The Barbarian in You: Reclaiming Vigor, Wonder, and Real Friendship

Ed Hinman wants you to know the barbarian isn’t who you think.

Not the axe-swinging brute breaking things in a movie. In Ed’s telling, the barbarian is the most alive, most ancient part of you — the renegade who lives with vigor, wonder, and fellowship, and trusts what his own heart is telling him. Ed is a Naval Academy grad, a Marine Corps veteran, and an executive protection specialist who walked away from the paved path to chase what he loved, earned a master’s in history, and turned his writing into a career. His book, The Barbarian in You, is essentially a field guide for getting those alive parts back.

And the best news in the whole conversation: it’s more available than you think.

The Three Pillars

Ed organizes a flourishing life around three feelings — and they’re not abstractions. They’re the chemistry of being human: the endorphins, serotonin, and oxytocin our evolution rewards us with when we live the way we’re built to live.

Vigor is physical effort and aliveness — any movement you’re actually drawn to. Wonder is awe, imagination, meaning — the enchantment Ed feels walking a battlefield or a cemetery. Fellowship is real connection, especially between men. The people who have all three in their lives, Ed has noticed, tend to flourish. And here’s the encouraging part: you don’t have to move to the woods or overhaul your life to get them. You just have to make a little room.

Just Showing Up Is Ninety Percent of It

Modern life doesn’t hand adults fellowship the way the military or a team once did. So it takes a bit more intention — but far less than we fear.

Ed compares it to a workout: there’s resistance before you go, and afterward you’re always glad you did. Jon told the story of following a guy online who was chasing a sub-five-minute mile at 50, discovering he lived in the same small Colorado town, and going for a no-agenda sunrise run — vigor, wonder, and fellowship in one morning. The lesson both men keep landing on: we assume connection takes far more effort than it does. Just showing up is ninety percent of it.

How to Build Fellowship on Purpose

Ed’s favorite proof is his own book club. Thirteen years ago, lonely for real friendship in Los Angeles, he cold-invited the husbands and boyfriends of his wife’s friends: bring a book you love, come to my place. They came. It’s now roughly 25 men who gather every quarter around a fire.

What he learned is that he wasn’t alone in wanting it — and that a shared thing makes all the difference. Jon runs; Ed reads. “You need a ball,” as Will put it — a reason to gather that isn’t just “hang out.” And when it’s just men, Ed noticed, something opens up: more supportive, more vulnerable, more real.

Trust Your Own Heart

The spine of Ed’s philosophy is Emerson’s Self-Reliance: “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” We give enormous credence to logic and the five senses, Ed says, and quietly ignore the intuitions and primal inclinations we’re born with.

Leaving the military, Ed skipped the expected paths and asked a simpler question: what do I love? The answer was history, so he studied it — then combined that unlikely mastery with a security career, and his writing became the vehicle for his whole path. His test for whether a calling is genuinely yours rather than ego chasing status: you’d still do it if no one ever knew. Will’s version is blunter and just as useful — if it’s not a “fuck yes,” it’s a no.

And Ed is careful and kind about the caveat: there is real honor in working a job you don’t love to provide for your family. He’s not telling anyone to blow up their life. He’s inviting you to add one thing — get up thirty minutes earlier, call an old friend — that gives you vigor, wonder, or fellowship. That’s enough to change the whole texture of a life.

Give From the Overflow

It can feel selfish to pour energy into yourself. Ed and Jon reframe it completely: you fill your own cup so you can give from the overflow, not the reservoir. Work out, do your thing, project what Ed calls your “bat signal” — the frequency you give off when you’re doing what you love with intention — and you naturally attract and inspire the people around you. Self-care, done right, is generosity.

You Don’t Have to Go Alone

Ed closes on the hardest and most human part: the dark seasons. His metaphor is the shield wall — a wall made not of bricks but of men. When life starts firing arrows, you’ll need your friends standing with you, which is exactly why you show up for them first.

Sometimes, he says, you need the pain to wake up — he wouldn’t trade the hard stretch that redirected his life. But you don’t have to walk through it by yourself. Reach out. Be vulnerable enough to say, “here’s what I’ve got going on.” In Ed’s experience, every time he has, the friend on the other end is grateful to be asked — the way Jon describes it, you’re not a burden, you’re handing someone the gift of being needed. Dark seasons pass. Keep the faith. You are the captain of your ship.

More about Ed Hinman

Blog: barbarianu.com
Book: The Barbarian in You — available on Amazon
Writing: featured in Task & Purpose, Business Insider, and The Washington Post
Background: U.S. Naval Academy, U.S. Marine Corps (8 years), Master’s in History
Day work: executive protection at Gavin de Becker & Associates

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Co-produced by Robert Lopez | cratesaudio.com