Who Are You Becoming | Self-Coaching with Ebony McNeil

Angie Good morning, everyone, and welcome to No More Mondays, the podcast where we believe that humans still matter, mediocrity is expensive, and ownership will change everything. As always, I am your host, Angie Callen, and today I am joined by the one and only Ebony McNeil. He is the founder and executive director of The Forge, which focuses on helping men build stronger lives through character, connection, leadership, and personal growth. And what I love about Ebony’s work, and just him as a person, is that he isn’t just asking men to become more successful in that classic societal sense, he’s asking them to rethink who they are becoming, to be intentional about that. Through Forge, he creates spaces where men, including a lot of younger men navigating pretty challenging circumstances, can have honest conversations about identity, responsibility, emotional well-being, leadership, and what strength actually looks like. And that’s where a really important distinction comes in, if you ask me. It isn’t that we get to choose our circumstances, the ones that sometimes shape us, but at some point we do get to have agency to decide what parts of that conditioning we keep, challenge, or change, and ultimately who we get to become in spite of them. So Ebony and I are going to dig into character, choice, accountability, why ownership actually does change everything, and why you don’t have to go it alone. Ebony, welcome to No More Mondays.

Ebony Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Angie I am so excited about this. I always like to give our listeners a little backstory on where some of my guests come from, especially those from communities that longtime listeners will recognize. I know Ebony through the amazing network of Justin Schenck and the Growth Now movement, so he and I have spent time in real life together talking about these kinds of things, and I appreciate so much the very important but not always easy work you’re doing to help especially young men be more intentional about their future and know they have choice beyond their circumstance. So I want to start with something I think we often underestimate, and that is that before we decide who we consciously want to be, we start getting messages about who we’re supposed to be, from family, friends, community, schools, workplace, culture, society, everywhere. And I’m sure you see this pretty clearly with the men who come into the Forge. So when somebody comes into the Forge, what are some of those messages he may have already absorbed about who he thinks he’s supposed to be that are impacting his development?

Ebony Some of the messages permeating through the men in my community, and community at large, are about what it means to be a man, and the surface level of certain things that are very important. Provision is important, protection is important, but society has made it become very surface level. Provision has to be a certain dollar amount, versus, are you still taking care of your family? Protection strictly becomes the physical portion, versus understanding how you’re protecting others. A big part of what’s making it a struggle right now is that social media is feeding a negative twist on all the classic positive attributes of manhood. It’s taken them, twisted them, and is feeding them in a negative fashion. It’s all about how you’re built, how much money you have, how many women you can sleep with, what kind of car you drive, how much is in your bank account. And even though some of those can lead to success and helping your family, the way it’s portrayed is not what manhood actually is. Manhood doesn’t have to do with how many women you sleep with, or your bank account, or whether you can fight. Yes, you should be able to protect yourself and your family, but being violent isn’t what makes you a man, and unfortunately social media feeds that. So when men come into the room, especially young men, because their algorithm’s a little different, they’re questioning themselves, because they’re measuring themselves against standards that aren’t even realistic. And sometimes they’re getting that information from those closest to them, too, married men getting it from their wives, young men getting it from friends or older family who have the same twisted image. So when men come into the room, they struggle a lot with just trying to figure out who they are, because most of us naturally don’t want to be what society is feeding us, but we think there’s no other way and no other measuring stick.

Angie This is interesting, and it recalls a past conversation here on No More Mondays. I’m going to throw out a name, Ebony, that you’re going to know, DJ Labouri was on the show, I want to say around two years ago, and we’re going to pull up that archive and link it in the show notes, because that conversation has a very close connection to what we’re talking about, this idea of the competition syndrome that creates a misguided expectation of what manhood looks like. And here’s what I want your feedback on, because I also believe there’s this irony or disconnect, because we healthily know what masculinity and success look like if you can separate the social-media commentary from it. It feels like we’ve moved into a new era of what masculinity can be, because a lot of that social-media stuff is based on past stigma, yet that’s still so much of the feed, it’s what we’re seeing. So talk to me about that disconnect, Instagram versus reality, almost quite literally.

Ebony I have four sons, so I know what they’re paying attention to.

Angie Credible interviewer here, guys.

Ebony Yeah, I’ve got four sons, and I’ve coached youth sports for over 15 years, so I’m readily interacting with young men as they’re making decisions, and I hear how they talk to their friends. I’m 51, and there’s stuff that pops up in my algorithm that makes me scratch my head. What Instagram shows as what a man is, is very catered to making men think a certain way. First off, we’ve got to realize we’re only seeing highlight reels. You’re seeing the guy take a picture in front of a nice car, he has this beautiful woman, and there are enough people who don’t realize he may not even know that woman, that could be staged, that may not even be his car. And why does that make him more valuable than the man who works 40 hours a week, puts his nose to the grind, coaches multiple sports, loves his wife, gives every dollar he has to make sure his family doesn’t want for anything? Why is the man with all the flash more valuable than the man who’s actually helping create a better world? That’s the problem, this has been fed as value, as what you should strive to be, but 98% of the world isn’t that. There are so many amazing men the kids should strive to be, and social media doesn’t feed that.

Angie Because the flash sells.

Ebony Correct. The flash is what sells, what gets clicks, what gets likes. But the quote-unquote man who’s doing the right thing, working hard, is who we should actually idolize, not just because he has a certain job, but the man trying to live his life the right way and positively influence those around him, he doesn’t get the attention. So when we started our organization, it’s based off three pillars, and the number one pillar is positive imagery, because the type of men we’re trying to grow and send back into the community need to be seen. That imagery needs to be more popularized, so people realize, I don’t have to be one of these guys in the manosphere, I can be this gentleman who has a great life but did it the right way, and values his woman versus multiple women, and takes good care of his money, even if he doesn’t make a million dollars. The world needs to see that, because it’s way more realistic, and those are the men who are going to positively influence society.

Angie There’s a macro level to this conversation that, if you’re not paying attention, you could miss, which is the larger human question, what are we modeling ourselves after? And I love this concept of positive, realistic imagery, and it’s just as much external influence as it is your internal voice and identity, because the voice we talk to ourselves with is the strongest one, and usually the meanest one. And where this converges with those macro societal influences, let’s dog on social media, because my husband Jim has said for years it will be the downfall of society, and sometimes he could be right, but we live in a country where professional athletes are paid more than the people educating future doctors. Our priorities are out of whack, and then as a normal human you consume content that reinforces that, and all of a sudden the positive imagery externally is so unrealistic that we’ve adopted some unhealthy internal imagery. So we take on all of this and form a belief system that oftentimes doesn’t serve us. I’m curious where you see that identity piece and the internalization of it playing out.

Ebony Identity is a big thing. With my LLC, I try to help coach men on a more personal level to develop their own identity, because identity isn’t just about what you can do or how you can perform, it’s about who you are internally, your own ethics, morals, and values. The problem is, there’s so much hitting us that sometimes we get confused about what those are, and we start making decisions outside of our actual true identity. Many people don’t understand how important their identity is, and that what creates their identity doesn’t have to be the same thing that creates another person’s. When you look at success stories, what makes them exciting is either the guy who fought from nothing, or the guy who was gifted something and had a silver spoon. The problem is, the big percentage in the middle has been made to feel their story isn’t exciting. The two-parent home with two educated parents who could take care of you is almost diminished as not exciting enough, and everybody wants this tough story, these life-changing huge experiences. They don’t realize their character and identity is developing over the smaller things throughout their life. When I was doing therapy, I remember a gentleman who was a fitness nut, and I realized he was like that because in seventh or eighth grade, somebody said he was out of shape, and that became his identity, I’ll never be that again. We can do the same with trauma, because trauma is anything that gives you a negative view of the future, but we can also do it with the positives, what makes you special? I don’t think enough of us focus on that. We focus on what upset us, the bad things that happened, and that becomes our identity, when there are so many people who see things in a special way but have been told it’s not special. If you sit in a room of 50 people, the perspectives are all different based on what we’ve experienced, and our identity is created off that, but we have to live in a place where we’re secure in it. I have a clip from my podcast where I said, you’re your own special sauce. No matter what happens, nobody can do exactly what you do, because nobody has the exact story you have.

Angie I just got so excited, because that was the clip of all clips right there. It’s almost like normal equals boring, and if you don’t fall into one of the cinematic tropes, the phoenix rising or the hero’s journey, your story is worthless. And this applies whether you’re a man or a woman. I see middle-aged women really struggle with this too, because of the expectations we were raised with by our loving baby-boomer parents, where performance and perfectionism were unintentionally interwoven into the expectations on us, and a lot of women get to middle age and realize they’ve been keeping up appearances and living up to others’ expectations instead of figuring out their own. So it’s almost like we get disconnected from our character, and this is where I really want to go, because you brought up a word that comes up so repeatedly in our work. We treat character as if it’s fixed, oh, this is just who I am, but I’m not convinced that’s true, because we can condition our own character through our decisions, our responses, what we tolerate and don’t, the belief systems we keep and the ones we choose to surrender. So what have you learned about that relationship we have with our character, and how we can be more discerning of it?

Ebony I think it takes a lot of internal reflection, even reflecting on your past, because what people don’t grasp is that your identity and your character will actually make the decisions for you. If they’re not, that means you’re getting too influenced. If I know who I am and I’ve accepted and groomed that, saying no to things becomes easy, because I know that doesn’t identify with who I am. So the first step of discernment is understanding that foundation, who am I, what really makes me happy, what really bothers me, and even, who do I want to be, and understanding the path to get there, and making decisions based off that path. Once your identity is established and you’re secure in it, noes become easy. Yeses are harder to find, because there are so many things coming at you that are not in line with who you are and where you’re going. So discernment is big, because I have to discern sometimes in a split second, would I, or the person I want to be, do these things? You’re constantly molding and shaving off things and creating this person, and it will always be special to you. There may be a lot of people who have the same ideas, but everybody won’t have everything exactly like you.

Angie And here’s a newsflash, it’s okay that it’s different from your best friend, your spouse, your parents, your upbringing. I think we’ve fallen into a very small tolerance of what we think we should believe, largely from those external influences. And to me, this comes down to something we talk a lot about here on No More Mondays, your values, and knowing what at your core you value, so that your decision-making, your identity, and your character all align to it. Now I want to give you a little bit of a challenge question, taking advantage of the fact that the therapist is in. What happens when somebody knows what they want, or who they want to be, but they keep behaving like the old version? And second, what do they do to make it stickier?

Ebony I’m a big believer that you have to hate something to make the change. They know who they want to be, and I’ll use a surface-level example, fit. They know they want to be in a certain shape, but they love donuts. You won’t change until you hate what those donuts are doing to you.

Angie You have to hate what they do to you.

Ebony Yes, you can love the donut, but you have to hate the outcome of the donut, and people don’t hate it enough. I don’t want it to sound negative, but here’s a way to look at it, if I think I can be the best version of myself and still do this action over here, I’m going to do that. Without getting too spiritual, if in my head I can be a follower of God and still do certain sins, I’m going to do those, versus understanding that I want to be this person, so I have to cut off these actions. Part of knowing who you are isn’t just knowing what you need to do, it’s knowing what you can’t do, or what you need to stop. When I was doing therapy, I had a lot of people who kept saying, I want to add this in, I want to add that in, but they weren’t stopping anything, because in their mind they could go to the next level and still hold on to these bad habits, until you can’t. So if this is my true identity, I’ve got to stop this. It comes down to realizing that if I want to be this, I have to hate that doing that stops me from getting here, and that’s when you’ll make the actual change.

Angie That’s good, because it’s the reaction to the thing, versus the thing itself, that’s the important crux. I could identify things where I don’t go quite far enough to stop doing what doesn’t serve the character and identity I want. So here’s a slightly loaded follow-up, do you think we’ve gotten too comfortable with the just-that’s-who-I-am as an excuse not to make those changes?

Ebony Yes, I do. We’ve been allowed to say that, and one thing that bugs me is when people use the word boundaries almost as an excuse to do what they want to do. When someone tries to help them grow or asks them to matriculate past where they are, it’s easier to say, that’s just me. No, that’s just the old version of you, the easy version. And usually a person who wants to see you get better sees something in you that you may not have seen yet, or you’re holding on to the past because it was easier. If cussing you out makes me feel better, even though I know it’s the wrong thing, and I realize after that I shouldn’t have said it, me saying that’s just me is a cop-out. What you actually have in front of you is someone who doesn’t need to be disrespected and talked to that way, so as a person who’s growing, you have to say, I should probably stop talking that way, and develop the habit of processing what you’re going to say before you say it. Now, you can say, this is who I want to be, and that doesn’t align, that’s a whole different thing than that’s just me, because you’ve done the work, you’ve made the decisions, you’ve reflected and realized I don’t want to do this. But when somebody says, that’s just me, you’ve got to deal with it, that’s a cop-out, a pass to conduct yourself in a way that’s not the best version of you.

Angie And you just brought up something I wanted to talk about, bringing others in who push you out of those boundaries. This concept of the Forge is brotherhood, and whether you’re male, female, identify male, female, or otherwise, let’s take brotherhood and say community, because when we talk about taking ownership, personal responsibility, this self-coaching idea, it can sound like, figure yourself out, fix it, you’ll be fine. But that isn’t how humans work, and taking responsibility for yourself is not the same as doing everything by yourself, if you’re willing to let people in who push those comfort zones and don’t accept the cop-out boundaries you set. So talk to me about that line between taking responsibility for your own growth and recognizing when you need others to come in and support it, and allowing them to.

Ebony That’s huge, and I’m going to answer it backwards. Understanding that you need that help, those accountability partners, is again you understanding your identity. I know I’m weak in these areas, so I need somebody who’s going to hold me accountable in them. That’s where mentors and good friends come in, who can say, look, man, you’re not doing this, and I can say, I know I’m not good at that, can you remind me? It’s not because I’m putting the weight on you, but I know that’s a place I struggle. So part of getting your identity, you can’t really have an accountability partner until they know what to hold you accountable to, because we can hide it. Anybody in leadership knows the leader of the team is usually good at a bunch of things but not great, so they build people around them who are great, and you have to do the same with yourself, build your own team around your weaknesses. One of the weirdest things, but also one of the biggest compliments, I ran into a gentleman and he said, you know what, I’ve been staying away from you, and I said, why, I try to talk to everybody. He said, I was coming to the Forge every month, but I stayed away from you because I didn’t want to tell you when I was struggling. I said, man, I want to be here for you, and he said, it’s not that, I know you’re there for me, but I realized you don’t stand for that, you would have held me accountable, and I wasn’t ready for that yet. It’s a compliment when someone knows you’re the person who will hold them accountable, but sometimes that identity, he hasn’t realized how much help he needs, he’d rather stay in the old version of himself than do the hard thing, which is talk to somebody who can pull him to the new version. And the last thing, this is exactly why we started the Forge, and made quality fellowship our second pillar, because that’s not normal for men. We’re fed from the time we’re young, figure it out, man up. I have four sons, so trust me, I’ve said toughen up a bunch of times, especially coaching football, but that’s the physical portion, the mental portion is different. Men have been taught that performance is most important, that’s how we’re judged, and we put friendship and accountability so far on the back burner that it almost never happens. Women talk way more consistently than men do, you make dates, you do all these things, men don’t cultivate our relationships as well. So every month we make sure these men are coming to the room, meeting new men, meeting men who are on the path they want to go to. My wife and I have a family calendar, I can see all the plans she has with her friends, and me and my friends are like, hey, you want to do this, sure, let’s figure out a date, and three months go by. It’s not because I don’t value him, it’s because in my head, if I’ve got four hours free, I’m thinking, what can I do in those four hours, not what can I do for myself. So we don’t put that bond together. Men, I’m trying to grow the importance of that, because we can’t do it alone, men can’t, women can’t, kids can’t. Having your circle is huge, and honestly the main reason I started the Forge is that people make decisions in a silo because they don’t realize they have a tribe to help, they don’t seek wise counsel. When you see a man who leaves the family, gets involved in crime, is violent and can’t control his emotions, it’s usually because he feels that’s the right way to handle it, he didn’t have somebody to walk him through and say, there’s a better alternative. So I’ve always focused on creating this understanding that you have to build a tribe around you, men and women, who can help you make a better decision, someone older, someone your same age, and sometimes even someone younger. The bottom line is you need that help, and that comes with being secure in who you are.

Angie Yes, and I’m so glad where you ended, because sitting in my mind was, don’t do this life thing alone, we as humans are not meant to.

Ebony Correct.

Angie And I believe one of the reasons it happens more frequently with men is because in manhood, vulnerability and strength are seen as inversely proportional, and that is actually not the case, they are not opposite. And what you just described is exactly how to break that cycle.

Ebony That’s the key. When you say the word vulnerability, a lot of men think it means susceptible to damage, susceptible to attack, I’m not fortified. But to actually build a strong relationship, you have to open up and allow that as a possibility. Not the first person you meet, no, you don’t do that, but you have to slowly let people in, say what bothers you and what doesn’t. That’s the only way to make a true connection, and when that connection is made, you get better. That’s the most important part of being strong, being willing to let someone else in. It’s easy to say, nope, I’m not talking to anyone, but the true value of masculinity, the true strength, is being able to say, here’s where I struggle, here’s why, can you help?

Angie Yes, asking for help is actually a strength, and I love that we’re talking about this more now than we used to, encouraging it, creating spaces for it. The Forge is an incredible model of things that can help bring up a community of men who think more like this, and this is why I was so excited to have this conversation. This idea of participating in who you become, yes, we’re shaped by our circumstances, but you can be just as much, if not more, molded by the people and the environment you put yourself in, if you allow it, and that’s exactly what the Forge does. So Ebony, what do you have coming up, and what are you excited about, what’s next in your world?

Ebony A few things. I started my own LLC, as you and I spoke about, EM Coaching and Consulting, which is the personal version of what the Forge is. The Forge is a large group, this is what I can do individually, whether it’s working on curriculums for schools and things of that nature. The Forge is my passion project, my baby, and everything we do centers around positive visions of manhood. We have two major community events every year. We just had our first of the year, the Father and Child 2-on-2 Basketball Tournament, which is huge, and our next one is the Father and Son Brunch Seminar, our version of a men’s conference. We call it Father and Son because that automatically helps create legacy and allows bonding time, and we may not all be fathers, but we’re all sons, so we can all gain from it. In that room there are kids from five years old on up. It’s coming up Saturday, November 14, and it’s my favorite event we do every year. We have motivational speakers, a men’s panel, and we coined the phrase maturation stations, four to five stations around the room where we teach things young men, and a lot of the older ones, need to learn to grow in their manhood. We do a tie-tying station, our most popular every year, a car basics station, financial basics, grooming, and emotional intelligence, mini workshops for everybody there. It’s always a huge event, usually about 200 to 250 people in attendance. I can’t wait.

Angie So cool, and we’ll link that, if you head over to nomoremondays.info, we’ll have all the links from this episode, including how to find Ebony, how to find the Forge, and how to check out this event in Eastern PA. What Ebony is doing is such an incredible example of servant leadership, self-coaching, self-awareness, and giving back to others so the cycle can continue. I’ve loved this conversation, and before we end it, I have one more question to put you on the spot with a little self-reflection. This whole conversation is about vulnerability not being a sign of weakness, building community and accountability, and taking ownership of your character. So I’m curious, in your professional development, what is something you know about yourself that you continually have to relearn or remind yourself of?

Ebony I’m going to be super transparent, validation. I still find myself at times looking for validation more than I should, and it’s funny, because we do sessions on imposter syndrome and all that. One flaw of mine, I can have 15 things that say great job, here’s an award, 15 people saying I love what you’re doing, and I’m still always wondering, is it enough? Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m looking for, but I’m constantly looking for something to tell me, yep, you’ve done it, chasing this thing I’ll probably never find. So I’ve had to realize I need to find validation in myself, find my validation through God, find better ways to be secure in who I am. I’m very secure in who I am, but even as much as I know better, things will still hit my brain and make me go, really, are you okay, are you secure? So that’s something I’m working hard to get better at, not being offended if someone doesn’t give me a kudos, because I don’t do things for that, but if I don’t get it, being transparent, sometimes I wonder.

Angie Thank you for being your own perfect example of a vulnerability you’re transparent about, and I think it helps everybody out there, because too many of us struggle with that exact same one. This is the kind of stuff where self-leadership isn’t about having all the answers yourself, and Ebony just proved that, even though he’s mentoring others in these things, we’re all still works in progress, and will be until we leave this earth. It makes me think that part of becoming self-aware is recognizing when you need another perspective, when you need another human in your world, and what type of community you need around you to support the growth and character you want to have. Ebony McNeil, thank you so much for being part of No More Mondays. This was a really meaningful conversation, and I appreciate you, what you’re doing in the world, your transparency, and for creating spaces where men get to grow, connect, and challenge themselves to be better humans.

Ebony Thank you so much for having me. It was great meeting you, and I’m glad we evolved to this. Thank you so much.

Angie No matter where you are in the world or what gender you identify with, there’s something to take away here, because humans do still matter, mediocrity is expensive, and as Ebony and I just talked about, ownership will change that. If this conversation resonated with you, please share it with somebody who could benefit from it, and leave us a five-star, because that always helps these meaningful conversations stand out. Thanks again to Ebony, thank all of you for listening, and until next time, here’s to fewer Sunday Scaries and no more Mondays.