Brady Pesola is a writer, speaker, and modern Stoic thinker. He has made life out of studying ancient philosophy combined with practical, nuanced, modern insight. In this episode, we talk about social independence, how to get it, and why you should operate in it.
00:00:00.000It seems anymore that people are operating increasingly out of extremes without any context, nuance, or understanding.
00:00:08.900I get it. Outrage sells. And to some degree, I know, guys, I've been guilty of it myself, but I have found that as I get older, wanting for myself to go find a piece of land and just work on my canoe or something rather than engage in what social media has diminished us to.
00:00:27.400My guest today, Brady Pesola, would agree, and he's made life out of studying ancient philosophy combined with practical, nuanced, modern insight.
00:00:37.900And today we talk about social independence and how to get it, the golden mean and why you should operate in it, what he calls the stoplight theory, something called metacognition, which is thinking about thinking, and also the concept of the gray man and how it can help you operate as a man.
00:00:57.900You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
00:01:03.660When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
00:01:08.140You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.
00:01:13.200This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.
00:01:17.400At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
00:01:22.380Men, welcome to the Order of Man. My name is Ryan Michler. I'm your host and the founder of the podcast, and I want to welcome you here today.
00:01:31.200Very glad that you're tuning in. Got a great show lined up with a good friend of mine.
00:01:35.420His name is Brady Pesola, and we've got some great, great podcasts in addition to this one coming out in January.
00:01:42.720So make sure you subscribe, leave yourself a rating and review, leave me a rating and review.
00:01:47.320That helps the movement, and it helps us secure other good podcast guests that we can gain some insight from and help you apply it in your life.
00:01:54.540Before I get any further, I want to talk about my friends and the show sponsors.
00:01:58.380You guys have heard me talk about them, Montana Knife Company, but I want to tell you a little knife story.
00:02:02.740I was working on my canoe the other day, and I needed a very sharp razor blade here in a small town in southern Utah.
00:02:10.820The hardware store is just not open on Sunday, so I'm like, what can I use?
00:02:14.940And I had my tactical wargoat, I believe is what it's called, wargoat knife with Montana knife sitting on my dresser.
00:02:39.380And of course, I bled over the knife, bled over my canoe, and inadvertently made me a repeating member,
00:02:45.980a returning member of the Blood Brothers crew over at Montana Knife Company.
00:02:50.640But the bottom line, guys, if you're looking for a sharp knife that's versatile, whether it's in the kitchen, in the field, everyday carry,
00:02:57.300or you happen to be building a canoe or just need to pick something out of your teeth, look no further than my friends over at Montana Knife Company.
00:03:05.220They've got knives for all sorts of different things, and you'll find something that's going to work for you.
00:03:10.020Just don't cut yourself on fiberglass like I did.
00:03:28.280He's a renaissance man, and he's focused on personal responsibility and virtue and living a life of discipline.
00:03:34.700What he does that I really like is that he draws from ancient philosophy, mostly stoicism,
00:03:39.680and he challenges men to reclaim their agency over their lives, having clarity, having courage, taking action.
00:03:50.160These are all things that you want to do, not only currently, but as we roll into 2026.
00:03:54.140And through his work, Brady takes his timeless wisdom that he's learned, his military experience in the Marines and modern application,
00:04:04.320and he helps men navigate uncertainty and adversity and pressure without pushing away responsibility or falling into victimhood like we see so often.
00:04:15.960But what I like about what he puts out there, in particular, his reels on Instagram, is that he cuts through all the noise, all the abstraction, all the nonsense, and all the outrage,
00:04:27.420and he just gives us really practical frameworks for leadership and self-mastery.
00:04:33.560Guys, I really, really think you're going to enjoy this one.
00:07:06.280It's just a shame that we need to throw that disclaimer in there because it's more words than necessary.
00:07:10.760You know, I had said something years and years ago, and I stand by this, is that not everyone who criticizes you is your enemy and not everyone who praises you is your ally.
00:07:21.500And I wish that more of us just were – we just took information as data.
00:07:30.220Maybe it tells us about something we could do better.
00:07:33.920Maybe it tells us something about another person.
00:07:37.020And then there's another quote that really stands out to me.
00:07:39.340It's never a tribute to malice what could be attributed to stupidity, and I would add this based on our conversation so far, or at least neutrality.
00:07:48.160But most people I don't think are malicious.
00:07:50.700No, that's actually Hanlon's razor, and it's such a wonderful saying in just that it allows your mind to just kind of remind itself that – and I tell myself all the time, I'm just as stupid if not more stupid than most everyone else.
00:08:11.820It's just as ignorant as everyone else.
00:08:13.920And so I have to give other people grace just as I would ask them to give me grace because I am very socially awkward.
00:08:22.640And so oftentimes I say things I'm like, oh, that didn't sound really – come to think of it, that was – yeah.
00:08:30.880I made a post about Christmas the other day, and I said something like, if you don't let your kids believe in Santa, you're the worst kind of pretentious snob.
00:08:48.100I said something like that, and it was very hyperbolic.
00:08:51.780Like I was using hyperbole to communicate a point, but it landed very, very poorly, and I'm like, hmm, you know, maybe I could have done that a little differently.
00:09:03.680But I refuse to take it down because that's one thing I don't do.
00:09:06.460I don't bow to the mob, even if they hate me for it.
00:09:09.760The hive mind is definitely something that is – it's a scary monster, the hive mind.
00:09:18.160The – when they come after you, it's – yeah, it's scary.
00:09:26.340And I've – like I said, sometimes – most of us human beings, we often say things, especially on social media, because the way that people get their followings, their engagements is through provoking people through hyperbole and eliciting an emotional response.
00:09:45.220And that's often the case now – the media used to do it all the time, and so a lot of social media influencers – I hate that term because it takes away responsibility of the average person who listens and absorbs content.
00:10:00.640But the media was great at what's called framing bias, and that was the ability to frame things through language, through pictures, through selected clips to project an agenda that they wanted to.
00:10:17.060And so social media has adopted the same.
00:10:19.940Most influencers have adopted like, oh, if I frame something a certain way, I'm going to provoke the emotions of other people to get the engagements I want for ad revenue.
00:10:29.640And that's what most people do these days is they farm your emotions.
00:10:34.300They get you to like, click, share, comment.
00:10:38.700It doesn't matter if it's positive or negative.
00:10:40.540It's they're earning ad revenue and revenue by the clicks and engagements the algorithm gives it to them.
00:10:46.940But, okay, so look, I don't disagree with that, but where's the line?
00:10:50.680Because don't we all do that, for example, in more – maybe less harmful or less malicious ways?
00:10:59.160Don't you do that when you go in for a job interview?
00:11:01.300Don't you go and do that when you go out on our first date?
00:11:32.140It goes all the way back to our Paleolithic and Pleistocene ancestors where when you were part of the tribe, if you didn't go along, you got exiled.
00:12:02.760But that being said, we want to be included.
00:12:07.840We want to feel accepted whether it's on a macro level or micro level.
00:12:13.160And it leads me to something that I've been writing about – been writing a book since long – since about the same time you were writing a book and you finished like a couple years ago.
00:12:23.920And one of the chapters is social independence and that is the ability to be able to detach from the hive.
00:12:31.960And it's not so much as trying to be antisocial.
00:12:35.420In fact, to want to detach from the hive I believe is an expression of affection for society, for humanity.
00:13:07.680But individually, I think most of us are pretty lovely actually.
00:13:12.720And most everyone that I've come across on one-on-one that even I didn't like at first I sat with and talked to face-to-face, I was like, you know, I really enjoy having this conversation.
00:14:08.440The place that we need to be as individuals is to find the right hive and to care about what the right people think of us.
00:14:16.260So, for example, the most base level is I actually really care about what my kids think of me because if I didn't care about that, then I couldn't be influential in their lives.
00:14:26.440I actually care about what my ideal audience member or what the guy, the ideal man that I want to help, I actually care about how he perceives me, which is why I wear the things I wear, have the backdrop that I do, present the way that I do because I want to be influential because I think I can serve these people.
00:14:45.100It becomes a problem when we start to try to appease everyone at the expense of ourselves.
00:14:58.400And that's where we got to try and find the golden mean.
00:15:00.920You know, everybody wants to say, and I've said it before, I don't care what they think about me.
00:15:06.380I don't want to care what they think about me.
00:15:08.340It's such a rebellious nature that's part of us.
00:15:12.280And I think most of us want to feel like that because it gives us that power, that power to be able to not feel like we live off the opinions and validation of other people.
00:15:24.560And as much as we all want to feel like that, to a certain extent, like you just said, we do.
00:16:45.640I'm just thinking about this a little bit, cause that's an interesting point.
00:16:48.540You had said, are they making you happy?
00:16:51.060And I, on one hand, what immediately came to mind for me, and I think you probably would attest to this to some degree based on our conversations.
00:16:59.540And what I know about you is it's not somebody else's job to make me happy, but that being said, well, not only not, can, can they not be a dick?
00:17:11.160There has to be some measurement of value in your life.
00:17:15.880You know, there, there are some that may not, for example, like, you know, your, your, your kids, for example, aren't obligated to acquiesce to every desire and make you feel good about who you are and how you're parent and everything else.
00:17:29.140That's unconditional love, but there are relationships where you have to consider, is this person able and willing to afford me what I desire?
00:17:39.260Um, there might be a professional relationship.
00:17:42.700Maybe it's a client advisor relationship where you're the advisor and they're the client, but if they're not paying attention to you or value what you have to say, then they're not reciprocating in the relationship.
00:17:51.360So I can see, I can make an argument for both, both sides of it is what I'm trying to say.
00:17:57.240And honestly, that, um, that equates to actually more of the middle ground, that golden mean it's a, it's a Aristotelian type of, of, of ideas.
00:18:07.200Finding that, that good middle ground, um, where we, where, where you don't live in extremes, finding that balance.
00:18:15.660Um, and yeah, to a certain extent, I think most people tend to forget that context matters, uh, context and everything.
00:18:22.540And now we talk, it context is often lost, right?
00:18:28.640And what you were talking about is, is situational, right?
00:18:33.140Let's apply context as far as our relationships, our transactions and how we interact with people, whether we do care about how they feel and whether they do care about how, uh, whether they do care about how they make us feel.
00:18:47.700Not a lot of like professional transactions require that, right?
00:18:50.960Like a lot of professional transactions are, um, I'm working, this is my job.
00:18:57.320My job is to do the work enough that it satiates the requirement that brings in profit for that company and makes everyone else happy as far as that goes.
00:19:06.920And happiness is such a broad term in that part.
00:19:10.240Like obviously a boss is happy that you are doing your job, right?
00:19:13.840And you're happy to be compensated at fair market value for it.
00:19:17.820And you become unhappy about it when you feel like you're doing more work than is what is being compensated towards you.
00:19:31.360Do you ever think that there's a downside to living in the golden means, as you say, because, you know, I've interviewed very, very successful men, yourself included.
00:19:42.740Over the past 10 years, I think close to 600 highly successful men in their own right.
00:19:47.880And a lot of these individuals, they do not live in the golden means.
00:21:06.140And whether it was intentional or not, it's going to happen.
00:21:09.940And those kind of people are able to handle that a different way than many of us, right?
00:21:15.560I'm a type of person that I – I'm not a people pleaser, but I try and keep a good balance about things.
00:21:24.200I try and keep a good balance with relationships because I've seen how I'm able to – especially in my work,
00:21:29.720how I'm able to – how I'm able to utilize relationships in ways that are beneficial personally, professionally, as well as spiritually.
00:21:40.740And so it's just one of those things like, yeah, they're – the golden mean can be hurtful if your intentions are somewhere where you want to rise above everybody else.
00:21:55.940You have to live in that extreme area.
00:21:57.800I don't think I know anyone off the top of my head that is hyper successful that doesn't live in that golden mean.
00:22:08.420Really what I'm hearing you say is are they doing it at the expense of other people?
00:22:14.560And the answer for the most part – and I would agree with you after thinking about this – is those individuals are not hurting other people, right?
00:22:24.580They're not using other people as their pawns, they're not manipulating, they're not physically or mentally or emotionally abusing them in some way.
00:22:31.140They're just living their life in the extreme the way that they see fit.
00:22:34.160I guess what came to mind for me is a man has to ask himself, do the ends justify the means?
00:22:42.620And in some ways, yes, there are some things that I am willing to sacrifice today in order to have what I want down the road.
00:22:52.660And that means that the ends justify the means.
00:22:55.100And there's some things that I'm – like abusing people, for example, that I'm just not willing to do regardless of the outcome.
00:23:03.440So I guess you have to ask yourself, to what degree do the ends justify their means, knowing that the answer is yes, the ends do justify the means in particular circumstances for you.
00:23:19.860I'm okay with folks being hyper-successful as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.
00:23:26.580But you see a lot of hyper-successful people, whether they intend to or not, do leave a bit of destruction, emotional or relationship destruction in their wake.
00:23:41.420You look at folks that will sacrifice their marriage for their career.
00:23:46.740And that's their – that may not be their intent, but it's their way of seeing what's more important to me.
00:23:53.440My hyper-successful in my career, in money, in fame, in – you look at people that will sacrifice their dignity and self-respect and their relationships for fame, for money, for attention, which I think is a drug.
00:24:16.380I think attention is one of the most destructive things that exists now in our society is that desire to be seen.
00:24:24.680And it's a constant fight, I think, for people on social media to want those likes, clicks, shares, and comments to where they make money off of it.
00:25:11.520And then you get some people that their idea of success is I'm happy, right?
00:25:18.880When you said earlier, you said you included me in that list of successful people, and right off the bat, I made the mistake myself and think to myself, like, I'm not that successful.
00:25:27.880I'm not – you couldn't measure my success in terms of fame or money.
00:25:31.400But then I got to think to myself, well, how am I successful?
00:25:58.380In philosophy, happiness is about contentment.
00:26:03.620People think that happiness is the idea that you are gleeful and got this rush of serotonin all the time like you're a golden retriever 24-7, right?
00:26:13.660But contentment is a whole different thing.
00:26:16.200It's being satisfied and being happy, content regardless of whether you're happy or not, regardless of the situation, saying, you know what?
00:26:27.440This sucks right now, but I'm content in the ability to handle this and move on until it's no longer a problem.
00:26:33.860I like that because I talk with a lot of men every single day who are dealing with things from relational breakdowns to addiction to loss of a job, medical diagnosis, loss of a loved one, all sorts of things that happen to us.
00:26:52.900And things that I've dealt with as well.
00:26:57.040And I've always wondered what separates the man who uses those horrible life circumstances, tragic in many cases, life circumstances to crumble and wither away or maybe even take their own life.
00:27:12.200And those who decide, hey, you know what?
00:27:49.760It just depends, even cultural, what you grew up around, what you saw.
00:27:54.860I watched my parents struggle hard and I saw my dad work his ass off in the work ethic and really do what they need to do to sacrifice and make sure that we all survived.
00:28:06.140And so I think that's carried me forward in my life and helped me.
00:28:10.740But I also think there's certain other nuances involved, some variables involved, whether it's genetic or cultural, growing up around people that just in a hard way, like where I grew up in Minnesota, the Iron Range, where the economy is based on the mines and off the price of steel.
00:28:32.040And who was purchasing those mines and selling those mines off and who had work, right?
00:29:37.880You know, you're like, how did you manage this?
00:29:40.520And this is barring people who like really work hard, right?
00:29:43.680You're just – what I'm talking about is a lot of people that I've seen that just – they are constantly just like, bro, can I get some of that magic, some of that luck you got, right?
00:29:55.540But the thing is when you hit enough red lights in your life, you develop coping mechanisms.
00:30:02.620You develop tools that are forged in the furnace of adversity.
00:30:06.660And so every once in a while, those green light people hit a red light and they're like, what do I do now?
00:30:15.880They're like, I don't even know what to do because they've never experienced adversity.
00:30:19.700Us red light people, we're there like, oh, this happens all the time, man.
00:30:28.680They go back to the green lights, right?
00:30:30.960And us red light people, we enjoy the green lights when we get them, right?
00:30:34.520Like how many times – like all day long you've hit a red light and all of a sudden you're like – you're rolling up and the light doesn't even turn green.
00:31:19.720They might slow down and boom, they're hitting red lights the whole way.
00:31:22.280But I think it's us red light people that experience adversity so much that offer so much more to the world that when green light people experience red light, we're there for them.
00:31:34.400And we say, it's going to be all right.
00:31:59.380It's about operational control, meaning that you can use it operationally as a father, a husband, business owner, community leader.
00:32:06.960And inside the Iron Council, our exclusive brotherhood, that starts with what I call trigger speed.
00:32:12.580It's how quickly you recognize when your emotion or your ego takes over.
00:32:16.840And then it's followed by pinpoint accuracy, the ability to identify the real problems instead of blaming other people or circumstances.
00:32:25.120And without that speed and accuracy, every response that you have is, it's either late or maybe even too soon, or it's misguided and misdirected.
00:32:35.800And it creates a bunch of problems in relationships, businesses, careers, the way you feel about yourself.
00:32:42.020But awareness really means nothing unless you're able to course correct.
00:32:49.820The ability to take critique, even if it's your own, determines whether that feedback is going to sharpen you or it's going to break you.
00:32:59.880And then you can get into aligning your behavior with your values and what you think.
00:33:04.840Now, some of these seem like abstract theories, but this is what we talk about inside the Iron Council.
00:33:10.260And we're going to be open through the middle of January.
00:33:13.680But at the end of the day, it's about taking control of your life.
00:33:17.460It's about recognizing how quickly things trigger you.
00:33:20.800About course correcting as quickly as possible.
00:33:23.500About rekindling relationships with romantic partners, with your children.
00:33:31.560It's about just feeling better about who you are as a man and maximizing all of what 2026 has to offer.
00:33:38.980So I'm going to encourage you to join us, to band with us, to be in our brotherhood, to get insight to the council, to get insight to the accountability, and to get insight from me directly as I engage and host and facilitate a lot of these conversations.
00:33:52.900Guys, head to orderofman.com slash ironcouncil.
00:33:57.180That's orderofman.com slash ironcouncil to learn more and to register your seat at the table.
00:37:42.260It cost me an extra $450, I think, to change the flights.
00:37:46.520And I was all butthurt and pissed off about it.
00:37:48.440And then I remembered something, my son and I had to stop because my fuel light came on and we had to stop for gas before we had got down there.
00:38:05.980If I was 10 seconds, 20 seconds further down the road, that car could have very easily crashed into me.
00:38:15.380And it got me thinking, I didn't think about it in this context, but since you're saying it, it got me thinking that I'm not sure the red lights are really red lights.
00:38:24.700It's just a matter of how we choose to look at them.
00:38:27.340What if sometimes that red light saves your butt and you don't know it?
00:38:31.860Or what if sometimes when you decide to stop for that yellow light and risk more red lights, that that, instead of going through the intersection, you could have been T-boned, you just decided to stop.
00:40:51.280I think I'm just going to go wallow in my self-loathing and my self-hate real quick because you're too, you give me diabetes, like being around you, you know?
00:40:59.440Well, and look, I mean, look, I'm guilty of just being as judgmental as anybody else.
00:41:36.280Sometimes it requires just putting on a happy face.
00:41:39.780This is so, I saw this meme and said, treat yourself, disassociate a little bit.
00:41:44.140And look, there's nothing wrong with it.
00:41:45.660There's a reason why we possess the faculty for reason.
00:41:48.000There's a reason why we have evolved or been created by divine design to possess reason and the brain that we have for us to be able to kind of get through this thing we call life.
00:42:05.640Whether it's good or bad or our perception of it.
00:42:11.280Sometimes we just, we've never done this before.
00:42:33.060We can't apply experience to it because we haven't experienced this part yet.
00:42:38.240We can only take what we've known thus far, the tools that we've developed, and apply it from a younger age that we learned and apply it at a new age and new circumstances.
00:42:49.680And sometimes we're going to fuck it up.
00:43:16.820You know, I've, and, and that could apply to big things and trivial things.
00:43:21.520Like I've never had this conversation with you.
00:43:23.880And so I'm bound to say something stupid.
00:43:26.240Um, I I've never, you know, had this job before.
00:43:29.820I've never driven, you know how, like you're driving down the road and there's somebody in front of you and they're probably old and decrepit and they're like taking their sweet ass time.
00:43:37.120And it's like, what the hell I'm trying to get somewhere.
00:43:38.880It's like, maybe that person has just never been on that road before.
00:43:41.880Same as you when you're on an unfamiliar road.
00:43:44.780Bro, I live in the mountains and there are three ways to get up to where I live.
00:43:50.780And every single way, there's always someone in front of me that is slow.