Order of Man - October 25, 2024


5 Ways to Bolster Your Confidence as a Man ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

Topics
boundaries abundance and commitments work to validate yourself
Hosted by
Ryan Michler
Mentioned
Connor Beaton Matt Boudreau Apogee Strong Larry Hagner
Rigging the Election, Owning Unnecessary Stuff, and Showing Up Powerfully ｜ ASK ME ANYTHING JEFFERSON FISHER ｜ How to Communicate Like a Man

Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

182.84

Word count

4,393

Sentence count

274

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Every man wants to be more secure in himself. It's not a question of if he wants to feel more secure, but how does he do it? We're constantly inundated and bombarded with our own feelings, our own emotions, things that fire us up, and things that make us mad. And it seems like too often we as men are tossed to and fro by external sources, other people, the circumstances we might find ourselves in. And today I want to share with you how you can be more secured as a man, and also 5 ways to bolster your confidence.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Don't have an opinion about everything and secondary or ancillary to that is not every
00:00:06.500 hill is worth dying on. It's not worth fighting for. If you're not interested in whatever the
00:00:12.000 subject is, you don't need to have an opinion about it. That's something I'm working on. I'm
00:00:17.040 getting better at it with a little thought and a little maturity. So I'm really trying personally
00:00:22.120 to make a conscious effort not to have an opinion about everything or if I do not really always feel
00:00:27.800 the need to share it. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and
00:00:35.300 boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
00:00:41.400 You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is
00:00:48.000 who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
00:00:53.300 you can call yourself a man. Every man wants to be more secure in himself. It's not really a
00:01:00.800 question of if he wants to be more secure, but how does he do it? We're constantly inundated and
00:01:05.720 bombarded with our own feelings, our own emotions, things that trigger us, things that fire us up,
00:01:11.080 things that make us mad, things that make us sad. And it seems like too often we as men are tossed to
00:01:16.640 and fro by external sources, other people, the circumstances we might find ourselves in.
00:01:23.920 And today I want to share with you how you can be more secure as a man and also five ways to bolster
00:01:30.540 your confidence. And I'm going to share those with you here in a minute. But before we get into it,
00:01:35.860 I just want to tell you why this is so important. And it might be intuitive. You might understand,
00:01:40.980 but it is crucial that we have a good understanding and knowledge as to why it's important that we do this.
00:01:46.000 Number one is you're just going to feel better. You know, I talk with men every single day that
00:01:50.640 are not feeling good about themselves. They're down on themselves. They're depressed. They're
00:01:54.920 anxious, potentially even suicidal. If you want to feel better about who you are and how you're
00:02:00.580 showing up, then your ability to be more secure is going to be a big indicator of that. Number two
00:02:06.420 is you're going to build influence with other people. We've all been around emotionally reckless
00:02:11.380 people. We've been around those people who are completely volatile, ups and downs and highs and
00:02:16.960 lows. And that does nothing to garner the influence that they may otherwise have with us. The fact of
00:02:23.540 the matter is, is that you want people to be influenced by you. And in many ways, you want them
00:02:28.580 to like who you are as a person or a leader or a father or husband or fill in the blank with your
00:02:34.940 label of choice. But it is important that your kids are influenced by you. You're trying to lead
00:02:40.860 them well. It is important that your significant other is influenced by you. Same thing with your
00:02:44.760 clients and your employees and your employers and everybody else. This is antithetical to the common
00:02:51.520 phrase and common mindset of, I don't care what anybody else thinks of me. Obviously, we ought to care
00:02:57.740 about what some people think. And we need to build influence with those individuals. The third
00:03:02.640 reason I think is so important is that when you build the type of confidence and security that
00:03:07.940 I'll be addressing today, you are going to create more opportunities for yourself. This directly stems
00:03:14.380 from your ability to be influential in people's lives. And when a client, for example, believes you to be
00:03:21.420 secure and believes you to be in control of who you are and have the confidence that comes with it,
00:03:27.760 a client, for example, might do more business with you, might be more apt to refer,
00:03:32.640 people your way. Maybe there's opportunities to go work with a different employer or someone else
00:03:39.080 because that person sees you as a confident, capable man. So these are the reasons why it's so crucial
00:03:47.520 that we learn to be more secure. Let's break this down into five steps. Number one is constantly working
00:03:54.620 to validate yourself. It's very common for men to seek external validation. And we do it in a lot
00:04:03.700 of different forms. It could be in the form of being validated by a woman or women. It could be
00:04:09.700 validation in the form of physical possessions that somebody might compliment us about or the amount of
00:04:16.540 money that's in our bank account or the praise and notoriety that comes with having six pack abs and the
00:04:22.440 perfect physique. And there's nothing wrong with someone complimenting you. In fact, if somebody
00:04:27.740 does compliment you, I suggest you say, thank you. That means a lot to me. And then go on about your
00:04:31.880 way. So it's not about ignoring or overlooking or rejecting or even rebuking somebody who might
00:04:38.520 compliment you. It's the motive. Is your motive to get that from other people or is the motive to do
00:04:45.480 that for yourself? If you're getting it from other people, what ends up happening is that you as a man
00:04:50.840 will work to manipulate others in order to get the validation that you want. You might say things a
00:04:56.960 certain way, act a certain way that is out of character and or not in alignment with who you are.
00:05:02.280 It's very off-putting from a perspective of the other person. And it's counterintuitive to at least
00:05:09.940 counterproductive, I should say, to you being able to build influence with people. Influence and respect
00:05:15.900 relationships are built on the backbone of trust. And if you're doing things to manipulate other
00:05:22.140 people's behavior or response, eventually they're just not going to trust you and you're going to
00:05:27.740 shoot yourself in the foot. So how do we validate ourselves? Well, by making commitments to ourselves
00:05:35.780 and then honoring those commitments. It's really that simple. If you say tomorrow morning, you're going
00:05:41.700 to wake up at 5 a.m. and you wake up at 6 a.m., you're going to undermine your confidence. But if
00:05:48.180 you get up at 5 a.m., even though you might be tired and want to sleep in and not want to get out
00:05:52.460 of bed, that is going to help you just a little bit, a little sliver of help to build up and bolster
00:05:58.180 the security that you have in yourself and the ability that you have to validate yourself, especially
00:06:03.300 when things are hard. If you keep those commitments, you're going to know that you're a man
00:06:07.840 that is a man of his word, that has integrity, that does hard things, that doesn't let external
00:06:15.020 circumstance get in the way of him accomplishing his goals. The most successful people I know are
00:06:19.700 the ones that keep commitments to themselves religiously, without fail, without exception.
00:06:26.200 So how do you know if you're seeking validation from others? And how do you know if you're trying to
00:06:33.640 validate yourself? Well, think of your intent or your motive behind sharing the things that you share.
00:06:42.080 So for example, if you want to tell somebody about a successful day that you had at the office,
00:06:47.920 is it so that you can brag and you can tell everybody and show everybody how wonderful you are?
00:06:53.560 Or is there a lesson, for example, or story in there that you want to share with other people
00:06:58.500 so they can learn from your success and apply it in their own life? Same story, right? Telling people
00:07:05.640 about how successful the day was, but the motive is service to others or the motive is service to
00:07:12.420 self. So who is it that you're trying to serve? If it's other people, you can rest assured that you're
00:07:17.320 probably not out there seeking validation. You're trying to be a value add to another person's life.
00:07:23.700 Let's talk about point number two, knowing who you are. It is amazing to me how many men do not know
00:07:31.560 who they are. They don't know what drives them, what compels them, what motivates them, what scares
00:07:37.740 them. We're acting on these scripts throughout our life without even knowing what the formula is.
00:07:43.060 And there is a formula. Everything that you do and say and think and the way you behave is all a product
00:07:49.640 of the stories that you either consciously or subconsciously have adopted in your life.
00:07:58.020 And everything is a story. Some are more accurate than others, but there's no story that we have in
00:08:04.200 our own lives that are entirely accurate because we have bad memories. We have biases. We have our
00:08:10.800 emotions that tend to cloud and get in the way. So we've got stories that we've made up in our lives
00:08:17.100 from the time that we were kids to the time right now. And every way that you behave is just a product
00:08:23.600 of the stories you told yourself as a result of the circumstances you found yourself in, whether those
00:08:30.640 were self-imposed circumstances or circumstances beyond your control. So when it comes to knowing
00:08:37.100 yourself, a man who knows himself and knows what stories he's operating his life by is going to be
00:08:43.580 more secure, partly because he's going to now give himself the control, the ability to write and
00:08:50.560 craft stories that are more valuable in what he wants to accomplish. So for example, let's say
00:08:58.860 that you have been working with a company for the past 15 years and the company's not doing very well,
00:09:07.340 or maybe the economy's not doing well. And your employer comes to you and he says, Hey, look,
00:09:11.540 we're having a hard time right now. We have to do layoffs and you're one of the people that we're
00:09:17.860 going to have to lay off. Now, one story you might tell yourself in that situation is that the boss is
00:09:24.080 out to get you. The economy's in the tank. Nobody likes you. Nobody appreciates you. Nobody cares about
00:09:30.720 you. These are all disempowering stories. An alternative story might be, this is an opportunity for me to go out
00:09:39.260 and create something new, to try something different, to put myself in a better situation and an opportunity.
00:09:45.620 This is a moment of learning for me that if I ever find myself in this type of position again, maybe I do need
00:09:51.060 to be more valuable to the organization. And maybe I need to work a little harder, a little smarter, be more
00:09:56.140 creative. Or maybe I should start that business that I've always wanted to start, but I've never given myself
00:10:01.200 permission to do it. Same story or excuse me, same set of circumstances, but completely different
00:10:07.560 stories. One is disempowering and one is empowering. Now, I'm not saying that we need to make the best of
00:10:14.740 every situation and overlook the negative sides of losing a job, for example. But if you're going to make
00:10:20.820 a story up, you might as well make up one that serves you. So what are your stories from the time you
00:10:25.900 were little to you right now? Also, what triggers you? You know, what fires you up? What makes you mad?
00:10:35.000 What are the things that really bother you? I feel like the more that we can put a face with the things
00:10:39.600 that bother us, the less likely it is for those things to have power and control over us. It's when
00:10:45.660 we don't identify those things. It's when we just let them work casually in the background that we get
00:10:51.820 ourselves into trouble. I like journaling personally. Got my journal right here somewhere. There it is.
00:10:59.220 So every day I'm writing something in here. Maybe it's a complete journal entry of my day and maybe
00:11:05.440 it's just a thought that I had or an after action review that I've done on my own personal performance
00:11:10.500 on this podcast or an interview that I've done or a conversation that I've had. But I'm constantly
00:11:15.680 writing those things down in here because I want to know what makes me tick, what makes me who I am.
00:11:21.520 And the more that I know that, the more secure I can be with who I am and the more easily capable I am
00:11:28.460 of figuring out what my weaknesses and flaws are and shoring those things up as well. Let's get into
00:11:35.020 point number three. Point number three is committing to boundaries. Guys, I've talked about boundaries so
00:11:43.220 much, but boundaries in your life about the way that you will be treated, the way that people will show up,
00:11:49.360 the expectation that you have at a base level for yourself and for other people and the way they
00:11:54.100 handle a relationship with you is crucial. And the less, excuse me, I should say the fewer
00:12:01.000 boundaries that you have or also your inability to uphold your boundaries is going to completely
00:12:08.240 demoralize you. You're going to allow people to trample all over you. You're not going to be able to share
00:12:14.400 your insights and thoughts. You're not going to be able to create opportunities for yourself. You're
00:12:19.800 not going to be able to express yourself in a powerful way because you're letting other people
00:12:24.660 treat you in a way that isn't conducive to your growth. This might be a relationship that you have
00:12:31.060 and maybe the woman in your life is verbally abusive and the way she talks with you is not acceptable, 1.00
00:12:37.640 but you just roll over because you think that's just what we ought to do. And you want to
00:12:41.460 not rock the boat or, you know, keep the marriage together. Or maybe a client berates you and belittles
00:12:47.040 you because you made a simple mistake. Our inability to stand up in a respectful, appropriate way often
00:12:56.540 will spell the difference between us being emotionally tormented, even doing it to ourselves, or emotionally
00:13:03.460 secure. A man that says to somebody who mistreats him, hey, look, I know you're upset right now,
00:13:10.060 but I refuse to be treated the way that I'm being treated right now. You can't tell me that that guy
00:13:16.740 is not going to walk around with a little bit more confidence and a little bit more swagger knowing
00:13:21.940 that he stood up properly to somebody who was trying to mistreat him. First, you need to know what your
00:13:27.520 boundaries are. What will you tolerate? What will you not tolerate? Second, you also need to put yourself
00:13:33.160 in a position where you have abundance in your life. So for example, if you only have one client
00:13:39.640 and that's makes up 80, 90, 95% of your business and that person berates you, the likelihood of you
00:13:48.200 standing up to that person is probably pretty low because you don't want to run the risk of losing
00:13:53.300 them. But if you have a thousand clients and this one client makes up less than 1% of your revenue
00:14:01.000 and they decide to berate you, you're okay to be able to stand up for yourself because it's not really
00:14:07.920 going to have that great of an impact. If anything, it will have a positive impact on your book of
00:14:12.320 business or your life in general. So create abundance and prosperity in your life. If you do that,
00:14:19.640 you're more likely to put yourself in a good position when the thing actually needs to be said.
00:14:26.040 Number four, guys, keeping, I think we already talked about this a little bit,
00:14:30.200 but it's just keeping your commitments even when you don't want to. Actually, I would probably say
00:14:35.660 especially when you don't want to because keeping a commitment when it's easy for you is not a difficult
00:14:42.320 thing and it's not a character building thing. It's not wrong. It's a good thing, but it's not going to
00:14:47.500 build any character. If for example, you love to work out in the morning and it's not difficult for
00:14:54.260 you to get out of bed and you go into the gym and you're excited and gets your day off on the right
00:14:58.440 path and you just love everything about lifting, for example, it's good that you honor that commitment,
00:15:04.620 but it's not going to build any character because it's not hard for you. It comes natural. It's easy
00:15:09.500 for you. But if on the other hand, you've decided, Hey, I'm going to go run a 5k or run a half marathon
00:15:16.880 or run a marathon or an endurance event. And I want to prepare for this, but I hate running. I'm speaking
00:15:22.200 about myself here. It's the commitment of training for running when you don't want to, that's actually
00:15:30.220 going to build the character or the commitment to have, let's say, for example, a difficult conversation
00:15:36.620 with somebody. Maybe you and your wife are struggling and you need to bring up a conversation
00:15:41.100 about the struggles and what's going on, but you keep kicking it down the road, hoping it'll get
00:15:46.660 better. And some days it is and some days it isn't, but there's always this underlying tone of
00:15:51.660 contention and friction in the relationship. But the commitment you made is to be able to have this
00:15:56.920 conversation. You also made a commitment to be honest and truthful with her. So if you're holding back,
00:16:02.380 then you're not being honest, you're not being truthful, and you're not honoring your own
00:16:06.460 commitment. You have to do that and get back into integrity because that's, what's going to boost
00:16:11.540 your security, your confidence in the way that you feel about yourself. So keep those commitments.
00:16:18.260 And if you're not going to keep the commitment, just don't make the commitment. Now I'm, I'm not
00:16:23.060 saying that as a permission slip for you never to make commitments in your life because some people
00:16:27.180 might read it that way. No, it's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is the commitments
00:16:32.440 that you make, honor them and make sure those commitments are in alignment with the vision
00:16:36.260 and desires you have for your life. Let's talk about number five. This one's important. This is
00:16:41.820 one that I'm personally working on that I struggle with at times, but it's simply this. Don't have an
00:16:47.480 opinion about everything. And secondary or ancillary to that is not every hill is worth dying on. It's not
00:16:55.080 worth fighting for. So you need to learn when to pick your battle or excuse me, when to battle and
00:17:02.060 when to retreat or withdraw. It's not even a retreat. If you're not interested in whatever
00:17:07.340 the subject is, you don't need to have an opinion about it. That's something I'm working on. I'm
00:17:12.600 getting better at it with a little thought and a little maturity and also just being busy with other
00:17:17.880 things. I don't have time to get involved in everything. So I'm really trying personally to make a
00:17:23.380 conscious effort not to have an opinion about everything. Or if I do not really always feel
00:17:28.500 the need to share it. I've never been accused of being a quiet person. I've never been accused of
00:17:35.700 not having an opinion. I do. But I've found that the more that I can just not let things work me up,
00:17:44.680 only the things that actually matter and are in alignment with my vision, the more focused I can
00:17:49.720 be on that and the more secure that I am. I don't have as much of a need to fight and contend with
00:17:54.960 people on subjects and interests and discussions that aren't relevant, exciting or entertaining to
00:18:02.200 me. So like I said, that is something that I'm working on to varying degrees of success at different
00:18:09.040 times in the day and throughout the week. But it is something I'm working on. And I found myself more
00:18:14.100 secure when I can leave things alone that really aren't worth my time. So guys, I know this is kind
00:18:22.460 of a quick list, kind of a rapid fire. This is how we do these Friday field notes, because I want you
00:18:26.420 to just take some notes. And I really every single week when I do these Friday episodes, I want to give
00:18:32.100 you some homework, so to speak, something that you can actually grasp onto and do in your life and
00:18:39.260 implement and make your life better. And that's what I would encourage you to do when you're listening
00:18:44.220 to these Friday field notes is take this information over the weekend, think about it, write some things
00:18:49.280 down, take some notes, and then come up with an action plan on what you're going to do specifically
00:18:53.800 in order to boost up your confidence and your security. So let me recap. Again, the benefits,
00:18:59.400 you're going to feel a whole lot better about yourself. And that alone is invaluable.
00:19:03.180 I know that there's days where, you know, I have down days, where I might struggle emotionally with
00:19:10.420 certain things. Maybe it's my circumstances, or maybe I'm throwing myself a little pity party,
00:19:15.860 you know, it happens. But what I found is that those days are usually aligned with being out of integrity.
00:19:26.300 Being out of integrity on conversations I need to have being out of integrity by not waking up and
00:19:30.760 going to the gym on time when I said I would being out of integrity with the way the house or my office
00:19:35.720 looks. Usually those bad and rough days are directly correlated with being out of order.
00:19:42.560 So you're going to feel better about yourself. You're going to build influence. Sometimes when I
00:19:47.280 talk about that, people have a hard time with that, because they immediately assume that we're talking
00:19:51.720 about some sort of manipulation strategy when we're influencing others. It's not what I'm saying at all.
00:19:56.460 There's nothing negative about influence. There's also nothing inherently positive about it. You
00:20:04.180 know, we've all been influenced to do wonderful things. Maybe you listen to this podcast, and it's
00:20:10.300 causing you to start a business or go back into the gym or fill in the blank. That's positive influence.
00:20:17.420 If it might be that, you know, you hang out with some buddies, and you decide to go get drunk,
00:20:24.280 and maybe you drive around drunk, and you end up getting in an accident, and heaven forbid you kill
00:20:29.440 somebody. But there's been scenarios where a person is influenced to do that. So there's nothing moral
00:20:36.760 or amoral inherently in influence. It's just really a matter of how you use it. And when I'm talking about
00:20:43.280 influence, I hope you understand I'm talking about building positive influence so you can effectively
00:20:49.120 lead and impact other people. And then the third is to create more opportunities. And don't we all
00:20:54.440 want that? You know, for me, for example, I want more podcast guests. I want more people to tune into
00:21:01.160 this mission. I want to partner with other people that I respect and admire and look up to. And I do
00:21:08.460 that by being secure in who I am as a man, knowing myself, and building up my confidence so I can in turn
00:21:15.460 and share that with other people. And then to recap the five ways, number one, work to validate
00:21:19.960 yourself. You don't have to prove anything to anybody else. And if you're trying to prove to your
00:21:25.560 dad or your wife or your kids or random strangers on the internet, how wonderful you are, that is a
00:21:31.880 recipe for disaster. It's unnecessary, it doesn't work. And if anything, it undermines true confidence.
00:21:39.500 confidence. It'll, it'll bolster your, your pride and your ego and your arrogance for sure. But it's
00:21:46.060 not true confidence. Instead, work to validate yourself. Number two, knowing who you are, knowing
00:21:52.920 your stories, knowing where you come from, knowing what fires you up so you can actually combat against
00:21:58.360 those things. Number three is committing to boundaries and keeping yourself out of trouble that
00:22:03.480 way. When you have those boundaries in place and you keep those boundaries and you expect other people
00:22:08.020 to keep those boundaries, man, you're like, it's, it's like walking around with, with armor on.
00:22:15.480 Nothing can get at you. Nothing can impact you. Nothing can penetrate your, your armor when you're
00:22:21.160 like that. Number four, keeping your commitments, even when you don't want to. I said, especially when
00:22:25.900 you don't want to. And number five, you don't need to have an opinion about everything. And not every
00:22:30.920 battle is worth you fighting for. Know the battles you want to fight, know the battles you don't care
00:22:35.940 about, and then act accordingly. Guys, I hope that helps. Being more secure is a beautiful thing. And
00:22:42.060 I've had security in myself to varying degrees of success throughout my life. And sometimes I've been
00:22:47.780 very secure and other times a lot of insecurities creep in. And I'll tell you what, life's better when
00:22:53.140 you can keep out the insecurities and build up the security in yourself. All right, guys, I hope that
00:22:59.340 helps. Hey, one other thing I wanted to share with you is in May of next year, the spring, so May 1st
00:23:05.340 through the 4th, spring next year, 2025, we're doing a really, really cool event. It's called
00:23:11.840 The Forge, A Gathering of Men. And we're going to be doing this just outside of St. Louis with me,
00:23:18.200 Larry Hagner with the Dad Edge, Connor Beaton with Man Talks, and Matt Boudreau with Apogee Strong.
00:23:23.940 I would love for you guys to be there. We don't have very many spots. So if you are interested and want
00:23:28.820 to watch a video about what it's about and get the details, head to themensforge.com, themensforge.com.
00:23:36.240 All right, guys, those are your marching orders. Think on that this weekend. Apply what you've
00:23:40.040 learned. Make yourself a better man. We'll be back next week. Until then, go out there,
00:23:44.200 take action, and become a man you are meant to be.
00:23:47.000 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life and be
00:23:56.580 more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.