A few years ago, someone close to me pointed out something I had never noticed about myself. A small habit, a way of holding myself, that I had carried for decades without ever questioning where it came from. It took me right back to a moment as a child, one I had almost forgotten, where I made a silent decision about who I was allowed to be. I felt compelled to bring this up because it is almost exactly the experience my guest this week described to me, and it sits right at the heart of a conversation I think every one of you needs to hear.
This week I sat down with Jon Symes, who has spent over twenty years working with leaders and with men in midlife, helping them see the invisible stories shaping how they think, relate and define success. Jon opened with a story of his own. In his mid-twenties, a girlfriend asked him why he walked with his legs slightly bowed, as though he had just got off a horse. He had no idea he walked that way at all. When he sat with it, he traced it back to being ten years old, walking to church in a new pair of corduroy trousers, hearing the fabric rub between his thighs, and deciding in that instant that this was not how a man was supposed to walk. A decision made in a single moment, at ten years old, quietly ran his posture for the rest of his life.
We Are All Running Programmes We Didn't Choose
Jon calls these programmes stories, and I will repeat that, because I want it to sink in: stories, not facts. Belief structures we absorbed so early, and so unconsciously, that we mistake them for the truth of who we are. They arrive disguised as wisdom from our parents, as common sense, as the patterns we simply saw around us as children. We never sat down and chose them. We inherited them.
And this brings me to the part of our conversation I found most useful. Jon offered a simple sentence to finish, instinctively, without designing the answer: in order to be successful, I have to... Whatever comes out first, before you have time to think it through, is pointing you towards a belief structure that has been quietly steering your choices. You can ask the same question of love, of safety, of admiration. Try it. Notice what arrives before your mind has time to tidy it up.
Why Seeing the Story Is Not Always Enough
Here is where I pushed Jon a little further, because in my own experience, simply seeing a pattern has rarely been enough to change it on its own. Jon agreed, and he was honest about it, which I appreciated. Some stories sit close to the surface, and awareness alone can shift them. Others live much deeper, often rooted in childhood, and require real work to move. He spoke about using Internal Family Systems to return to the moment a story first made sense, and about somatic approaches, working directly with where a story lives in the body as stuck energy. Seeing the story is the first step. Moving it is the second, and it is a different piece of work entirely.
Masculinity, Initiation and What We Never Received
So, having said that, we turned to something Jon feels strongly about, which is the near total loss, in modern culture, of any real process of initiation from boyhood into manhood. No older men to guide the way. No threshold to cross. Just boys, ageing in male bodies, performing what they believe manhood looks like, with nobody ever formally telling them they have arrived. Jon spoke about the idea of trustworthy power, of men learning to protect life itself, rather than simply accumulating power in service of ego.
It struck me, listening back, that I never received that initiation either. And it left me with an idea I shared live with Jon: writing a letter to my eighteen year old self, offering him the initiation nobody gave him, with the wisdom I hold now. I would invite you to consider the same.
This conversation stayed with me long after we finished recording, and I suspect it will stay with you too. Jon's work, his writing and his free resources can all be found at jonsymes.com, where he shares practical ways to begin identifying, and rechoosing, the stories running your own life.
Stand out, don't fit in.