The Five Stages of Initiation to Build a Purposeful Life as a Man

The Five Stages of Initiation to Build a Purposeful Life as a Man

Stage One: Purging the Past

Imagine you have a house that needs renovation. What is the first thing you would do when tackling that project? Well, you would likely remove all the old furniture, wall hangings, window coverings, and any other bits and bobs from the room. You can’t start tearing down walls and ripping up floors with a bunch of stuff in the way. You purge it out. 

Your spiritual journey is no different. 

When starting down the path towards transformation, it always begins with confronting the past. Old lovers emerge from the woodwork, family members or friends you haven’t spoken to in years, maybe you run into an old co-worker at the grocery store. This is by design. Your new life cannot begin until you have acknowledged and healed the past. Recognizing patterns of emotional suppression is critical to releasing the deep-seated need for control so that you can embrace vulnerability instead. 

That old girlfriend you’ve kept tabs on for years? Let her go. That grudge you’ve been holding onto? Let it go. My guy, you will never realize your full potential until you liberate yourself from the quicksand of your past. Anything left unresolved, face it boldly. Once you’ve cleared the house of the past, you can move on to the next stage of reconstruction. 

Stage Two: Reconstructing the Self

You’ve cleared out all the old furniture and demolished the house down to the bare bones. Your t-shirt is soaked through with sweat, and you're covered head to toe in drywall dust like a powdered donut. But, as you stand in the center of that hollowed-out house, you know it was a job well done. Mission accomplished. 

Sort of. 

You can’t live in a house that’s been torn down to the studs. When you wake up the next day and stand in the center of the frame, you start to feel really, really, exposed. Here’s the thing: this is your house. There is no hotel or friend you can crash with while completing this project. There is no leaving your house, no matter the condition. At this stage, reality starts to settle in. And in your enthusiasm to purge, you made yourself vulnerable to the elements. 

It’s common to want to cut yourself off at this point. You feel sensitive, raw. Like falling asleep on the beach with no sunscreen on and waking up hours later red as a lobster. You don’t want to be touched. You don’t even want to be seen. All you want is to bathe yourself in aloe and be left alone. But unfortunately, you've got a house to build. 

This is where many men get stuck, because you have to build through vulnerability. It’s uncomfortable, but necessary. You cultivate character by integrating positive traits such as assertiveness, decisiveness, empathy, and compassion, all while feeling incredibly stupid. That will fade, though, and eventually you will become more self-confident as you develop the finishing skills to make your house beautiful and bring it up to code. This is your chance to upgrade your entire identity. 

Remember, you don’t have to build alone. You might find it helpful at this stage to hire an expert or two, or ask a friend with handyman skills to lend the assist. A renovation project of this scale goes a lot faster with a crew. 

Stage Three: Balancing the Scales

Bro, your house is looking so nice! It’s got walls and everything. You’ve installed some nice cabinets in the kitchen and laid some stunning wood floors throughout. Your finishing skills are on point. When everything was torn apart, you even upgraded the plumbing and electrical and got one of those smart thermostats. But now that the structure of your house has been upgraded, you can’t just bring back all that old furniture. It doesn’t fit. 

Not only that, after all this work you’ve put in, you’re starting to realize that you don’t want to sit in your house alone. You want to share the new sturdy house you built. Show it off. Invite some people in. Maybe one special person in particular. 

Welcome to stage three. This is where you open the metaphorical door to the feminine. You caught her attention with your lovely landscaping and curb appeal, and now you have to pass inspection–and she is a damn tough inspector. She will notice if your crown molding doesn’t line up perfectly in the corners or if your paint job is sloppy. She will test every light switch and open every cupboard door. You will have to stand there patiently as she pokes around every single room. And I mean every. Single. Room. 

You will be nervous as hell and shaking like a leaf, but once she’s done, she may turn to you and smile her approval. And that will be the best damn moment of your entire life. She has deemed your house safe and worthy of what comes next. Because once you have earned her approval, she will fill your house with love, beauty, and joy. You will pick out furniture together and make your house a home, but only if you are capable of setting your pride aside to respect, honor, and trust her gentle guidance and expertise. To allow her to play and flourish within the sturdy walls you worked so hard to build. 

Stage Four: Aligning with your Purpose

The journey is not over yet, my friend. 

Congratulations! You have reached stage four of this journey, and to be honest, not many people make it this far. You have mastered the first three stages by demolishing, rebuilding, and maintaining your home. As any good homeowner knows, regular maintenance is critical. But, you know that. You take great pride and care in your home. You’ve set up security cameras and treat the lawn regularly. You listen to the wisdom of your feminine when she tells you that something needs to be addressed, and you fix it right away. You’ve never been happier. 

So why is there a small nagging feeling in the back of your mind that something is missing? 

More and more, you find yourself gazing out the window to the world beyond your comfortable house. You start to question how happy you really are with it, this life. Should you burn it down and start over by building a bigger, grander house on top of the ashes? Or should you move to another neighborhood altogether? Perhaps you’ve outgrown its walls. 

Our souls crave expansion. This hunger can often be sated for a while by new experiences such as travel, a new hobby, or an expensive purchase. What you will often find is that this only soothes for a short while, and more and more you’ll find yourself thrill-seeking to fill the ever-deepening ache within. What your soul is truly craving is purpose. 

Now that your own house is in order, it’s time to look outside yourself and to the world beyond. If you’ve successfully made it to this stage and mastered all the previous stages, there should be no need to burn your house down. Instead, you’re being called to share the talents you’ve acquired so far on your journey to help others. Remember those handymen friends who helped you construct your house? Or the experts who rewired your electrical? That’s you now. 

This is the part of the journey when you should start asking yourself, How may I serve? 

Stage Five: Taking the Lead

You have come an awful long way, my friend. Not only have you stripped your house to the bare bones, cleared out all the old broken furniture, rebuilt sturdy walls and installed new floors, passed inspection, brought in fresh new furniture in collaboration with your partner, kept up on all the maintenance, but you have also now helped many others to do the same. So what could possibly be left to do? 

The final stage of transformation is true leadership. Most people are under the impression that being a leader means delegating tasks and barking orders. That’s a tyrant, not a leader. A true leader goes first. 

You’ve been diligent in your house maintenance over the years, but just like real houses, you might notice one day that things are starting to look a bit outdated. Or perhaps you notice a minor inconvenience, such as the garden hose always getting tangled up or the fact that every time it rains, a pond appears in that one low spot in your backyard. So, you ask yourself, “How can I make this better?” 

After some research, you buy a new garden hose that self-winds. It’s perfect. You’re so happy with it that you tell your neighbor, who also orders the same garden hose. He then tells his neighbor, and on and on it goes until the whole neighborhood has done away with their outdated garden hoses. All because you did a little research and took the extra step to test out something new. It could have gone badly. The garden hose could not have worked at all, and it was a huge waste of time, but you tried anyway, even though none of your other neighbors had even heard of such a thing as a self-winding garden hose. You went first. 

Garden hoses aside, this same concept can be applied to all aspects of your personal development. At this stage, you go beyond good to strive towards great. This is the optimization stage where you learn to self-lead. You no longer look to see what your neighbor is doing, but instead take initiative to perfect every aspect of your life. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Because you understand that complacency leads to disrepair. Remember that dilapidated house you started with? You don’t want to return to that. So you keep striving. Keep learning. Keep growing. 

Perfection is a moving goal post. There is an acceptance that occurs along the way that you will never reach it. You are human after all. However, it’s a worthy goal to strive towards. How can I be the best partner, father, friend, son, mentor, coach, community leader that I can possibly be? It’s not that you’ll never make mistakes or have a misstep here and there. That’s not the point. The point is that you have learned to love growth. You live for the challenge of becoming the best version of yourself and mastering both the internal and external world. You now understand that to make a positive impact in the world is the ultimate goal of your soul.