Episode description
Compassion isn’t weakness.
It doesn’t mean making excuses for bad behavior, avoiding hard conversations, or allowing people to walk all over you. Real compassion takes strength.
In this episode of the Northman Coaching Podcast, Gary Hults breaks down what compassion actually looks like in the life of a man: listening before judging, understanding without necessarily agreeing, telling the truth when it needs to be heard, and setting boundaries without losing your humanity.
We’ll talk about compassion in relationships, friendships, coaching, brotherhood, and even the compassion we often forget to give ourselves.
Because sometimes the strongest thing you can say is, “I understand what you’re going through—and this still isn’t acceptable.”
Compassion and accountability can exist at the same time.
You don’t need to become softer.
You need to become strong enough to listen, strong enough to forgive, strong enough to set boundaries, and strong enough to tell the truth.
#Compassion #MasculineStrength #MensMentalHealth #ChristianMen #NorthmanCoaching
Episode Transcript:
Gary (00:00.632)
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Wherever you’re listening from, welcome back to the North Man Coaching Podcast. I’m your host, Gary Hults Today we are talking about the value of compassion. And I’ll be honest with you, when you hear the word compassion, it probably doesn’t sound like a particularly masculine word. Strength sounds masculine. Courage sounds masculine. Discipline sounds masculine. Even leadership sounds masculine. But compassion?
Some guys hear compassion and immediately think soft. They think compassion means feeling sorry for everybody, letting people off the hook, making excuses for shitty behavior, being the guy everybody dumps their problems on, or being so understanding that if you completely forget to have standards, that is not compassion. That is lack of boundaries. Real compassion requires strength because compassion is the ability to look at another human being and say, I may not understand everything you’re going through.
I may not agree with you. I may not agree with everything you’ve done, but I’m willing to see the human being standing in front of me. And that’s the big difference between understanding someone’s behavior and excusing someone’s behavior. That’s what I want to talk about today. Because I think we need more compassion, especially between men.
So what is compassion? Let’s start with what compassion actually means. Compassion is not pity. Pity looks down at somebody. Compassion gets behets beside them. There is a huge difference. Pity says things like, man, your life sucks. While compassion says, that has to be fucking hard. What do you need? Sometimes the answer is health. Sometimes it’s advice. Sometimes it’s accountability.
And sometimes the answer is nothing. Sometimes they just need you to shut the fuck up and listen. And that’s difficult for men because we are fixers. Someone tells us about a problem, and immediately our brain starts going, okay, here’s what you need to do. Step one, step two, step three, and problem solved. Next, but human beings don’t always need to be fixed. Sometimes they need to be heard. That’s what I want you to think about.
Gary (02:18.359)
Think about the last time somebody actually listened to you, not waiting for the opportunity to talk, not checking their phone, not thinking about what they’re going to say next. They actually listened. There’s something powerful about that because listening tells another person, you matter enough to me to stop what I’m doing and hear you. That, my friend, is compassion.
Compassion does not mean agreement. Here’s another mistake that we make as men. We think understanding someone means agreeing with them, and it does not mean that at all. I can understand why somebody made a decision and still believe that it was the wrong decision. I can understand someone’s anger without accepting disrespect. I can understand someone’s childhood without allowing them to use it as an excuse for how they treat people today.
I can understand someone’s fear about allowing their fear to control my life. That is compassion with boundaries, and we desperately need both. Because compassion without boundaries becomes enabling, and boundaries without compassion can become cruelty. The goal is to have both. I understand you. And this still isn’t acceptable. Those two statements can exist at the same time. So let’s talk about Jesus and compassion. Because if you’re a Christian man,
We don’t have to look very far for an example. In Colisians 3, I believe it’s verse 12, it says, Therefore, God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Think about that word. Clothe yourself with compassion. Meaning this is something we’re supposed to intentionally put on. And when you look at Jesus, compassion was not weakness. Jesus had tremendous compassion for people: the sick, the poor, the rejected, the grieving.
Even the sinner, the person everybody else had already written off. But Jesus also told people the truth. That’s the part that people sometimes leave out. Jesus did not say, I love you, therefore everything you’re doing is fine. No. There was love and truth, compassion and accountability, grace and responsibility. That’s something that we need to understand as men. Because sometimes the compassionate thing isn’t telling someone what they want to hear.
Gary (04:42.059)
Sometimes the compassionate thing is telling them what nobody else has the balls to tell them. Sometimes compassion sounds like the fucking truth. I’ve experienced this through coaching many of times. A man will come to me and tell me everything that’s going wrong: his marriage, his relationship, his career, his finances, his confidence. And I listen, I understand, and I acknowledge what is going on, what’s going on what’s going on in his life and how difficult it is. But eventually, I have to ask.
What are you doing about it? That’s compassion too. Because if I sit there and tell a man, you’re right, everybody screwed you, nothing is your responsibility, then I’m not helping him. I’m helping him remain stuck. And that’s not coaching. That, my friend, is enabling. Sometimes I care about somebody enough to make them uncomfortable. Sometimes compassion says, I understand why you became this way. And then accountability says, but you do not have to stay this way. That’s powerful. Your past.
Can explain you. It doesn’t have to define you. There’s another attitude I hear from them. Nobody helped me. I had to figure everything out myself. Nobody gave a shit when I was struggling. Okay. And maybe that’s true. But here’s my question. Why would you want someone else to experience the same thing? Think about that. Some men wear suffering like a fucking badge. I went through this, so you should too. Why? If I fell into a hole and eventually figured out.
How to climb out. And then I see you walking toward the same fucking hole. Should I just stand there? Good luck, brother. Bill’s character. No. I might say, hey, there’s a hole there. That doesn’t make you weak, it makes you compassionate. Your suffering should teach you how to recognize suffering in other people, not make you indifferent to it. Now, next I want to talk about my good friend Joel Rosario.
And I want to talk about him because he has been a guest on my podcast. And if you’ve heard any of our conversations, you know that Joel has a way of bringing experiences into what we are talking about right now. He’s also an author. Joel wrote May December End, The Ballad of Joey Flowers. And one of the reasons I want to mention Joel today is because when you hear somebody’s story, whether it’s through a book or sitting across from them or listening to them on a podcast, it can change the way you see them.
Gary (07:07.201)
Because now you’re not just seeing the person standing in front of you. You’re seeing some of the road that they traveled to get there. That is where compassion begins. Curiosity before judgment. Maybe instead of what’s wrong with this guy, we ask, what happened to this guy? And then there’s another question. What has he done with what happened to him? Because again, compassion does not eliminate accountability. But knowing somebody’s story can change the way you understand them.
And Joel’s willingness to put his experiences into words and share them gives other people an opportunity to recognize parts of themselves. And that is one of the beautiful things about storytelling. Somebody tells their story, and another person thinks, shit, I thought I was the only one. You’re not. Anyway, his book is available on Amazon, Amazon Kindle, and at a bookstore in Kenosha, Wisconsin, called Studio Moonfall. Since we talked about Joel, let’s talk about him and his wife.
Club. They have a podcast together. And I think there’s something important about that too. Two people sitting together, having conversations, sharing perspectives, sharing life. Because compassion becomes especially important inside of relationships. It’s easy to have compassion for a stranger. You don’t have years of history with them. You don’t have old arguments. You don’t have or you don’t know any of their annoying habits, and we all have them. You haven’t heard the same story 400 fucking times.
Relationships test compassion differently. Can you look at your wife, your husband, your girlfriend, or your boyfriend and remember this person is having a human experience separate from mine? That’s harder than it sounds, because we tend to interpret everything through ourselves. Why did she say this to me? Why did he do that to me? Why doesn’t she understand me? What about what I need? Sometimes compassion requires getting out of your own head long enough to wonder.
What is happening inside of theirs. And that’s one reason conversations between a husband and a wife can be so valuable. You’re hearing two experiences of life, two perspectives, two people who don’t necessarily see everything exactly the same way. And they shouldn’t. Compassion isn’t requiring someone to experience life exactly the way that you do. It’s respecting the fact that they don’t. So check out Joel’s book, May December End, and check out the podcast he does with Globe. It’s called Sessions and Lessons.
Gary (09:34.39)
And every new episode drops on Sunday and Wednesday. Not because I’m telling you that you have to agree with me, but listen, because hearing people’s story, it really helps you understand compassion. So now let’s talk about compassion relationships. Let’s stay here for a minute because relationships are probably where compassion gets tested the most. Imagine your partner comes home and she’s upset. You think
The issue is stupid. Maybe your perspective is stupid. But here’s a mistake that you say. Why are you making such a big deal out of this? And I’ve done that so many times. Conversations over. That’s the end. Your emotional experience doesn’t make sense to me, therefore, it is invalid. Compassion would sound a lot different. Help me understand why this is affecting you so much. Notice something. You didn’t agree, you didn’t surrender your opinion.
You didn’t apologize for something that you didn’t do. You became curious. That, my friend, is emotional maturity. And then we need to get a lot better at that. Not because women need us to become therapists, but because if you claim to love somebody, you should probably give a shit about what’s happening inside of them. So compassion doesn’t mean being a doormat either. Now somebody out there listening is probably thinking, Gary, that sounds great until somebody takes advantage of you. Absolutely.
Which is why compassion requires boundaries. You can forgive somebody and never allow them back into your life again. You can understand why somebody behaves the way they do and still decide you don’t want to be around them. You can love somebody and say no. You can care about somebody and still walk away. You can wish somebody healing without volunteering to be the person they keep hurting. That, my friend, is important because some people confuse being compassionate with being endlessly available.
They’re not the same. You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep somebody else warm. Sometimes the compassion is the compassionate thing to do for both people is to set a boundary. Because when you constantly protect somebody from the consequences of their actions, they never have a reason to change. Now, let’s talk about compassion for yourself. Let’s turn this around because some of you are incredibly compassionate toward everyone, except yourself. You’ll forgive.
Gary (12:03.773)
Everybody else. You will understand everybody else’s mistakes. You’ll tell another man, brother, you fucked up. Learn from it. Keep moving. But when you screw up, you’re a failure. You’re an idiot. You should have known better. And I had this conversation with a gentleman the other night, but he still replayed it in his head. And five years later, that’s not accountability, that’s punishment. And there’s a difference. Self-compassion isn’t standing in front of the mirror saying, Everything I do is wonderful. That’s bullshit. Self-compassion is saying I fucked up.
Then, what can I learn? What can I repair? What do I need to change? Give yourself some grace. And how do I make sure I don’t become this mistake? You are allowed to learn. You are allowed to grow. You are allowed to become a different man than the man who made that decision. Otherwise, what’s the point of doing the work? We don’t know what people are carrying. There is another piece of compassion that I think we’ve lost.
We judge people incredibly quickly. The guy who cuts you off, the cashier who’s rude, the coworker who’s quiet, the friend who hasn’t called, the person who doesn’t seem like theirself. We immediately create a story. He’s an asshole. She’s miserable. He doesn’t care. And maybe, maybe that’s the truth. Or maybe something happened. Maybe his marriage is falling apart. Maybe she just got some terrible news. Maybe he’s worried about his kid.
Or maybe somebody he loves is dying. Maybe he’s barely holding his shit together. And you don’t know. And neither do I. That doesn’t mean bad behavior suddenly becomes acceptable. It means maybe we don’t need to assume the worst about everybody. Sometimes grace is simply leaving the room for possibility that there’s something you don’t know. Men need compassion from other men. And men, we need this from each other.
We talk consistently about brotherhood and accountability, about being strong, about pushing each other. Good, because we need all of it. But if the only time you hear your voice is when they’re busting your balls, something is missing. Sometimes your buddy needs, how are you doing? And when he says, I’m good. Ask again. No, seriously, how are you doing? And then shut the fuck up to listen long enough to hear the answer. If you need that in your life, check out the North Man Brotherhood on the school platform.
Gary (14:30.285)
We meet four times a week. If you’re interested, go to OfmanCoaching.com and click join the brotherhood. Remember, guys, you don’t need a psychology degree to give perfect advice. Sometimes you need to be the guy who notices that’s compassion. That is compassion, my friend. So the challenge. My challenge for you this week, find one opportunity to practice compassion intentionally. Maybe it’s with your wife, your girlfriend, or your kids, your father, your mother, your friend, your coworker, whoever.
Maybe it’s somebody that you’re angry with. Maybe it’s yourself. And before you respond, get curious. Ask one more question. Listen for another minute. Consider there might be something happening that you do not know about. And if accountability is necessary, then fucking give it. But give it because you want the person to become better. Not because you want to prove that you are right. There’s a huge fucking difference. Anyway, in closing, compassion isn’t weakness.
Weak men can be cruel. Weak men can also be people pleasers. Neither requires much courage. But looking another human being in the eye and saying, I see you, I hear you, I care about what happens to you. And because I care about you, I’m also willing to tell you the truth. That, my friend, is strength. Jesus demonstrated it, great leaders demonstrated, good fathers demonstrated, good husbands and good friends and good men all demonstrated.
So don’t become softer, become stronger. Strong enough to listen, strong enough to forgive, and strong enough to establish boundaries. Strong enough to tell the truth and strong enough to admit we were wrong. And strong enough to show compassion in a world that is becoming increasingly comfortable judging people it does not understand. You have no idea what somebody had to walk through to become the person standing in front of you today. Maybe before you judge their story.
Listen to it. I’m Gary with Northman Coaching. Check out our daily devotional tomorrow morning and every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday with my good friend AJ. And check out the seven deadly sins every Tuesday and Thursday morning. That is with moi. Anyway, thank you guys for listening. Check out our website, NorthmanCoing.com. And as always, I hope to see you guys next time.
