Men of Honour is The HopeFULL Institute’s respectful relationships seminar for boys in Years 9 to 12. We’ve delivered it in more than 750 schools across Australia. Here is the essay behind it, on impulse, respect, and the kind of man a boy chooses to become. Read it, then book a date for your school.
The night a good boy frightened himself
Not long ago a Year 12 boy wrote to me about the hardest night he’d had. Home had been heavy for months, his long-term girlfriend had ended their relationship, and at a party it all caught up with him at once.
In his words: “I couldn’t control any emotion I was feeling. I ran into a bathroom stall and punched the wall until I collapsed to the floor in tears.”
He’d never thought of himself as an angry person. The force that came out of him that night frightened him. Hold that boy in mind. The day of the seminar, he did something I didn’t see coming.
Have you ever done something the second you felt the urge, then wished you’d waited 10 seconds? So has every man who came before you.
Your brain is rewiring faster than it ever will again. Your body runs on a daily surge of testosterone. And you are the target of a screen built to grab the wheel, with a manosphere selling you a cheap version of manhood every time it does.
Strong forces, all pulling at once. Learning to run them is the work of becoming a man.
Manhood begins in the gap between feeling an impulse and choosing what you do with it. That gap is where character gets built, and the gap can be trained. You are not at the mercy of your appetites.
Manhood begins in the gap. Between the urge and the action. And the gap can be trained.
The lion and the zebra: run your own machine
Picture a lion on the savannah. He sees a zebra, his programming fires, and he hunts. He doesn’t stop mid-chase to ask whether this is ethical, or how the zebra feels about it. The lion is not conflicted. He hunts, he kills, he eats. A lion is appetite from start to finish.
Live by doing whatever your biology orders the moment you feel it, and you’re running the same code as the lion. Fine for an animal. A man is built for more.
The Talmud puts it better than I can. “Who is strong? The one who masters his impulses.” Not the biggest. Not the loudest. The one who runs his own machine.
The Bruce the shark problem: when instinct grabs the wheel
You might remember Bruce from Finding Nemo, the great white trying to swear off fish. He runs a support group, hand on heart, reciting the pledge: “Fish are friends, not food.” He means it. Then Dory gets a nosebleed. One drop of blood in the water, and Bruce is gone. The frenzy takes the wheel, and his mates have to drag him off his new friends.
Here is what makes Bruce worth remembering. He wanted to be good, and one drop of blood overruled it in a second. Some nights your hormones do the same to you. The boy in the bathroom stall felt exactly that: instinct with both hands on the wheel, and no gap between the feeling and the fist.
Here is the difference between you and Bruce. You have a larger prefrontal cortex than any animal, the part of you that can pause and choose. It plans ahead, weighs consequences, and holds an impulse back long enough to decide. In your teens that system is still being built, and it keeps maturing into your mid-20s, which is exactly why the gap is worth training now. William James, the father of American psychology, saw it a century before the brain scans did: “The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.”
The shark has no gap. You do.
I feel the impulse. I run the machine. The machine does not run me.
Respect is a code, not a feeling
It takes nothing to be cruel, to fire off in anger, to use someone to satisfy an appetite. That’s the path of least resistance, and water and cowards both take it. It takes real strength to keep your word and treat people well when every hormone is voting the other way.
Let your appetites run the show and you become predictable, and easy to play. Anyone who knows what you want can pull your strings. Live by your values and you become hard to move.
A Year 10 boy at Saint Stephen’s College emailed me after a recent seminar. He’d asked a girl out, she’d said yes, and he wanted to do it properly. Here’s the line that stopped me.
“I don’t want those thoughts to control how I view the girl I really like.”
He wanted a relationship built on respect, not just attraction, and he was asking how to train his own mind to get there. That’s the whole game. He still feels desire. He just decides what it gets to do. That is respectful relationships, in one boy’s own words, chosen and not preached.
In the age of AI, be a human, more
AI can write the essay, make the picture, and ship the code faster than you can read this line. But it never has to override a single impulse to do the right thing. It imitates emotion, but it doesn’t feel for a mate who’s hurting. You do, every day. Your humanity is the edge.
Lao Tzu said it 2,500 years ago. “Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” Your honour, your word, and the nerve to look someone in the eye and stand for what’s right: that’s the part no algorithm can copy.
Same boy, same day: the proof
Now come back to the boy from the bathroom stall. The day of the seminar, the test arrived within hours. He found out one of his close mates was meeting up with his ex-girlfriend. A week earlier that news would have flattened him, sadness or anger straight to the wheel.
This time was different. “Your speech was still fresh in my mind. I was so proud of myself for regulating my feelings and letting go.”
Same boy. Same kind of trigger. The opposite response, and only hours apart. Nothing in his life got easier that afternoon. He found the gap, and he used it. Then he built something to hold the ground he’d taken: 20 minutes of guitar a day, his outlet, on a schedule.
That is the entire case, written by a 17-year-old. The gap is real. The gap can be trained. Train it, and you choose who is driving.
Tonight’s work: define your code
Next time you feel that shark moment, anger, desire, laziness, or ego, do this first. Notice it. Name it. Then take the 10-second gap and decide who is driving: your appetite, or your character.
Here’s tonight’s work, and you’ll need a pen. Write down the kind of man you want to be in 3 lines. Then write the impulse that has been running you. Under it, write what you’ll do in the gap next time. Don’t practise what you don’t want to become.
For school leaders and heads of wellbeing
Why schools book a respectful relationships speaker for boys
Boys today are negotiating manhood with very few honest conversations and a feed full of bad maps. The federal government has committed $83.5 million over 6 years to consent and respectful relationships education, with $77.6 million flowing to states and schools through to 2028. Every school now carries the duty to deliver it.
Any school can put respect on the timetable. The rare thing is a man who can hold a hall of Year 10 boys and make it land hard enough to change what they do on Monday. That’s the part most speakers can’t do, and it’s the one thing Glen is booked for. The coaches and teachers who’ve sat through every kind of speaker say it plainest:
“In 12 years of professional football we’ve heard a ton of motivational speakers. Nothing was as meaningful as this.”
NYC Head Coach, Canberra Raiders.
Men of Honour is a 2-hour seminar for boys in Years 9 to 12. Glen sits across from the room and has 7 conversations they don’t usually get: porn, sex and respect, nutrition, training, money, friendship, and the kind of man they want to become. The room is safe but not soft. He doesn’t lecture, doesn’t moralise, and doesn’t swear to win them over. He tells the truth.
We know what boys walk out with because they write in, often within the week. They cancel a habit they’ve carried for years. They eat breakfast for the first time in months. They drag the weight set out of the garage. They stop accepting “yeah, all good” from a mate who clearly isn’t. They go home and have a conversation with their dad or mum that hasn’t happened in a long time. Every boy gets the Men of Honour workbook, so the 7 conversations keep going at the kitchen table.
What schools and students say
“You inspired me to get my act together physically. I brought out my old weight set and started training again. I’ve replaced unhealthy snacks with protein bars. You helped me get my life back on track.”
Year 10 student, Ormiston College.
“Even the most disengaged boys found Glen engaging and inspirational. Several parents rang to congratulate us on a presentation their sons came home eager to discuss.”
Head Teacher, Wellbeing, Camden High School.
“Thank you for being a father figure for me, for showing me how to pick myself up, and for giving me conviction to chase what I want.”
Year 12 student, St Ignatius’ College Riverview.
Book the best school speaker for your boys
Men of Honour runs in person, anywhere in Australia. We don’t do virtual. The impact lives in the room.
To book, email hello@thehopefullinstitute.com with your school, your preferred term, and the year levels you want in the hall. We’ll hold a date and send the details.
Want to see it on paper first? Ask for the Men of Honour info pack in the same email, and we’ll send the seminar outline, what students walk out with, and pricing.
Frequently asked questions
What is Men of Honour?
Men of Honour is a 2-hour respectful relationships seminar for boys in Years 9 to 12, delivered by Glen Gerreyn of The HopeFULL Institute. It covers the conversations boys need and rarely get, on respect, screens, training, money, and manhood.
What does the seminar cover?
Seven conversations: porn, sex and respect, nutrition, training, money, friendship, and the kind of man a boy chooses to become. Every boy leaves with a workbook to keep the conversations going at home.
What year levels is it for?
Boys in Years 9 to 12. It works across every school type, every demographic, and every academic band.
Where in Australia do you travel?
Australia-wide. Men of Honour is in-person only, in metro and regional schools.
How do we book a respectful relationships speaker for our school?
Email hello@thehopefullinstitute.com with your school and preferred dates, and ask for the info pack. We’ll confirm availability and hold a date.
Male by birth. Man by choice.
Character is a skill a boy builds, one gap at a time. So is hope. We teach both.
