Men Talking Mindfulness: Mental, Physical, & Emotional Fitness to Elevate Performance and Resilience for Leaders and Teams Under Pressure!

Our A2A Course is live and at 40% off until Friday, May 29th at 1pm ET. Visit https://focusnowtraining.com/a2a-course to sign up NOW!! Marcus Aurelius said it nearly two thousand years ago: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own. On this episode of Men Talking Mindfulness, hosts Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider sit down with Andy Riise... army...

What happens in the space between a trigger and your reaction? That gap — the one most people don't even know exists — is where everything changes. In this special episode, Will and Jon break down the concept live during the Awareness to Action (A2A) course launch webinar, walk the audience through a real-time breathwork exercise to experience the gap firsthand, and explain how training this skill...

Have you ever been mid-conversation with your partner, felt your jaw tighten, your stomach drop, your brain go sideways — and some part of you already looking for the exit? That's not a character flaw. That's your nervous system treating your partner like a threat. EJ and Tarah Kerwin are couples therapists, founders of Relationship Renovation, and parents of twins born on their honeymoon. EJ — a...

Leaders are exhausted from a job they're not actually doing. They're exhausted from the performance of doing it. The mask, the armor, the carefully calibrated version of themselves they put on every morning before walking into the office. In this solo episode, Jon breaks down what leadership theater is costing you, your team, and your family. Why most leaders are running on imposter syndrome and d...

We've got a new course, Awareness to Action, launching May 27. Text MTM to 33777 or hit this link to stay in the know: https://focusnowtraining.com/a2a-course-interest Episode notes: We almost didn't make it past the first few episodes. Jon was filming from a yellow Fiat with black racing stripes in a Starbucks parking lot, stealing their wifi. Will was in his old apartment. The dogs walked throug...

Who are you when everything you've built your identity on gets taken away? For Dennis Connors, that question wasn't hypothetical. A teenage USA rock climber turned Marine Corps intelligence operator, he served three combat tours in Iraq supporting Tier 1 Special Operations, ran 250 interrogations, and came home with multiple undiagnosed TBIs, severe PTSD, and two strokes — the second partially par...

Text A2A to 33777 to stay in the know about our upcoming Awareness to Action Course! Carl Jung said that when a man deals with his own shadow, he does something real for the world. On this episode of Men Talking Mindfulness, host Will Schneider sits down with Connor Beaton, founder of Man Talks and author of Men's Work, to get into what shadow work actually looks like for men and why most of us ha...

You've read the book. You nodded at every page. And then you changed absolutely nothing. Sound familiar? Nir Eyal helped Silicon Valley build the systems that capture your attention — then turned around and wrote the books on how to fight back. Hooked became the playbook for habit-forming products. Indistractable showed you how to resist them. And now Beyond Belief cracks open the real reason most...

Stop pretending you're fine on 5 hours of sleep. You're not. On this episode of Men Talking Mindfulness, hosts Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider bring back Robert Sweetman, former Navy SEAL, sleep scientist, and founder of Sleep Genius, to talk about what actually makes the difference between garbage sleep and real recovery. Rob's approach starts with a concept he calls the sleep dojo. The same way...

One concept. That's all we're covering today. And if you only took one thing from 260-plus episodes of this show... it might be this. Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust and came out the other side with an idea that Jon and Will think about almost every day. Between what happens to you and how you respond, there's a gap. A space. And inside that space is where every good decision you've ever made...

Mindfulness is a $2 billion industry. It's in apps, corporate programs, retreats, and workplace wellness modules. And men are more burned out, disconnected, and distracted than ever.  So is mindfulness  actually working? Sean Fargo is a former Buddhist monk who spent two years in a Thai monastery before deciding the world needed these teachings more than the monastery needed another monk.  His pla...

"I spent five years hurting a good woman by staying with her but never fully choosing her." That one sentence, written by Bryan Reeves, has been read by tens of millions of people. On this episode of Men Talking Mindfulness, hosts Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider sit down with Bryan... former U.S. Air Force captain, relationship coach, and author of the book Choose Her Every Day or Leave Her... to...

We're doing something a little different. Shorter episode. One idea. No fluff. Here's the truth... most mindfulness advice wasn't built for men. "Just meditate for 20 minutes." "Download this app." "Take a breath and relax." Cool. None of that lands for the guys Jon and Will talk to every week. Not because those guys are anti-mindfulness. They just haven't found an entry point that makes sense for...

When was the last time you actually felt at peace, genuinely, deeply okay in your own skin? If that question makes you uncomfortable, you're exactly who this episode is for. Ishan Shivanand spent 19 years inside a Himalayan monastery before stepping into the West to teach. He's a mental health researcher whose ancient practices have been validated in double-blind clinical trials showing an 82% red...

On this episode of Men Talking Mindfulness, hosts Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider sit down with Jonathan Dickinson, one of the most respected Ibogaine clinicians in the world. This conversation is a masterclass in brain health, psychedelic medicine, trauma, and what's actually happening in the field right now... without the hype. Jonathan walks Jon and Will through how Ibogaine is different from...

Did you know that there is one molecule in your body that controls your blood pressure, brain function, sexual performance, sleep quality, immune response, and how fast you age?  There is. It's known as nitric oxide.  After 40, most men are producing half the nitric oxide (NO) their body needs and almost none of them know it's happening. So we brought in Dr. Nathan Bryan, who has spent 25 years re...

Adversity doesn't ask if you're ready. It kicks the door in and demands a response. On this episode of Men Talking Mindfulness, hosts Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider sit down with Nick Lavery, a U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret who lost his leg in combat and then did something almost no one has ever done... he fought his way back to active-duty special operations. Nick's story isn't about her...

Nearly one in five men report body shame every year. Almost half say it's affecting their mental health. And almost nobody is talking about it. Emmy Award-winning TV producer Kyle Ridley spent over a decade booking eating disorder segments for national TV — and every spokesperson he received was a woman. He also spent most of his twenties hiding a serious eating disorder of his own, graduating sum...

Most people try to change their performance. Mark Divine changed his identity. In this episode, Jon Macaskill shares key insights from a powerful conversation with former Navy SEAL Commander and SEALFIT founder Mark Divine—breaking down the mental shift that took him from the corporate world to becoming honor man of his BUD/S class. This episode explores the deeper layers of performance that most...

Don't let this war pull you off center. The news is loud, the headlines are relentless, and your nervous system is responding to bombs on the other side of the world as if they're falling outside your door. That's not weakness — that's wiring. And it's exactly what the media is designed to exploit. Jon and Will recorded this on March 18, 2026 — live escalation, real anxiety, no sides taken. Jon dr...

You've been the one who handles things your whole life. The one who doesn't ask for help. The one everyone leans on. But what happens when that self-reliance stops being strength and starts keeping you sealed off from the people you care about? In this solo episode, Jon Macaskill gets personal about what it actually costs to carry everything alone... the tight jaw, the flat "I'm good," the quiet f...

If you're a man who's ever fought this battle in silence — this episode is the conversation you've been waiting to have. Jon and Will sit down with Sathiya Sam — coach, speaker, and host of the Deep Clean Podcast — a man who spent 15 years deep in his own struggle with porn addiction before finding his way out. Not with willpower. Not with an app. With a framework that goes all the way down to the...

Most of us were taught that anger is a problem to manage, suppress, or apologize for. The ancient Greeks thought that was a path to a half-lived life. This is the audio version of the Focus Now Training Newsletter — a weekly drop where Jon Macaskill breaks down the mindfulness, focus, and performance concepts from Men Talking Mindfulness into something you can act on this week. This week's topic:...

What if anger management is NOT about suppression, but about direction and training emotional intensity into clarity, discipline, and presence. Most men are taught that anger is a problem to manage, eliminate, or apologize for, but what if that belief is quietly costing you strength, identity, and performance? In this episode, Jon and Will sit down with Mike LeBlanc - Marine veteran, Harvard MBA,...

Why do you care so much about what other people think? In this episode of Men Talking Mindfulness, hosts Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider sit down with Army veteran, mental performance coach, and Skull Sessions podcast host Andy Riise to dismantle the most quietly destructive pattern in men's lives — the approval trap. There's a name for what's running in the background of your decisions, and it i...