Gents Journey
Helping Men become the Gentleman they deserve to be. This Podcast is part inspiration part motivation. We discuss what it takes to be a Gentleman in the 21st Century. We also talk about how to deal with the internal and external battles that life throws at us. So come be apart of the Gents Journey!
Gents Journey
The Confidence Protocols: Trail II: The Howling Veil
Have you ever felt the weight of words left unspoken? The suffocating pressure of truths buried so deep they've become part of your foundation?
Welcome to the Howling Veil, the second trial in our Confidence Protocols series. This transformative journey takes you to a sacred altar where only one offering is accepted: the truth you've never dared to speak. Through vivid storytelling and powerful metaphor, we explore how the sentences trapped in our chests—"It hurt when you didn't care," "I needed you and you weren't there," "It wasn't my fault"—aren't just painful memories but active barriers to authentic confidence.
I reveal why most men aren't naturally quiet but have been trained into silence through consequence and rejection. The things we refuse to say don't simply vanish—they fester beneath our personalities, twisting our tone, choking our clarity, and dulling our impact. When your voice has been holding back something real for too long, it no longer trusts you to carry truth.
The most profound insight awaits at the heart of this episode: confidence doesn't begin with expression—it begins with excavation. Speaking your truth isn't about crafting perfect words; it's about no longer hiding. When you finally release what's been locked inside, you recover fragments of your identity that have been held hostage by silence.
From personal experience, I share the strange emptiness that follows when you release long-held anger—how you might initially miss its familiar weight before discovering the clarity and freedom beyond it. This journey isn't just about becoming a better communicator; it's about becoming whole again.
Ready to break the code of silence? Join me in this ritual of permission where you'll discover that true power comes not from knowing what to say, but from refusing to hide any longer. Your authentic voice—and the confidence that accompanies it—awaits.
"True mastery is found in the details. The way you handle the little things defines the way you handle everything."
Hello and welcome to the Gentleman's Journey podcast. My name is Anthony, your host, and today we are in the confidence protocols. This is trial two the howling veil. So let's go ahead and let's get into it Now. Part one the ascent into the veil. So let's go ahead and let's get into it Now. Part one the ascent into the veil. The jungle has changed the path that led you here soft, rotted, wet is gone and its place is stone Not clean, not carved, but wild stone, jagged, cracked, a winding trail climbing into the highlands like a spine, exposed from the island's back.
Speaker 1:The moment you step onto the path, the wind begins to change. It's not strong, but it carries intention. It moves like it's trying to shape something in the air, a whisper that never finishes, a scream that never lands. And the higher you climb, the more you feel it. This is not just wind, this is resistance, not from the world, but from you. With every step up the twisting incline, your chest tightens, your throat feels raw, like you've been yelling for hours, but you haven't said a word. That's the first sign that you've entered the veil. It doesn't wait for permission, it begins working on you immediately. Your breath shortens, your pulse races and in your mind. The same sentence begins to echo on loop Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it. You keep climbing the canopy thins. The trees grow twisted, bent inward, like they're listening to you breathe, and then you crest the ridge and there it is, the Howling Vale, a bowl-shaped valley carved into the earth by rage and time. The wind doesn't pass through it, it's born there. You feel it hit your face like a slap, not violent but knowing but knowing. And in the very center of the veil, surrounded by jagged black stones, stands an altar, weathered, empty, waiting, and at its base, scrawled under the rock, says this speak the thing you are never allowed to say, or stay here Forever.
Speaker 1:The wind thickens the moment you step into the bowl of the veil. It doesn't howl from the sky, it churns from the ground up, a circular current spiraling around you, like it knows your name but refuses to say it until you say yours. You pass into the center like entering a sacred ruin, not ancient, just forgotten. The altar rises out of the stone like a single word that refused to die. It has no symbols, no golden plates, no torches, just truth waiting to be released. You feel it in your chest now that pressure is building behind, behind your chest and in your back, like every unspoken sentence is crawling up your spine demanding a voice. Your throat aches, but not from use but from neglect. You place your hand on the altar's edge. The stone is warm, alive, like it's been waiting for this moment longer than you've been alive. The wind shifts. It doesn't scream now it listens. The space around you goes dense, like the whole veil is holding its breath, waiting for one sound, one word, one sentence, one truth.
Speaker 1:You never dared to speak. You try to think of what to say, but this isn't about thinking. The island doesn't want a script, it wants the thing behind the thing. And then, without permission, your memory opens. The first image comes up. You're standing in a room when someone who had power over you a parent, a teacher, a friend you wanted to say something you needed to, but you didn't. You felt it rise like heat in your chest and you swallowed it. And they never knew.
Speaker 1:A second image comes up. Someone hurt you, not with fists, but with dismissal. You minimized it, even as it shredded you. You told yourself it's not that bad. I should be stronger. If I said it out loud, they'll leave. So you never did. You carried it instead for years. And now it's at the surface.
Speaker 1:Your mouth opens, but no words come. Your jaw trembles, not because you're afraid, but because you're close. See, the island doesn't give you instructions, it gives you a stage. And if you don't speak now, you'll live here. The wind will howl your secrets forever. The altar will wait with disappointment. The next path will never open. So you place both hands on the stone, you close your eyes and you say it.
Speaker 1:The sentence varies for each man. It hurt me when you didn't care. I needed you and you weren't there. I spent my whole life pretending I wasn't angry. I never got to say goodbye. I didn't deserve it. It wasn't my fault. I was only a boy.
Speaker 1:Whatever your truth is, you say it now Raw, shaking, imperfect, but real. The moment the words leave your lips, the altar shifts beneath your palms, not physically, but energetically. It exhales, and so do you. The wind picks up, not screaming this time, but carrying your words across the veil like they belong to the land. Now they're not trapped anymore, they're witnessed. The altar doesn't speak, but the map in your pocket pulses. Another piece is returning.
Speaker 1:Silence follows the sound. Not emptiness, not retreat, but a silence that seals, you've just said it, the thing that lived in the cage of your body for too long, the truth you've never thought you'd voiced. And now, now, the entire veil responds, not with noise but with reverence. Their wind, once howling, now circles you like a protector, no longer trying to rip the truth from you, it begins to carry it. You can feel it in the dearth beneath your boots. The ground doesn't push back anymore, it becomes your weight, as if you finally earned the right to stand there Because you spoke. You broke the code of silence. And that act simple, raw, unfinished has changed the shape of the island, has changed the shape of the island, but more than that, it has changed the shape of you.
Speaker 1:Your hands are still resting on the altar, but now something is beneath them, Not an object, not a tool, not a tool, but a mark Carved freshly into the stone, without sound, without movement, a single syllable that wasn't there before, vor. It grows faintly beneath your fingertips, not bright, not dramatic. It grows faintly beneath your fingertips, not bright, not dramatic, just true. You lift your hands slowly, the words remain. You reach for the map. It's warmer, again Alive. You open it and there, besides the syllable, ka recovered from the mirror shore, a second piece shimmers into being Vor, not a name, not yet, but something is building. You don't remember the full word, but your body does. Your chest knows it, your jaw prepares to shape it. The fragments are returning. The island is not just tracking where you've been, it's restoring who you are.
Speaker 1:And in this moment, kneeling at the altar, breathing slower, the feeling, that feeling that the second piece is settled into your blood, you understand something few men ever will. It's that confidence doesn't come from saying the right thing. It comes from saying the real thing, even if your voice shakes, even if no one else hears. You said it and because you did, you're not a prisoner of that silence anymore. You're the man who broke it.
Speaker 1:After the truth is spoken, the world listens differently. Now you remain still at the altar, hands trebling, not with fear anymore, but with the weight of what's finally been released. The wind doesn't howl now. It carries, it lifts the words you spoke like sacred ash, dispersing them through the trees, the stone, the air. They do not echo, because echoes are for things that return. These don't. They're gone, not erased, are for things that return. These don't. They're gone, not erased. Freed.
Speaker 1:The altar cools beneath your palms. Your knees are sore, your throat feels raw, like something sacred. Just passed through it and it did. The veil is still, and for the first time since entering it, you feel invited to move. So you rise slowly. The mat pulses at your side. You can almost feel the syllables. It's holding vibration in tandem with your breath Kha-vor, kha-vor. Two pieces, now recovered. Your name, once buried, is now beginning to form in fragments.
Speaker 1:You begin the walkout. The veil is not done with you yet. As you cross back over the stone basin, the trees above begin to shift. They move without wind, branches curling inward, barks splitting open just slightly. You realize the veil is listening to you now. Not in judgment, in recognition. You spoke. Not in judgment in recognition. You spoke. Now everything hears you differently. Birds do not scatter. The path does not resist. Even the smallest rocks seem to roll slightly away from your steps, not out of fear but out of respect. You're no longer a man holding in everything. You are a man who lets something out that matters. You ascend the far side of the veil, legs steady, chest open. The trees ahead part and before you exit completely, you hear something, not a voice, not a scream, but a hum. It's coming from the trees themselves, low, resonant like a throat warming up before it speaks again. You glance back once more. The altar is still, but the stone beneath it, barely visible now, is the phrase what you bury becomes your burden, what you speak becomes your staff. You step beyond the last ridge and the jungle exhales, but the wind that follows you out now is no longer testing you. It's following you.
Speaker 1:See, this trial wasn't about volume, it was about permission. See, most men are not quiet by nature. They're quiet by training. They didn't learn to be silent from wisdom. They learned it from consequence. You know, you say the wrong thing, you get punished. You say the right thing at the wrong time, you get ignored. You say anything that reveals you're hurting, you get distance. So over time, they adapt, they speak less or worse, they only speak what the world wants to hear. That's not in peace, that's not control, that is fear wrapped in performance.
Speaker 1:But here's what no one tells you the things you refuse to say, they don't disappear. I'll say that again. The things you refuse to say, they don't disappear. They fester, they rot beneath the surface of your personality, they twist your tone, they choke your clarity, they dull your passion and soon you begin to wonder why your words don't land, why your presence doesn't hit, why your voice lacks weight. It's because your voice has been holding back something real for too long. It no longer trusts you to carry truth. See, the howling veil isn't here to give you confidence. It's here to make you remember the cost of staying silent.
Speaker 1:This wasn't about saying something clever, or delivering a speech, or confronting someone else. This was about confronting yourself. What are the words that you have lived inside of your chest for so long that remain unspoken? What are the sentences that would have changed everything if you only would have said them when it mattered? And, more importantly, what would happen if you spoke them up now? More importantly, what would happen if you spoke them up now? See, most men think power comes from knowing what to say, but real power comes from not hiding anymore. See, confidence is not the absence of fear. It's in the presence of truth spoken through the fear anyways, and the moment you speak the thing you were never allowed to say, you recover a part of your identity that has been held hostage by silence. That's what happened here. This wasn't a ritual of performance. This was a ritual of performance. This was a ritual of permission.
Speaker 1:You gave yourself the right to sound like yourself again, and the island responded. You know, the second piece of your name is now yours for two syllables, a voice restored, and the words you spoke at the altar they're no longer inside you, choking you. Slowly, they've become a part of the wind that follows you now. And here's a lesson you take from this trial, one you must never forget again. And here's a lesson you take from this trial, one you must never forget again Confidence doesn't begin with expression.
Speaker 1:It begins with excavation. What you voice now becomes what you own. So you've spoken the thing. Now you must live with what changed. Not every man can speak. His truth. Fewer can still hold it. This trial, it didn't just ask for a voice, it asked for ownership. So here's your task Before you move on, complete the ritual below.
Speaker 1:Don't rush, don't fake. I should say don't fake it really. Don't make it too harder than it seems, don't over-intextualize it. Right, you're not writing a journal entry, you're releasing a part of yourself. So here's step one Write the sentence you've never said out loud. Not a quote, not a caption, a real sentence that has been locked inside you for years. A couple examples would be. You made me feel invisible and I let it happen. I begged for help and no one came. I've been angry for so long. I don't know who I am without it, or I needed to say, I needed you to say sorry, and you never did. Choose your sentence.
Speaker 1:Step two Say it aloud, alone, full voice. Go somewhere private. Say it once out loud, with your real tone, no whispering, no reading from the page like a script. Say it like it's been burning your throat to come out. Let the sound shake the room, let it feel too real. That means it's working. Now, after you do that, you can bury or burn the paper. You're not keeping this. You're not filing it away somewhere.
Speaker 1:This is a release ritual. Set it on fire safely or burn it into the earth, it doesn't matter. Then say this aloud as it vanishes. Then say this aloud as it vanishes what I carry now is mine, not with what's forced, not what was silence. What I say now will be truth. This is the work of confidence, not affirmation, not posturing, not perfect tone, but truth and ownership. That's, that's your real voice returning, and with it the map shifts again. Two syllables recovered Ka-vor, and from somewhere deep in the trees, the crack of thunder doesn't roll. This time it rings and the next trial has stirred. You know I'm going to say something here really quick.
Speaker 1:So, as I was writing this, as we're right, as we're going through this adventure, you know, one of these, these things that no one really talks about, was that we all carry anger and, to be honest with you, that was something that I carried for a long time. I carried a lot of anger with myself and once I started doing things like this, like actually releasing it, what's really strange what no one tells you is that when you let these things go, because it's been a party for such a long time, you honestly don't know how to react when it's not there anymore, when you fully release it, like you miss it, it's almost like having that really bad friend but they were always there, kind of thing. It's like that. Or having that really bad relationship, but because they were always there, you never felt lonely. That's kind of what happens. When you finally are able to speak your truth, this big weight comes off of you, right, you start to be honest with yourself. But when all that truth comes out and the lies are gone and you start to understand who you are and, like I said, like that I realized that the anger longer controls me. I missed it as odd as that sounds, I truly missed it. But because that anger is gone, I gained clarity. I gained myself again, and that's where you're going to start to see, like you're starting to see this in these two trials so far is that you're gaining yourself through this, and that's what all this is about. That's what Jen's journey is about. It's about more than becoming a gentleman Becoming a gentleman is gaining yourself back.
Speaker 1:So I want to thank you so much, guys, for listening. It truly means the world to me. You know that you're taking time out of your day to listen to this and you know I've gotten some really good feedback on this, you know, on this trial so far, these trials, and you know we're kind of going a new way about this. But you know, one of the things I love about what I do, especially with this, is the creativity that comes with it, and I just appreciate your guys's you know well, I guess, listenership, I guess, if that's a word and you know I appreciate you guys going on this journey with me. So, oh, and as we're talking about that, if you want to go on this journey.
Speaker 1:If this is your first time listening, first off, thank you. And if you like what you're hearing, if you guys could do me a favor if you're on Apple iPod, you know the podcast, whatever. Like this, share it with somebody. Give it the five-star review, give it a review. It'd be so fantastic if you could do that. But also, too, don't just listen to this podcast, actually apply it. I'm telling you, these things are life-changing.
Speaker 1:So if you want to get up, reach out to me, as we're talking about life-changing things, right? If you want to reach out to me, there's three ways you can do this right. First way you see, on the description of the podcast, it says let's chat. So just click on that and you and I can have a conversation. Yes, it's really me, it's not ChatGPT, okay. A second way would be through my email. My email is anthonyatgentsjourneycom. You can reach out to me there. And then, last but not least, you can go to my Instagram. My Instagram is mygentsjourney. I'm there too. So again, guys, thank you so, so, so, so, very much for listening today. And remember this you create your reality, take care Bye.