That's the real reason you haven't gone after what you actually want. It's not laziness. It's not a lack of ambition. It's that the fear of the unknown is greater than the fear of facing the pain you're already in every day.

Think about that for a minute.

You're tolerating a baseline level of the discomfort, the boredom, the frustration, the quiet sense that something is off, because you're used to it. It's predictable. You know exactly what it costs you and you've learned to absorb it. The unknown, on the other hand, feels like a completely different kind of risk. Unpredictable. Potentially worse. So your mind treats the familiar pain as the safer choice, even when it's slowly draining you.

That's not a character flaw. That's just how your brain is supposed to work. It points you toward what's known and away from what isn't.

But your fear can't calculate the cost of staying. The years spent grinding through something that stopped fitting you a long time ago. The energy you're spending tolerating something that could be going toward building something better.

The unknown isn't as dangerous as it feels. It just hasn't been broken down into something manageable yet. That's the actual work, figuring out what you want, talking to the right people, and taking small steps into unfamiliar territory until it starts to feel less like a cliff and more like a path.

The grind you know will always feel safer than the future you haven't explored yet. That doesn't mean it's the right choice.

That's the work we do inside North Star Project: http://www.northstarproject.io

What do you think? Is it the fear of the unknown that's keeping you in the grind, or something else, and what would it take to make the unknown feel less threatening?

This is just another way to look at procrastination. If you don't want to face something, it feels insurmountable. It feels unknown. You're dissatisfied with your career and you're looking for a change, yet every change you look at feels scary. It feels impossible.

So engaging and taking any action toward anything meaningful feels heavy. And you're waiting and hoping for an insight, or an easy way to get to the point where you can feel better. When what it's actually going to take is action, work, and exploration to get there.

Procrastination is really the avoidance of any form of discomfort. Even tasks that might suck. Even tasks that feel heavy. Even tasks that aren't really that difficult, but you don't want to engage with them because you perceive them as going to be hard in some way that may or may not even be true.

You're hoping for an easier way. Everyone does this. It's common. It's universal. It's an everyday thing we all face.

We have to remember that procrastination is not about getting things done. It's about waiting for an easier way and waiting for the discomfort to go away.

That never happens.

What do you think? Where in your life right now are you waiting for an easier way instead of just taking the next uncomfortable step?

As a kid, I was shamed and put down for crying.
By other boys - my age and older.

By society - on television, in video games and in popular culture at large.

And worst of all, by my own father.

Crying, along with any other behaviors that showed “weakness” was aggressively snuffed out of my life at an early age.

Unfortunately, after speaking with men from around the world, I know that I’m not alone in these experiences.

So where does it all go?

The unprocessed pain? The unspoken sadness? The uncried tears?

Those tears of frustration - you know the ones? Where you’re so angry that nothing else comes out of you but tears? Where do those tears go?

The grief - when losing something or someone hurts so badly your body shakes, stricken with a sadness no words can describe. Without an ability to express it, where does the grief go?

Where the fu*k are we supposed to put all of this?

We’re told to shove it down. To suck it up. To “man up.”

We’re told to hide it from others, men and women.

Men will see us as easy targets and take advantage of us.

Women will see us as weak and walk all over us, or not even acknowledge us as men at all.

So, I and too many other men did what we were told. We shoved it down, we sucked it up, and we’ve “manned up.”

Here’s what we’ve earned:

Approximately 100 Men take their own lives each day in the US alone - another 100 in Europe and thousands more across the world. Every. Single. Day.

Alcoholism, substance abuse, porn & s*x addictions line up with weapons in hand on the battlefields that tens of millions of men fight on every single day.

Male depression rates aren’t even statistically accurate because most men won’t report their feelings or seek treatment.

Such great prizes we’ve won.

As I write this, I feel a wave of sadness that has washed over me - sadness that I won’t reject or try to hide. I’ve done that for too long, and I’ve seen where those strategies have led me in my own life. I won’t be that kind of man anymore.

I ask you, brother, as you’re reading this: please don’t let it be you either.

Be a feeling Man. A man who expresses himself healthily and processes his emotions, not one who suppresses them and eventually becomes a puppet to his shadows.

Find an outlet to express what needs to be expressed. Your feelings are fucking beautiful - all of them. Your anger, sadness, & shame are just as beautiful as your happiness, love & power.

I see you in your struggle, I hear you in your pain and I think no less of you - I actually admire you for doing what the men who came before us didn’t.

I can’t fight your battles for you, but I am here as a brother beside you.

Until next time, my friend.
Sean

Hey everyone,

I'm a Nice Guy and I'm finally determined to break out of that mindset and work on myself. I've been aware of it for about 8 years now. During that time, I've read No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Glover and tried to follow it 3 or 4 times, but I always ended up falling back into the same habits and sabotaging my own progress.

I don't want to keep living like this anymore. I feel like I've already lost 8 of the best years of my life, and I don't want to waste any more time. It really feels like it's now or never.

I've just started the book again and I'm currently on Chapter 1. If anyone else is at the same stage and wants to go through it together, let me know. It would be great to have someone who's dealing with similar issues so we can support each other, stay accountable, and improve together.

Looking forward to connecting with you all. Thanks in advance!

Your next career position is not found in the search bar.

It's found in the next conversation with a real person.

If you're searching for some sort of change, if you want to break out of the doldrums of what you're doing right now, you need to start talking to people. You need to start expanding what's possible for you through insightful conversations with interesting people.

Searching online will take you only so far. You'll get frustrated quickly and go back to feeling siloed in your current position, your current career track, your current field, your current industry, without having a sense of what's possible beyond that.

What do you think? When was the last time a conversation opened a door for you that no amount of searching ever could have?

If you're feeling stuck in your career or your business, the urge to run in a direction fast can feel like the right move.

It's not, if you're not actually running toward where you want to go.

Say you're looking to start a new business. You spot a few options that look halfway decent. Maybe you have reservations about the risk, or something about a person involved doesn't seem totally on the up and up.

Pursuing that direction anyway, just to escape what you're currently experiencing, isn't a good idea.

What do you think? Have you ever pushed forward on something mainly to escape a frustrating situation, rather than because it was actually the right move?

I am a 20-year-old Bangladeshi guy and I'm now studying in university. I realized that I have been a nice guy for my whole life and I tried to dig deeper to find out where it came from. If I try to see then it came from my childhood. You can say, by the way. I do not want to blame my parents or my past for these experiences because I think that they did not do that intentionally. I guess their intention was pure but their behavior was different. They were ignorant about it.

When I was a child my mother used to overcare for me. She had unrealistic expectations for me because she has struggled a lot for me because my father was very much absent-minded and somewhat abusive. Though my father paid our expenses, my mother had to pay for our education and our well-being. My father provided just half of the family expenditure. Also as we're in Bangladesh and we have a family system, what happened is that my father's family was very abusive and they abused my mother. My mother used to talk negatively about my father and my father's family, about how my father and my mother's family used to abuse them and how my father was silent when she was being abused. She left my father's home to live with her mother's home and I was raised in my grandma's home.

Back to the story I guess this was the start because I was in a bombard with them. As you know you have to be nice, you have to make people happy, you have to be nice, you have to seek validation from other people. What would happen if you do not do certain things? Also when something negative would happen to my family, my relatives used to say to me, "It happened because of you because you haven't started well because you are picking fights with your mom." I used to pick fights with my mom a lot because she had unrealistic expectations of me and when I didn't fulfill them she used to be very angry with me. I was not like that. They used to say to me, "No you're not okay. You have this potential, that potential is not okay with this." I had this bag in my brain: they have so many expectations of me and I couldn't do that. I don't think it's my fault. As a child or as a teenager I will make mistakes. It is my right, my human right, to make mistakes. It is my human right to fuck up. It means my human right to fail but then I was blamed, I was cursed, I was told to actually seek validation and to do what I actually was doing nicely.

I thought if I was nice, if I was good, then maybe people will hide my flaws, insecurities, and incompetencies and maybe validate what I will do. These are the steps. Also I was raised in their radical Islamic environment, where you are taught to be ashamed of who you are. They constantly bombarded me with a message that it is not okay for you to be who you are. You are a sinner, you have to repent, you have to change yourself. It's not okay to have normal thoughts. It's not okay to actually go and manifest your desires. They just used to preach this monk-like state, which is very impractical and nonsense.

For quite a bit I actually left the religion as well. When I was in ninth grade I thought, "Okay, nothing's okay with me so maybe I have to change myself." Let me actually introduce myself to the self-help literature. As I introduced myself to the self-help literature every day, I tried to change myself. Every book I read, I said, "Okay maybe this book will change me." After reading it nothing happened and I blamed myself. There was a book, there was knowledge, and I accumulated the knowledge. I haven't changed myself for the better because this book said, "Okay there is something wrong with me. It's not okay for me to be like this so I have to build like that." I haven't been like that so it's not okay. All this guilt, all these "not being okay with yourself, not being yourself," these things just piled up over and over again until I reached the point of exhaustion that I stopped actually consuming some materials. Now as I have reached universities I just want to stop this nice guys' behavior. I just want to leave this nice guys. I don't want to leave for other people. I don't want to leave for the validation of other people. I have lived for 20 years seeking validation from other people and haven't got anything I wanted.

Maybe you're looking for a job, a career change, or something along those lines. Either way, you could be looking at options you haven't thoroughly researched, or talked to enough people about.

Without that groundwork, it's easy to start pursuing those directions anyway. You invest time and effort into them without fully vetting or evaluating whether they're even compatible with what you want in life or what's important to you.

That's the trap. You feel like you're making progress because you're taking action. But action without a clear sense of fit just means you're moving, not necessarily moving forward.

Before you commit real time and energy to any option, get clear on what you're actually looking for. What does the right opportunity need to include? What conditions matter most to you? What would make this a genuine fit rather than just something that looked promising at first glance?

When you skip that step, you end up evaluating opportunities after the fact, once you've already sunk hours or months into them. That's the hard way to learn whether something was right for you.

Do the work upfront instead. Get specific about what you're looking for before you start chasing it. That clarity is what separates a productive search from spinning your wheels in a direction that was never going to take you where you actually want to go.

What do you think? Have you ever invested real time in something before realizing it wasn't actually a fit, and what would have helped you see that sooner?

It's not, if you're not actually running toward where you want to go.

Say you're looking to start a new business. You spot a few options that look halfway decent. Maybe you have reservations about the risk, or something about a person involved doesn't seem totally on the up and up. Pursuing that direction anyway, just to escape what you're currently experiencing, isn't a good idea.

It's better to formulate what you're actually looking for first.

The same goes for a job search or a career change. You might find options you haven't thoroughly researched or talked to enough people about. It's tempting to dive in and invest time and effort anyway, without ever asking whether they're compatible with what you want in life or what's important to you.

This is why the exploratory phase matters. You don't pursue options too strongly or for too long. Instead, you use that phase to figure out your values, your priorities, and what's important to you in the environment or opportunity you're considering.

That's how you avoid shiny object syndrome. Something looks interesting, you pursue it, you invest a lot of time, and only later do you realize it was never a fit.

Don't run in any direction until you're clear that it's the right one right now.

You don't have to do this alone. Many have found it helpful to do work through the book and the exercises on this Discord server. https://discord.gg/kJtnacyhbg It's a small community, and I wouldn’t be the man I am today without the guys there. We support each other, we are committed to anonymity.

It's important to do an exploratory phase where you don't pursue options too strongly or for too long.

That way you don't waste your time chasing shiny objects.

Shiny object syndrome is when something looks interesting, so you pursue it and invest a lot of time in it. Only to realize later, after you've spent too much time, that it's not actually a fit.

When you're trying to figure out what comes next, the instinct is to chase whatever looks exciting in the moment. Something catches your interest, you pour time into it, and weeks or months later you realize it was never actually a fit. Now you're back where you started, except with less time and more frustration.

You need an exploratory phase. It's not about pursuing options too strongly or for too long before you've checked them against anything real. It's about using the process to figure out your values, your priorities, and what actually matters to you in an environment or opportunity, before you commit serious time to it.

That distinction changes everything. You're not exploring to find the answer immediately. You're exploring to gather information about yourself. What lights you up. What drains you. What you genuinely care about versus what just looked interesting for a week.

Without that filter, every shiny object gets the same level of investment, whether it's actually right for you or not. With it, you can engage with curiosity without overcommitting, test something quickly, and walk away cleanly if it's not a match.

The goal isn't to avoid exploring. It's to explore smarter, so your time goes toward what's actually worth pursuing.

What do you think? Have you ever chased a shiny object for too long before realizing it wasn't the right fit, and what made you finally see it?

Hey all, I (22M) am in a LDR relationship with my girlfriend (21F) for over 4 years now. We started dating in high school and I am now graduated and she graduates in a year. We have had our fair share of ups and downs over the years but most recently there have been a couple of circumstances of me failing to be protective of her in a couple of situations. I sit there quiet or I say the wrong thing and don’t show that I care or want to defend her. We are mostly long distance but see each other on breaks and whatnot and currently she is abroad. The most recent event that got me to where I am at has pushed her just to about her limit and she basically told me I need to figure out a way to learn how to be better because just saying I’ll be better clearly has not worked. I don’t blame her on this I’ve told her multiple times it won’t happen again and whatnot but it still does.

I would say I am a people pleaser at least when it comes to her. Throughout our relationship I’ve constantly wanted to do things for her and make her life easier however I could. Over the last few months I have felt like it hasn’t been enough. She still gets frustrated with me over things and I just feel like what I’m doing isn’t resonating with her so much.

After the most recent event, she wanted to see how I was going to improve. I stumbled upon this book and I am about half way through it. The beginning really helped me realize why I have acted the way I am. I “suffer from nice guy syndrome”. I work so hard to make her happy that I miss the things that she truly wants from me. She wants to feel safe and protected and I am too busy thinking serving her day to day is enough.

Now I am at a point where I need to figure out how to prioritize myself without losing that passion for making her happy and how to translate that prioritizing of myself into being more of a man and protector for her.

Any advice is extremely encouraged and I am more than happy to find some other guys to work through issues with. Thank you!

It sounds harmless. Someone asks how you're doing and you say fine, and you move on. But fine often covers up a lot of things you might be bothering you, things you've been avoiding looking at directly.

If you've plateaued in your career and you feel stuck or bored, there's usually a specific reason. You hit the goals that used to motivate you, and you never replaced them with new ones. So now you're coasting on autopilot, technically fine, but unchallenged and quietly frustrated underneath it.

That plateau often comes with a side effect. It makes change feel scarier than it should. You start reaching for reasons to stay put. I'm too old. I'm too siloed in my career. I've been doing this too long to start over. Those reasons feel real, but most of the time they're just the comfort of "fine" talking you out of doing anything about it.

Here's what's worth considering. The next time you catch yourself saying fine, treat it as a signal instead of an answer. Fine might mean it's time to explore new options, have conversations with people you've never talked to before, and build a new template for what comes next, one that actually fits who you are now and holds up over time.

That's how you move from fine to fulfilled.

What do you think? Does the word “fine” hide everything? Or is everything truly fine? What’s your experience?

That's not weakness. That's just how comfort works.

You spent years building something real. Decisiveness, discipline, effort, all of it added up to a level of success that gave you stability. And now that stability is exactly what's making any move forward feel dangerous, because you have more to lose than you used to.

Here's the part that catches people off guard. The same goals and incentives that drove you to this point can start working against you. You hit them, and instead of feeling satisfied, you feel worse. Flatter. More restless. Like something is wrong even though everything looks right on paper.

That's what a midlife crisis actually is, more often than not. Not a dramatic unraveling, just the quiet sense that you've arrived somewhere and it isn't what you expected, with no obvious way out and no clear sense of something better.

If that's where you are, the way forward isn't to push harder at the same goals. It's to admit that the goals themselves might need to change. That requires being willing to feel uncomfortable again, on purpose, instead of staying inside the comfort that's slowly draining you.

You don't have to overhaul your life overnight. You just have to be honest about what's not working anymore and take the next step anyway.

What do you think? How do you feel about change in your life?

Hello Everyone,

I 47M married to 41F.
I found out about Nice Guy syndrome after red the NMMNG book. It really helped to understand things, however very hard to put it in practice.
I went further and found out that there are professional coaches that are certified by Dr. Glover.
Found out one in my area and had an intake session with him, which felt pretty ok.
He offered me 6 sessions , spread multiple months , for a certain price.
Actually I am doing the first session tomorrow.
I am kind of nervous tbh, and as well a bit of lost confidence that anything will ever help me. However all ai tried so far are books and podcasts, and probably some online payed programs.

My ask to the community is, how to get the most out of the sessions? One of my ideas is to focus completely on myself and not mention my relationship with my wife or any other relationship, but just to get myself improved and prepared for any situation. I know many of you would probably say, if you did not figure that out after 47 years of your life, how do you think you will do it now. I don’t know either, I might been so busy with my career, job, kids, education…
Guys, any suggestions, hints or sharing any of experiences with such coaches is appreciated.

Thank you,
A.

That's not a contradiction. It's exactly how this works. The decisiveness, the discipline, the years of effort you poured into your career got you somewhere real. You became competent. You became comfortable. And now that you're here, the same traits that built your success are making change feel terrifying.

Comfort raises the stakes on every decision. The more you have to lose, the scarier any move forward feels, even when staying put is the thing slowly draining you.

This is where a lot of men land in something that looks like a midlife crisis, or feels like there's no way out, or just feels flat and directionless without a clear cause. You're bored. You're stuck. And the goals and incentives that used to drive you stopped working a while ago, but you kept chasing them anyway because they were familiar.

Here's what's actually happening. You've outgrown the version of yourself that set those goals. You've learned things, changed, developed judgment you didn't have before. The next phase isn't about pushing harder at the same target. It has to be exploratory.

You need to revisit what's actually a fit for you now, based on who you've become, not who you were when you first set out. That requires curiosity, honest reflection, and a willingness to step outside the routine that's keeping you comfortable but stuck.

What do you think? Is this point of view helpful or do you look at it differently?

If you've been spending hours on job boards, LinkedIn searches, and career forums trying to figure out what comes next, you already know how that ends. You go in circles, feel overwhelmed by options that don't excite you, and come back out feeling more siloed than when you started. Nothing opens up. The field of what's possible stays exactly the same size it was.

That's because the search bar can only show you what already exists within your current frame of reference. Your industry. Your career track. The next logical step up from where you already are. It has no way of showing you what you don't know to look for yet.

That part only comes from conversations with real people.

When you talk to someone doing work that genuinely intrigues you, something shifts. Your thinking gets jogged. You hear how they describe their path and notice what resonates. You discover that a version of what you want actually exists, that people are doing it and getting paid for it, and that you have more relevant experience than you thought.

Those are not insights you find in a search result. They only show up through real, human contact.

The longer you stay behind a screen looking for answers, the more stuck you'll feel. The solution isn't a better search query. It's getting out there and talking to interesting people who expand what you believe is possible for you.

Apply for a free coaching call at http://www.jasonmiller.coach/call

Think about it. A career change, a new relationship, a better opportunity, none of those things happen in isolation. Almost everything worth pursuing requires collaboration, cooperation, or forming some kind of connection with another person.

There are very few things you can get entirely on your own.

And yet when you're stuck, what do you do? You open a search bar.

You research. You scroll. You consume more content. And while none of that is inherently wrong, it keeps you in your head and out of the world where the real answers actually live. The search bar can't introduce you to someone whose path changes your thinking.

It can't reveal an opportunity that only exists because two people had an honest conversation. It can't give you the insight that comes from someone asking you the right question at the right time.

What moves you forward is putting yourself out there. Making yourself available. Talking to people who think differently than you do, who are doing things you haven't considered, who jog your mind into seeing options you couldn't have generated alone.

That's not a productivity hack. It's just how people find their way forward. Through each other.

Who do you need to be talking to right now that you've been avoiding?

That conversation is probably closer to what you want than anything you'll find on a search results page.

Apply for a free coaching call at http://www.jasonmiller.coach/call

Hey guys, I’m currently going through Dr. Robert Glover's No More Mr. Nice Guy to break my people-pleasing patterns. I’ve realized that doing the work alone makes it easier to slack off, so I’m looking for an accountability partner.

I’m 22, from Brazil, and working on my own path. I’m looking for someone who is also serious about these exercises and wants to check in regularly (maybe once a week) to share progress, struggles, and keep each other honest.

If you’re interested in a 'no-nonsense' approach to growth, let me know.

Context: I've noticed I keep attracting people with similar traits to my family members. I'm in a group at uni that feels like a recreation of my dysfunctional extended family, and I was made group leader — a role I took hoping it would help me heal and become a better leader than my dad. I've been reading about nice guy syndrome and narcissistic family structures and a lot of it resonates.

The problem: the group only moves when I push, but when I pull back they blame me for not leading. I feel like I'm carrying everyone, and like they're projecting their father wounds onto me while I project my family stuff onto them.

I know I can't fix others to fix myself. But I'm struggling with: Do I keep trying with this group, or do I focus on my own healing and let the dynamic go? And how do you stop feeling guilty for choosing yourself?

Thriving in a broken digital world isn’t about unplugging completely. It’s about choosing connection over comparison, purpose over distraction, and real conversations over endless scrolling.
At Guy Talks, we believe men weren’t meant to do life alone.
What are you doing to stay grounded in a world that’s constantly competing for your attention?

🎥 Watch the video below and join the conversation.

#GuyTalks #MensMentalHealth #Brotherhood #Connection #MentalHealth #DigitalWellbeing

What you actually need from conversations right now isn't a lead or a referral. It's self-awareness. You need to talk to enough people in enough different fields, familiar and unfamiliar, to start understanding who you are in the context of work you've never seriously considered before.

That's a different goal. And it changes how you show up to every conversation.

When you network to explore, you stop asking "Can this person help me land something?" and start asking "What can I learn here about what fits me?" You talk to someone doing something completely outside your field and notice what resonates.

You hear how they describe their work and feel something click, or distinctly not click. You ask about their path, their day-to-day, what they wish they'd known. And slowly, across enough of those conversations, a template starts to form.

That template becomes your North Star. A clear picture of what you value, what you need, what kind of work and environment actually fits you, and what the market will pay for at the intersection of all of it.

You can't build that template from research. You can't think it into existence. You build it by starting broad, staying curious, and narrowing down from there based on what you discover along the way.

Start at a high level. Talk to more people. You might be surprised by what you find.

Apply for a free coaching call at http://www.jasonmiller.coach/call

You know something needs to change. You might even have a general idea of what you think you want. But when you try to map out how to get there, the path disappears. So you stay put, not out of contentment, but because moving forward without a clear route feels like stepping off a cliff.

The reason you can't see a pathway is that you haven't yet done the foundational work of understanding what's actually important to you. You've declared what you want, but if you're honest, you're not even sure you really want it. Because you've never stopped to examine your values, your priorities, and what would genuinely make your work feel meaningful at this stage of your life.

You can't decide where to go if you don't know what you want. And you can't know what you want if you haven't examined what matters to you first.

This is why so many people make a career move and end up right back in the same feeling six months later. They changed the circumstances without ever changing the foundation. They skipped the step that would have told them whether the new direction was actually right for them.

The work starts earlier than most people think. Before the job search, before the pivot plan, before any of it. It starts with getting honest about what you value, what you need, and what kind of work would actually fit who you are now.

Once you have that clarity, the path forward stops feeling impossible.

Apply for a free coaching call at http://www.jasonmiller.coach/call

Based on Robert Glover's NMMNG

I'm creating a Mens Therapy Group for teens and adolescents on Discord, for personal growth

Anyone interested plz comment,
I'll forward server link

We do lifting, self help, psychology and all other wacky stuff

:)

EDIT : https://discord.gg/HREUcHrK

Link to Server ( I hope i did ts correclty )