Brian Mattocks
Host and Founder of A Mason's Work - a podcast designed to help you use symbolism to grow. He's been working in the craft for over a decade and served as WM, trustee, and sat in every appointed chair in a lodge - at least once :D
Appears in 309 Episodes
From Catastrophe to Agency: Walking a Different Street
Portia Nelson's poem \"Autobiography in Five Short Chapters\" describes falling into the same hole in the sidewalk, again and again — first by accident, then out of ha...
Follow the Rationalization, Find the Work
Most of the setup for your worst moments happened well before the moment itself. By the time you're trying to lower your blood pressure or walk back something you just...
Opening the History Book of Your Own Behavior
Looking at your own behavioral history honestly is genuinely difficult, and the main reason isn't that the material is too painful — it's that most people can't separa...
You Cannot See the Lesson While It Is Happening
The frustrating truth about recurring patterns is that they're nearly invisible in the moment they're operating. When you're emotionally enmeshed in a situation — angr...
You Will Work the Same Stone Again
Workman's Rule 5 from Brian Mattocks's book A Mason's Work is blunt: you will work the same stone until you get it right. That isn't a metaphor for punishment. It's a ...
Ability Is Not Permission to Interfere
One of the more uncomfortable truths about self-development is that the more capable you become, the more tempted you are to reach into other people's lives and fix th...
Anxiety Has a Name, Find It First
Brian Mattocks opens a week-long exploration of anxiety not with a solution, but with an honest confession: he lives with anxiety himself, and the hardest part is that...
Boundaries Build What Anger Can Only Damage
Anger comes from care. That single recognition, sitting with it honestly, reorders a lot of what men in leadership roles think they need to fix about themselves. You a...
The Engine Under Anger Is Care
Pull on the thread of the expectation gap long enough and you find something that most conversations about anger never reach: care. The reason the anger flares hardest...
Control Is a Grip That Kills What You Love
Anger that is non-directed is not functionally useful. You cannot reliably turn raw rage into productive work — but you can turn it into productive focus, and that dis...
The Expectation Gap That Fuels Your Rage
Beneath nearly every episode of anger is a gap — the distance between what you expected to happen and what actually did. Brian uses a Father's Day fishing trip gone si...
Anger Is a Signal Not a Character Flaw
Every father, lodge leader, and person in charge of anything has felt it — that flash of rage that seems to come from nowhere. Brian opens this week by reframing anger...
Let Them Figure It Out: Why Withholding the Answer Is a Gift
The teacher who gave you every answer to every question didn't help you learn anything. The one who sat with you while you struggled through the problem — who gave you...
How to Lighten a Load Without Picking It Up
Knowing you shouldn't fix someone else's problem doesn't automatically tell you what to do instead. This episode is about what you actually can do — three concrete mov...
Abiding: The Third Option Nobody Teaches You
When someone brings you a problem, the obvious exits are fix it or leave them to it. Neither is what Brian is pointing toward this week. The third option is abiding — ...
The Reward Loop Behind Your Problem-Solving Habit
Most people who rush to solve didn't develop that habit in a vacuum. They were rewarded for it. As a kid, solving problems earned approval. That approval got attached ...
Work Your Own Stone: Insight Is Not Jurisdiction
When a friend is struggling, the impulse to jump in with answers feels generous. It feels like love. But Brian Mattocks opens this week by naming what's really driving...
Does It Square: The Only Honest Weekly Review
Brian closes the week by introducing the square as the tool that makes honest self-evaluation possible, and by redefining what virtue actually means. In Brian Mattocks...
The Empty Journal and the Architecture of Avoidance
Brian opens this episode with a confession: he owns half a dozen beautiful, completely blank journals. Each one was acquired with a clear intention. None of them were ...
When the Gavel Swings at Nothing
There is a specific kind of mental activity that mimics useful work while producing none. Brian opens this episode at 2 a.m., describing the anxious rehearsal of a pro...