Robert Kress Functional Pharmacist, Newburgh, MI (2025)

11/02/2025

The literature and “experts” point to Low T, prostate issues, metabolic disarray, and overweight/obesity as root causes of ED. Those matter—but they’re not the whole story. Here are 5 core factors no one talks about (and what we work on inside the Midlife Man Collective and my Executive Coaching):
1. Dysregulated nervous system — constant fight/flight blunts arousal and blood flow. 🧠⚡
2. Not feeling desired — when a man doesn’t feel wanted, drive shuts down. ❤️‍🩹
3. “Not enough” loop — old shame stories crush confidence and intimacy. 🔁
4. Communication walls — unsaid truths create pressure and distance. 🧱
5. Distraction & addiction — numbing habits disconnect you from self & partner. 📱🍷

If this hits home, you’re not broken—you’re out of alignment. Rewire the system, repair the story, rebuild connection.

Join us: Midlife Man Collective (community + tools).
Go deeper: Midlife Man Executive Coaching (private, focused).
DM “ED” and I’ll send next steps.

11/01/2025

Thoreau called it “quiet desperation.” David Brooks calls it the Second Mountain. Mythology calls it Chiron’s Return. I call it the moment you finally see the next summit—and choose to climb.

Midlife isn’t a crisis; it’s a course-correction. Our priorities stop whispering and start shouting. We notice what we’ve ignored: energy slipping, thinking getting cloudy, weight creeping up. That’s not “just getting older.” It’s your body and story asking for a rebuild—from the foundation up.

What we rebuild:
• Strength, sleep, and metabolism
• Hormones and nervous system balance
• Mindset, boundaries, and purpose

If you’ve waited 30 years to become who you really are, that’s okay—just don’t wait another 30. The path your father or uncles took isn’t the only path. The time is now.

Join the work:
→ Midlife Man Collective for brotherhood + momentum
→ 90-Day Executive Coaching for focused strategy and accountability

DM me and I’ll send next steps.

10/31/2025

Reading Hemingway reminds me: midlife isn’t about collecting more—it’s about what you refuse to trade.

Notes from To Have and Have Not for men in midlife:
• Decide your code before the storm; pressure reveals it.
• Isolation is the costliest poverty—brotherhood compounds.
• Boundaries create freedom; say “not at that price” to numbing habits.
• Agency beats circumstance—build skills, own your choices.

This is our work in the Midlife Man Collective: fewer trophies, more truth. Less “have,” more be.

Two three to step in:
• Join the Midlife Man Collective—community, training, accountability (link in bio).
• 1:1 Executive Coaching (90 days)—custom plan + weekly momentum. DM EXEC90 for details.
- you're a practitioner who wants to build a midlife medicine practice of their own, DM me now

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10/30/2025

🧭 Lead Your Own Journey

Helping is beautiful—when you’re asked. But steering other people’s boats becomes an energy leak, a procrastination tool, and a quiet way to avoid your own path.

Why this matters:
• You trade what you control (your choices) for what you don’t (their outcomes).
• You delay your progress while breeding resentment and dependency.
• People don’t own their wins if you row for them.

“Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.” — Epictetus

How it sneaks in (examples):
• Turning every text into a mini-coaching session—even when no one asked.
• Cleaning up a coworker’s mess before they’re aware of it.
• Managing your partner’s mood so you don’t have to feel your own discomfort.
• “Fixing” your grown kids’ challenges instead of letting them learn.
• Doom-scrolling advice accounts about their problem while you ignore your next step.

A better stance: Be a lighthouse, not a tugboat—steady, visible, available when invited. Keep your hands on your oars: your training, your work block, your word kept.

If you’re ready to build the inner strength and structure to stay on your course, the 🧭 Midlife Man Collective leads with functional medicine, story, and community. DM me or hit the link in bio.

10/29/2025

🎸 The Nebraska Moment 🛣️

Bruce rode the big wave—live from Asbury Park, Born to Run highways, Jersey in his bones. Stadium sing-alongs, sure…but underneath the noise? A rumble. Old stories, father gravity, that urge to keep running because it feels easier than feeling.

Then came Nebraska. Not an accident—a confession. Four-track on a kitchen table. Songs like skeletons. The soul saying: tell the truth. Dark years, real depression. Not a marketing plan. A reckoning. (And somewhere on that road west, a quiet diner and the realization: she’s right.)

Here’s the turn: facing the shadow didn’t end him—it made him. The writing got deeper. The storytelling hit marrow. Iconic didn’t come from polish; it came from honesty.

Every man carries a shadow. Different origin stories—fathers, hometown gravity, the myths we told ourselves to survive. None of it random. It’s the map. If you want the real voice, you spend time there. Not to move in—just to listen. That’s where the surface songs end…and the marrow songs begin.

🧭 Midlife Man Collective — We lead with functional medicine to build you from the ground up—foundational strength for your next steps—woven with story, myth, and a supportive community.
DM me now or click the link in my bio.

10/29/2025

🧭 “Where you come from is gone. Nothing outside you can give you any place. In yourself, right now, is all the place you’ve got.”
— John Landau, Deliver Me From Nowhere

That line landed because it’s what men in midlife are starving for: presence.

Not more productivity.
Not more hacks.
Not more noise.

Presence.

We talk a lot about “getting out into nature to reset.” And yes — nature is medicine. Nervous system downshifts. Breath slows. The signal clears.

But here’s the pivot:
You don’t actually need to be in nature to access that state.

You have to be able to access it in real life — in conflict, in fatigue, in work, in your relationship, in the moment you feel yourself getting hijacked.

That’s what I coach men to do.
And that’s what I train practitioners and coaches to deliver.

Through my Men’s Health Coaching Program, you get both tracks:

1️⃣ Your personal work
• nervous system regulation
• stronger energy, sleep, clarity
• dismantling the old narratives that keep you performing instead of living

2️⃣ Your professional work
• how to coach men from presence, not pressure
• how to integrate men’s health, emotional resilience, and functional medicine
• how to build a practice around real transformation, not surface-level optimization

This isn’t just “get healthier.”
This is: become grounded enough to lead.

If you’re ready to walk that path for yourself — and learn how to offer it to other men:

🔥 DM me to talk about the Men’s Health Coaching Program.

⸻

10/28/2025

Step into nature to step back into yourself.
We all know the metrics—lower cortisol, steadier blood pressure, stronger immunity. But the deeper ROI is reconnection: outside is how many leaders remember who they are inside. Freedom. Possibility. Play.

If you’re building a life with more signal and less noise, schedule time outdoors the way you schedule meetings.

🧭 Midlife Man Collective: we lead with functional medicine, story, and community to rebuild from the ground up. DM me to join.

10/27/2025

🧭 “You have to risk to find life.” — Joseph Campbell

Most people don’t stay where they are because it’s fulfilling.
They stay because it’s familiar.

Comfort has a gravity to it — it pulls us toward the predictable, even when it no longer serves us.
We mistake numbness for peace, avoidance for calm, and comfort for safety.

But the path to growth — in health, business, or leadership — always requires a willingness to step into the unknown.

To risk.
To feel.
To heal.

And healing isn’t about bypassing pain — it’s about giving your nervous system the message that it’s safe to experience it.

That safety doesn’t come from force.
It comes from foundation:
🌙 Right sleep — to anchor your recovery
🥗 Right food — to stabilize your energy
🏋️‍♂️ Right movement — to discharge tension
🤝 Right community — to remind you that growth isn’t meant to happen alone

When the body knows it’s safe, the mind can explore what it once avoided.
That’s where transformation begins.

Because what we often call pain is usually just potential we’ve kept hidden in the shadow.

The work, then, isn’t just to chase more — it’s to meet yourself more deeply.

🔥 This is the heart of what I teach inside The Midlife Man Collective and Beyond the Labs Functional Medicine Training —
how to integrate physiology with psychology, and courage with clarity.

If you’re ready to step out of numbness and into purpose —
👉 DM me to learn more about The Midlife Man Collective or Beyond the Labs.

10/24/2025

🩸 You are not required to bleed every time someone else gets cut emotionally.

Empathy is a strength — but without boundaries, it becomes a wound.

As leaders, clinicians, and coaches, we’re wired to care.
But there’s a difference between being present and taking ownership of another person’s pain.

Your role isn’t to absorb their emotions — it’s to hold the space for them to feel and process their own.
Allow them to have their experience.
Don’t try to take it away, and don’t retreat when it gets uncomfortable.

Hold steady.
Stay grounded.
Let your presence do the work your words can’t.

When you stay calm in someone else’s chaos, you give them something far more powerful than advice — you give them safety, steadiness, and perspective.

That’s not detachment — that’s discipline.
That’s empathy with boundaries.
That’s emotional mastery.

🔥 This is one of the core principles I teach inside the Midlife Man Collective and Beyond the Labs Functional Medicine Training — how to lead, listen, and serve without losing yourself in the process.

If you’re ready to elevate your capacity as a man, leader, or practitioner —
👉 DM me to learn more about joining The Midlife Man Collective or Beyond the Labs.

⸻

10/23/2025

🧭 Midlife Man Collective — Rule 62
Begin holding yourself to a higher standard of potential before you ask others to do the same.

We often talk about leadership as the art of influence — but real leadership begins with alignment.

Before we can elevate our teams, clients, or families, we have to elevate our own standards — in discipline, communication, and presence.

The best mentors don’t demand change from others; they embody it first.
They create an atmosphere where accountability feels like inspiration, not pressure.

This is true in every realm — business, medicine, relationships, and personal growth.

If you want others to rise, start by standing taller yourself.
Hold your own line before asking anyone else to hold theirs.

That’s what the Midlife Man Collective is built on —
men committed to potential, purpose, and higher standards.

And it’s the same principle we teach inside Beyond the Labs Functional Medicine Training —
because transformation in others begins with transformation in you.

🔥 If you’re ready to raise your standard — as a man or as a practitioner — DM me to learn more about joining The Midlife Man Collective or Beyond the Labs.

⸻

10/22/2025

Trust the Season
You can schedule effort—you can’t schedule outcomes.
Plant. Tend. Let ripening take the time it takes.

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu

Today, focus on inputs you control. Release the deadline you don’t.
Mantra: I sow and tend; time ripens. Effort is mine—the outcome and timing are not.

10/21/2025

🧭 Non-resistance isn’t retreat — it’s mastery.

In practice — and in life — resistance drains clarity.
It tightens the mind, narrows perspective, and blinds us to the subtle patterns unfolding right in front of us.

Gratitude is more than a mindset tool.
It’s a physiological shift — a way of opening the nervous system to possibility rather than constriction.
When you practice gratitude, you’re not ignoring reality — you’re choosing to engage with it without resistance.

Revisiting your wins does the same.
It’s not ego — it’s integration.
You’re teaching your body what success feels like, so it knows how to return there again.

And when you recount synchronicities and connect the dots in your own life, you begin to see how often order hides inside what once looked like chaos.

This is how we train non-resistance.
Not by doing less, but by being more aware — more attuned — more aligned.

Because clarity doesn’t come from force.
It comes from space.

🔥 This is one of the core tenets we teach inside Beyond the Labs — to move beyond data and into wisdom.
To learn to see patterns not just in labs, but in life.

If you’re ready to expand your practice and your presence —
👉 DM me to learn more about Beyond the Labs Functional Medicine Training or The Midlife Man Collective.

Robert Kress Functional Pharmacist

11/02/2025

11/01/2025

10/31/2025

10/30/2025

10/29/2025

10/29/2025

10/28/2025

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10/21/2025

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