about in the last conversation was about words. So what is, what is the first step?

I mean, if you're speaking to, say, someone right now, a man who's, you know, say in his 30s and his 40s, has been in a job what he considers to be a job for a while, what's the starting point?

Yeah, the starting point is to admit, okay, I am not happy. That's the starting point. I am not happy. Where am I not happy? Well, my wife or my girlfriend or my kids or my mother or whatever.

No, no, it's not about that. You're not happy. What are you not happy? Well, you're probably not happy in what you're doing, Matt.

I remember a former nurse that got into the business of selling psychotropic medications and other medications, and he was making $300,000 a year, hated his job, not happy. But he couldn't, quote, he couldn't quit the job because he's making 300K, right?

Yeah. Yeah. That's probably a very common trap.

It is a very, very common trap. So if the first ingredient is making money, you have to really set that aside.

The first ingredient is who am I, what do I like, what's exciting for me and what can I do? And then the second step is not necessarily training. The second step is getting your feet wet in some way or another.

I have young, budding wannabe therapists, sometimes patients of mine who say, I want to be a therapist. How should I start? Should I go to school? Should I get master's degree? Say no, go get a job as a psych tech someplace in a hospital.

See what real people are like, right? So that's. I think the next step is get your feet wet as soon as possible. Well, I'm 35 and I got married and I got this. I got it.

Now wait a minute here. We're looking at a very important part of who you are guy here. So let's just consider.

Don't just quit your job and, you know, jump into the foray, but see if you can find a way to spend an hour, a few hours looking at being with and maybe doing something that you think could be valuable, right?

Before we get into anything else, I got kind of an idea where I want to go next. But what is the risk of not doing that, right? If you find yourself in a, you know, a non ideal situation, what is the risk of.

Of not doing this work and figuring out what the ideal situation is.

One of the biggest risks is the third thing in our book. The biggest risk is wine, which, you know, for alliterative purposes, has to do with addictions.

Right.

So the biggest risk here, that if I'm in a job that I don't like, if, depending on how much money I still don't like it, I will find some addiction. Why would I do that? Because I will find someplace where I can be happy. Right. I can be happy in gambling.

I can be happy in drinking or promiscuity or whatever I might do. And so that's the biggest risk because we're compensating. Okay. Why do you have to get drunk every night?

Well, because I'm working every day and I hate my job. Okay. So this is not about being alcoholic. This is really about you're in the wrong job, you're not in a profession.

Right. Okay, so it sounds like the definite first step is figuring out who you are.

And without going into that too much, because like I said, we did that in the last episode on Words. What is the basic overview of what that is? Like? If you are starting over, you're not in your ideal setup, in your 30s, 40s, however old you are.

The first step is this. Figuring yourself out, understanding yourself. This topic of words that we spoke about, what is that in a. In a nutshell?

Like, what does that look like for the person to. Starting over?

Yeah, that's really very important because psychology is really all about feelings. But by the way, feelings are not just about emotions.

So a lot of men stay away from psychology and psychotherapy because they don't feel comfortable in the whole realm of emotions, especially emotions with words. Yeah, Like, I know how I feel. Why do I have to tell anybody how I feel? Oh, because if you don't tell anybody how I feel, they won't know who you are.

And by the way, you won't know how they are because you don't care about how they feel. Ultimately, it's the whole feeling business. So the. The starting point here is not to jump right into psychotherapy in someplace.

The starting point is, what do I feel? And do the best you can to answer that question. It might be unhappy, uncertain, hopeful, angry or whatever.

If you can put some package to what you feel, you will begin to get closer to your. Your basic nature, the foundation of who you are.

So that would suggest that there's some trial and error then in figuring out your profession, figuring out your work. Because you would want to. Yes, because you want to try sweeping the floor, try writing games or try whatever it might be.

Yes, exactly right. So let me come back to this really important task that you said. How do you understand who you are?

You don't read a book, you don't talk to somebody else, you don't see a therapist. You look at yourself and try to answer the question, what do I feel?

And you will have thoughts, you will have memories, you will have passions, you will have emotions, you will be excited, you'll be disappointed, you'll be hopeful, you'll be resentful. And you start with that whole package. And this is what happens when you do that.

Pretty soon, something intervenes from the side and the intervention is, there's something wrong with you, Ron. You have to do this, you have to do that. So I suggest the second step is to do your best to push that aside. He, she, they or I think I should.

Let's put, let's do that later, but right now, let's stay with this whole path of what do I feel? You do that for a little bit, you will realize that you need to talk to somebody else about this whole business of who you are.

Not for them to tell you who you are, much less what you should do, but for you to have a format to say, let me tell you what I am, what I feel, and I have no idea how to do this. I'm not good at this, and where do I go from here? And hopefully the person in the other chair says, thank you, Ron, for talking to me.

Just tell me more.

Yeah, you could do this process in, you know, midlife. This isn't something that has to start.

I mean, ideally, yeah, they would teach this, you know, these skills of understanding yourself and the importance of that in middle school and high school. But you could do that while in a job that you don't like and before making a big move. This is not something you have to do all at once.

I have seen people that, you know, decided, okay, I'm going to be a starving artist or whatever. I'm going to be a therapist, so I'm just going to quit my, my job. Big mistake. It's not about doing something first.

It's about getting a handle of who am I inside and how can I profess myself in my work in some way or another. That may take years, but you might have to have a job that you don't like, but with a passion that you do.

Like when I worked with a guy who was making a hundred thousand dollars or something for an insurance company, hated his job and he worked slowly. He wanted to be a therapist and he had been a patient of mine, worked slowly at it.

And after a couple of years he decided, I'm going to go get a master's degree. Which he did. And he slowly entered into the whole field of psychotherapy.

But from the start to the finish, this is about a six year process, so it doesn't happen overnight. Anyway, he took a left turn that the master's program wasn't good enough, so I had to do something else. And then he tried this that wasn't right.

And eventually he found himself. So would you say trial and error is really, really very important?

Right.

Something comes to mind that you've told me this was years ago, the importance of feelings, because obviously from what you've just said, feelings are crucial to this process. And I don't know what the percentages were or if you ever gave me an actual number, but it was something like feel, feel, feel, think, do.

Feeling is 70% of all this, you know, just arbitrary number. But it's something like that.

It's mostly feeling, having a stat, taking a stab at putting that into words, maybe feeling some more to try and get clarification on what it actually is. Then think about it, then do something.

Well said, Matt. Deb came up with the paradigm 10 to 1. 10 to 1 is what? 10 is feelings, 2 is thoughts, 2 thoughts. Do is 1.

To be able to do the right thing, you have to think clearly. To be able to think clearly, you cannot be emotional.

So to not be emotional, not to be excited, not to be depressed, not to be angry, you have to realize, let me feel all of this and feel it and feel it and feel it until it's a part of me and it's not dominating me. I'm not dominated by my emotion.

I'm not dominated by anger or excitement or I got, oh boy, I'm going to, you know, come up with this perfect new video game. Right?

Yeah. I can feel even in myself and I'm almost disappointed in myself that I feel this way. I can feel this like I don't want to do that.

You know, I want to do. Right. I want to skip some of that.

And even after, you know, the years of learning the importance of this and working with yourself and Deb and others, like, I still feel that. And that's got to be a challenge for just about every man on the planet.

Well, part of this is our Western culture. Our Western culture is do something. So in this sort of feeling, thinking, doing, people tend to be in the feeling realm.

And they want to jump from feelings to doing, or they're in the thinking realm. They want to skip the feelings and just think and think and think and then do that. That's not the process.

The process is feel first, think second, do third. But we are in a culture which is the question when you meet somebody is, well, what do you do? What do you do?

Well, doing is fine, but the real question would be, who are you? What are you about? What's important to you? How are you serving yourself? How are you serving the world? And what's valuable.

Yeah. With the importance of feelings, I can't stay away from the.

I think struggle, maybe is not the best word for it, but it's the only one I can come up with. The struggle that we men have when it comes to emotions and feelings. And the biggest one being, at least in my mind, feeling is feminine.

Emotions are feminine. Talking about my feelings is feminine. It's not necessarily masculine. You think we can pick that apart a little bit? What do you have to say to that?

Just off the top, let's just talk.

Briefly about that because, yes, that's absolutely true. And it's one of the reasons the therapy is so dominated by women.

And dare I say this doesn't sound too misogynistic, it's dominated by a woman's view of the world. And women don't have any more emotions, any more feelings than we have. They just have many more words.

And they have had a culture where their feelings and the subset of their emotions have been allowed to be there. And for us men, they haven't. What are the emotions that we allow? Joy and anger. We don't allow fear. We don't allow sadness.

We don't allow subcategories of disappointment and hurt. So you're exactly right. Part of the difficulty here is when I think about feelings as a man is like, oh, that's, that's feminine. It's just soft.

I don't want to go there. That's really not who I am. I mean, I had a guy respond to, you know, a post that we did or blog, and he says, oh, this just is so anti male.

It's like, wait a minute, have you, have you read the book here? I mean, you know, we're talking about here. So the whole word feelings, I jokingly say it's the other F word for men.

It's like, oh, yeah, I'm not going there.

Right. Another. Another one of your four letter words.

Yeah. Yes. Right.

So maybe just for a second, then talk to me, a little bit more. Let's dig into as deeply as we can here of the importance of. Of feeling and emotion. What does that look like for a man?

How do you start helping a man, specifically in the therapeutic context? Like, you must have a. At least a mental conceptual process that you work through for someone.

I mean, I'll take me, for example, you know, when I first came to you, I even had this conversation with my wife just yesterday. Before that, there's been a progression. At first, I was primarily logic. I had strong feelings. I've always been a deep feeler. But I was.

I was all thinking and doing. I would try and at least, I don't know, maybe not repress because it wasn't purposeful, but I didn't really know what to do with them.

And I just thought and did something.

And then as I was starting to, you know, understand the importance of feelings and get a better handle on myself, I went through a lot of hard things in my life. So then those feelings just ramped up. And to an extent, there was periods in there where I didn't know what to do with them.

And I would, you know, hardcore introvert for a while, stay away from people. Or at least I felt more comfortable away from people because I had so much going on inside that I didn't know what do.

And then I come to a balance, you know, years after that where I feel like I can go back and forth. You know what I mean? Like, if the emotions are too strong or the context is not right to process them, I can do that later.

I can put it aside and not be emotional in the moment so that I can avoid arguments and whatever. But what is that mental or conceptual framework that you have? Like, what's step one, step two?

What does that look like when you're working with a guy that doesn't really understand how to do that, or at least the importance of doing that?

Let me give you roughly two kinds of men here. There are men that feel first and do second. There are men, like you just said, who think first and do second.

There are very few men who know how to feel first and then think second and then do third. I mean, just this morning, I was with a guy. Most of his session, he was crying because his love of his life may not be as interested as he is.

And he's just so afraid and so sad and so hurt. So he's really good at that. And his question is, what do I do here? You know? And I say, this is not about what you're going to do.

It's about how you feel and feel and feel. And after a few minutes, maybe a half an hour or so, he started to feel less. And then he could listen, then he could think.

And he said, oh, I say some stuff that I should never say because when I get totally involved in my feelings, which tends to be with highly feeling people, they just eradicate, corrupt. And that's, that's especially for us men. Swearing is a big part of what men do if they're feeling based.

So it's not like being more feeling, it's just being feeling first and thinking second and doing third.

So you were saying there's three types of men. What type do you see the most of?

I see about 50, 50 probably these days, maybe because I'm on the thinking side. I see more thinking men and they sort of stick with me. But this guy I saw this morning, I've seen for a couple of years.

So he has learned to trust me. But it's very, very hard for a deeply feeling person to think that I can't just feel and then do.

He said, I just want to get married, I just want to be together. And she's, she's an independent spirit and then she's going to Australia someplace and it's like, what am I doing? What am I doing?

So what, what's going on here? He's dominated by fear. The two most important emotions we have are joy and sorrow. Joy, I have something, have somebody have an idea.

Sorrow, I lose it. The other two emotions are anger and fear. Anger is always about the past. Thinking based people tend to be in the past about anger.

I did this, she did that, they did that. Feeling based men tend to be in the future, which is what he said. I'm so worried about what's going to happen in the future.

So to realize that both fear always in the future, whether a second or a year, and anger always in the past, whether a second or a year impedes on the present, which is really joy and sorrow. So when I try to help men, the paradigm is let's keep you in the present. The present is always joy and sorrow. The present is a sine curve.

Love it, have it, lose it, feel sad, love something else.

So when you say those are the two most important emotions for this topic of work, figuring out, you know, when you need to leave a job and find a profession and how to find a profession.

Yes, maybe at the present, at the present time, if you're making a certain amount of money and you have obligations to just realize I just feel disappointed. I just feel sad. I'm not happy.

I did a recent post, I did a blog on this called if you can name it, you can claim it, which basically means if you can just say what it is. I'm just not happy now. What I should do. No, let's hold off that train now. What I should do.

Let's just stay with what do you actually feel I'm not happy. Well, what should I do? No, no, let's not move forward. Just stay still. What good is that going to do? Just watch you feel unhappy. You feel unhappy.

You feel unhappy, then you feel less unhappy. It's like, oh, that's not all I feel. So that's the naming and claiming sort of thing. If I can name what I feel without a judgment of it.

Yeah, I felt two different things there. I mean, that's very freeing and what not.

Not a confidence boost, but it grows your confidence to be able to understand your feelings and then understand yourself and then know what it is that you want in situations, what you want out of life, what you want in relationships. It's very freeing. It's not the easiest thing to do at all. And you might not realize that that's what you're gonna get out of the process.

At least that's was my experience. I didn't know going into it. I hated it in the beginning because I just wanted to make the situation right. I wanted to fix it. Right.

I wanted to be on the other end of it.

All right, well, you did. From what you say and what I'm seeing with other people, you didn't have a grasp of admitting I don't want to do it.

To admit to that I don't want to do it is to name it and claim it. It's like, I didn't want to do this. I work out three days a week. Never do. I enjoy it. I don't want to do it.

I've done it for so many years now that it's just a part of my process, but I never want to do it. I just don't want to get old and stupid and infirmed. And I need to work out three days a week.

And now the other three days a week I can play basketball. That's not a problem at all. But it's not just good enough. I need to work out, and I don't want to do it. So I don't want to do this job.

It's not, I should quit tomorrow or it's awful or what's wrong with me or what's wrong with him? No, no, I just don't like what I have here.

Right. What are some practical things that you could suggest for men to dig into that process?

Like, I found journaling very helpful because sometimes, at least I've had a way of reasoning away something so I can generally look back into the past and say, okay, well, I didn't like this and here's why. But the further that you get into the future, the more that you kind of forget those details. And I found that one of the things that.

One of the reasons why rather I like journaling is the fact that I can actually record it and get specific and, you know, put feelings into words. Yes. But also have something to reflect on so that I can see growth and, and all that.

But mainly so that I can look back and see, oh, this is the details of. Of what I felt. And it was consistent or persistent. Right. And I shouldn't ignore that because I know for myself I had a way of reasoning away these.

These things and being like, oh, I can do this for a little bit longer, or, you know, I really want this specific end result and maybe I can still get there really, really good.

By the way, there are roughly two different ways of journaling. One is audio and video, and the other is written. And what you describe is writing. That's what we normally think about journaling.

Well, that serves you because of your nature. It doesn't serve a lot of men because they just say, well, I don't like words. I never been good at it. I can't spell right.

And I don't know how to put this down. You can journal in a different way. Just pick up your cell phone.

Talk to your cell phone, or take a picture of yourself and do a video of yourself and just talk to you.

Yeah.

Talk to this unknown person. Then you can look at it. So the journaling can take these three forms or predominantly too, which is audio or written. Very valuable way.

Yeah. Is there anything else that you found helpful that you suggest?

Well, what's helpful, which is almost impossible to find, is another guy that's trying to do the same thing. But if you tell another guy, I'm not sure about my job or I'm not sure about my wife, or I'm not sure what I should do.

I'm looking, you know, to be an astronaut, he's going to say, well, you can't do that, Ron. Oh, you're not smart enough. You're too old. You know, this doesn't work.

Are you going to make enough money you're going to get the typical kind of male response. So it would be nice if there were a good friend, uncle, a priest, a pastor, a therapist, or somebody out there who can just kind of listen to you.

Yeah, but that's a very, very hard commodity to find. So I think the second thing is gathering information.

And again, there are two ways of gathering information and they tend to be thinking based, which is reading, or feeling based, which is watching or listening. So most of the people that are watching this, that we are doing right now are not thinking based people.

Most of these people are feeling based people who do much more when they can see somebody and hear somebody and engage somebody than they are when they're just reading something.

Talk to me a little bit more about the idea of a profession, because I don't think that is a word that is thrown around very much like, you know, what do you do for work? What's, what's your job? That's generally the terms that you hear. I honestly, I don't know if I know anybody that uses the term profession.

Talk to me a little bit more about actually what that is and how that is so connected to understanding yourself and like what it is to profess yourself through the world.

Well, let me give you some examples. I think I wrote this in the book. I know a trash collector who is a professional.

I know a trash collector who is ashamed of the fact that he's a trash collector. He never tells anybody what he does. Oh, I just work for the county. What do you do? I just work for the county.

Doesn't want to admit that he picks up trash the other, because that's not a profession. That's a job. That's work. The other guy is a professional trash collector. Now what in the world does that mean?

He goes by people's sidewalks and picks this up and puts it on the Internet and sells it and looks at that. He waves at people. He's enjoying what he's doing. And this very trash collector, just a couple of weeks ago picked up my trash and something fell out.

He got out of his truck, went onto my sidewalk, picked this up and put it in the street. He didn't have to do that, but for him this was a profession. This is a reflection of who I am. I wouldn't be doing my job.

So he evidently thought, if I don't pick up this piece of cardboard that didn't happen to go into the, into the bin. And I was so taken by that that when he came around on the other side of the block, I gave him $20. I said, Merry Christmas.

And he looked at me and said, why are you doing that? I said, you took care of me. So the guy's doing what he is good at doing and he just happened to get a tip out of the result of that.

That's not what he was looking for. Yeah, he was professing himself, I can't leave this scrap of paper on this guy's lawn.

He didn't want to leave it on the lawn. But what is the driver behind that? That is value based. That is just feeling.

It is feeling. But remember, feeling is not just emotion. Feeling is thought, feeling is action. Feeling is what I say.

But emotion here is the really driving factor as we normally think about it. But more, much more importantly, who am I inside? What is this spirit that I have inside? Or some people would say, do I have God inside?

An atheist would say, is the universe unfolding as it should? So this sense of who I am is in every human being. It just hasn't been enlightened, it hasn't been brought to the surface.

I can't tell you the number of people that I do what's called an intake evaluation. And at the end of that, I say, now what's important to you? And people say, what does that mean?

I mean, here's a guy that's 40 or 50 or 60 years old, and I say, what is important to you? He doesn't know how to answer the question, even though he might be bright. Even more, he might be a really good person, he might be religious.

He doesn't actually, because he hasn't actually asked that question of himself. What is your value system? And you find your value system. Your value system can adjust and change.

You can add to it, you can subtract from it, but you start with it. And really important in this matter of feelings is feelings are never wrong. Words are wrong, actions are wrong.

Emotions can be wrong in the sense that they don't adequately communicate what's going on. But feelings themselves are never wrong.

So if I can get a grasp of there's something inside of me, but I can't put words to it, or there's something inside of me, and these are approximate words, or there's something inside of me and this kind of action demonstrates this, then I'm professing myself, then I have started down the road of finding what my profession is so I can be in my profession. Right?

So you're saying it, correct me if I'm wrong, that it's not necessarily the nature of the Work. Because the example that you gave of the trash collectors, I mean, obviously that's, you know, a dirty job, a physical labor type of job.

It's not a job that is, I would say, generally looked at as a profession. Right. But it's the. It's not the nature of the work itself.

It's the nature of the person and what they want to what see in the world put back into the world.

Have we not encountered the cashier at a store who is just not happy with you compared to the cashier who is actually enjoying serving you?

Right.

It's maybe what you hear, oh, it's my pleasure. I hope you have a good day. Or it's maybe what you just feel. The difference there is somebody is working a job and somebody is working a profession.

Mm. So then you. I mean, you get into the benefits of finding this profession. Obviously, life satisfaction would be a big one.

Is that the biggest one that you see, or is there other reasons why.

Men should do it? I think it's life. It's. I think it's ultimately more than that. It is life satisfaction.

It is.

I'm satisfied with life. And secondarily and necessarily, it's. I'm serving humanity in some way now.

My trash collector friend is serving humanity in a very, very important way. Just as important as a neuroscientist is serving humanity and understanding how the brain works. That's, I think, the second element of it.

First, I serve myself because I am being who I am and I'm professing who I am and I'm doing, and it's enjoyable. And then secondly, how is this affecting other people? And those two things together create meaning. First, it's about me. Secondly, it's about you.

And thirdly, it's about us and the us. When I get to the us, that is meaningful. But I have to have a sense of me first, you second, so I can move forward to meaning.

That sounds a little bit about what you said.

When you talk about men going from good to great and being a force for good in the world like this would be a crucial element to that of finding a profession that is connected to some good nature, some good value, something life really changing that's inside of you that you want to see in the world.

Exactly. I talked to a neuroscientist. Not a neuroscientist, a bioscientist who was working on being able to control fusion.

I don't know what you know about physics, but if we could control fusion, our energy crisis would be over overnight because the amount of energy that we create with fusion, if it's controlled, is huge.

That's about all I know about fusion is that it would solve the energy crisis.

I talked to this guy who was working on fusion and he said, well, I'll be a failure. And he kind of smiled. And so what do you mean by that? He said, I'll work 40 or 50 years on this and I won't have it solved. What will happen then?

I said, well, somebody else will take what I learned and he'll learn something else. And maybe he will solve it or maybe his son will solve it.

At time after that, this guy was happy doing a job that would never be finished in his lifetime.

Right.

The meaningful part of this is he was making a contribution, which, by the way, is absolutely a huge contribution if and when we ever actually can control fusion. So struck me, it's like, this is not a failure whatsoever. This is an opportunity for you to do what you're doing. You're professing yourself.

And all day long he makes an inch progress and they have miles to go.

Right.

Well, it'll happen.

Yeah. That even goes a deeper level then, because you have to understand the impact that you are having. And it's not public.

Yes.

That's got to be a bit more of a challenge.

Yeah, That's a challenge too, because it's not about my getting approval.

Yeah.

It's not about other people liking me or not liking. Because people like me. I'm happy. People don't like me. I'm not happy. That's just natural. That's true with all of us human beings.

But if my goal is to serve people, it's not about doing what they want me to do. My goal is to do what I think I can do to serve this individual and this year of humanity.

And if I do that, people will like me and people won't like me. And I will feel happy when they like me and I will feel sad when they don't like me.

That asks a lot of men because women don't do really well with being sad and having people not like me.

Yeah. Especially not women.

Especially not women. And that gets us in a huge. A huge different category that we'll talk about another day.

Yeah, that's a different conversation. It's one that we're going to have a little bit further down the road.

Next up, we are going to dig into wine, which you've already mentioned is just a pseudonym for addictions. But Ron, thank you so much again for your time and your book. Balls, Men Finding Courage With Words, Work, Wine and Women is available now.

You can get it at Barnes and Noble. You can get it through Amazon, a couple of other retailers.

I will link the website in the show notes for the episode and we will talk to you again soon.

All right, man.

All right. Thanks for the conversation.

You bet.

We'll see you. Thank you for listening. I hope you found some value in this episode.

If you have, be sure to share the Akkeri podcast with a friend and subscribe wherever you get your podcast podcasts.

You can find the Akkeri on socials at TheAkkeri and on the web at TheAkkeri.com and you can find Ron Johnson through his website, Midlands psychological.com as well as on social media at Midlands Psychological.