"Men Are Like Donkeys": First Reset Program Recap
It’s not every day you see many months of hard work, ideas, collaboration and good ol’ fashioned knuckle grease come to fruition. On May 13-15, Gerry, Mike and I hosted our first Reset Retreat program in the hills of Rosebank, near Byron Bay.
Nine men came along to the 2 night retreat, from Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon – to take a step back from their busy, often stressful lives to take a breath, connect with other men, and reconnect to what is most valuable to them. The conversation on the first evening was of the trepidation of coming to a retreat like this. One man spoke of the mix of feelings while driving up the hill towards the centre, thinking “What am I doing here? Is it weird that I’m taking a weekend away to take care of myself? Do real men do this?” Another man said “I hardly told anyone that I was coming to this retreat. I don’t know why.”
Another man phrased it like this.
“Men are like donkeys,” he said. “We carry everyone’s burden. We’re everything to everyone. And we keep putting another thing on our backs, and another, and another. And we just have to keep on trudging along.”
I think they really nailed it here. And that’s what the weekend was really about – just allowing these men to place those loads down for a moment, to connect with others going through similar challenges, and reconnect with those parts of life and ourselves that give us inspiration and motivation that may have lain dormant for a while (perhaps years).
A key part of the weekend was the fireside men’s circles. This is actually how Mike, Gerry and I got to know each other – through a shared experience of how deeply valuable these fireside shares were to our lives at the time. While we won’t divulge the details of these men’s circles, they’re a rare opportunity to hear and be heard by other men, something that has been lost and a void I think we all feel to some extent.
Psychology masterclasses offered opportunities to learn strategies to manage challenging situations and consider one’s life from different perspectives, while the ice baths and Turkish steam room immersion allowed a reset of the nervous system.
We wanted to share a few of the men’s experiences in these videos here, and wanted to say just how grateful we are to these men for being so engaged in the weekend – for bringing their whole selves to the retreat, along with a healthy dose of vulnerability.
With each of these Reset Programs, we hope to walk up against this social norm that men don’t take care of themselves.