Check In on Your Men | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
197.39844
Summary
In this episode, Ryan talks about the importance of checking on your men and why you should do it. He also talks about how important it is to check on your brothers, friends, family, colleagues and the people around you.
Transcript
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You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart
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your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
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You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who
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you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
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you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler.
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I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Welcome here. Welcome
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back. Glad to have you aboard in any fashion, whether this is your first episode or you've
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listened to all 900 plus at this point. I'm glad you're here. We need to continue to share this
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message of reclaiming and restoring masculinity. And frankly, we need to bring this message into
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our own lives, into our hearts, our souls. When we slip up, when we mess up, we need to
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go back to the drawing board, get the fundamentals down. And that's what we're doing here. We're
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helping all of us, myself included, with the fundamentals of masculinity and manliness and
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how we can improve our lives and the lives of the people around us. So I'm going to get
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into a very, very important message that I've stumbled upon a little bit over the past several
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weeks. And it's one of manliness, frankly. It's something that we as men should be doing.
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Before we get into it, just want to mention that we've got our store over at store.orderofman.com.
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You can check out the merchandise, including this hat and this black shirt that I've got
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on here. Again, that's store.orderofman.com. Great way to look good, support a movement you
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believe in, and also support us. So check it out, store.orderofman.com. Also, the Iron Council
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is going to be opening up very, very soon here in the next 30 to 45 days. So if you head
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to orderofman.com slash Iron Council, orderofman.com slash Iron Council, you can get on the wait list
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to be notified. All right, guys, let me share this message with you. And this one will be
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a bit of a rapid fire for a Friday field notes. Usually I have some well articulated and crafted
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information and I don't today. I'm shooting off the hip a little bit because of some personal
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experiences I've had over the past several weeks. And I'm going to leave, not leave. I'm
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going to start with it by saying, you need to check on your men. You need to check on
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your men. I've, like I said, had some personal experiences where some things have been shared
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with me and I've shared things with other people. I won't get into that because of the privacy
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of the conversations I've had. But it is amazing to me how often we as men can look at other
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people in our lives, friends, family members, brothers, colleagues, co-workers, parents, and
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believe that they have everything figured out. But what I've noticed, and again, this is over
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the past several weeks, is that just lying under the surface, there's something there.
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And maybe you've noticed it. Maybe you've noticed a look in somebody's eye. Maybe their demeanor
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has changed. Maybe their attitude has changed or something. There's a factor. There's a variable
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there that causes you to question whether or not that individual is okay. Now, it's hard sometimes
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as men. It's not hard, but we make it harder than it needs to be when it comes to reaching out to other
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guys. I didn't know how to broach the subject. I didn't know how to talk about it. I didn't want
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you to be offended. I didn't want to pry. Guys, get that stuff out of your head. Who cares if they're
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offended? Who cares if you pry? If you're a friend of that person or in some sort of capacity,
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then you have a responsibility to do it. If you notice something that's off, my friend Stephen
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Mansfield calls it the free fire zone, where you actually give other men permission to have these
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kind of conversations with you and check you and tell you when things look off and tell you when they
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see behavior in you that you need to correct. But I would suggest to you that if you see something
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off in another man, a brother of yours, that you check in on that guy and you don't worry about
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being offended and you don't worry about, you don't want to pry. I mean, if you care
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about the guy, reach out. And here's what I would do. Hey, Joe, I've been a friend of yours
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for a long time. We've never really had very many deep conversations. Some we have and some
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we haven't. But I've noticed something about you over the past several weeks or I've noticed
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something over the past several months. And I've been nervous about reaching out to you and
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connecting with you, but are you okay? Is everything okay? How are you? How's your
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fitness? How's your family life? How's your business? How's your career? Like, is everything
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okay? And when they give you the answer, the default answer is no, everything's good. I'm
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fine. Everything's okay. If you notice something's off, don't accept that. Don't accept it. Now you
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don't need to be a jerk about it and you certainly don't want to push them away, but very simply
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you might say, Hey, you know, I know that's the default answer that most of us as men go to,
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but I'm genuine about my care for you. And I really do want to know. I'm genuinely curious
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because I want to know if there's something I can do to serve you. And when you do this,
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you never know. You might just talk somebody off the proverbial ledge or the literal ledge
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if it comes to that. And if it has come to that and it has, and you guys have seen that a lot of
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you have experienced suicidal thoughts yourself, uh, or know somebody close to you who is suicidal
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or even has committed suicide. And maybe just somebody checking on them would have been enough
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to get them off of that ledge and back on the path they need to be. We've run into all sorts of
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problems in life, bankruptcies, lawsuits, business isn't going well, health scares, fitness is out of
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order, uh, addiction, separations, divorces, losing children, loss of a loved one. You can bet and be
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fairly certain that if you were to walk around and bump into a hundred people on the street,
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that 80, 90, 95, maybe even a hundred percent of those individuals have something going on in their
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life. And they need to be able to talk about it. They need somebody in their corner. They need a
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champion and yet they don't have it or they don't feel like they do. And so they suffer in silence
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and they wallow in their own self-pity and they bounce around with the thoughts that are going
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around in their mind and they can't get it out and they can't express it. And maybe all they need is
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for a man to come up and say, brother, I love you. I care about you. I want you to win. You're
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important to me. What is going on in your life? What is going on in your life? So that's my message for
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you today. It's very short, very quick. It's not this 10 step formula or whatever I normally do.
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But what I would say as I close today is I would challenge you to take a look and do an inventory
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with the people in your life, men, women, brothers, sisters, colleagues, coworkers,
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whoever it may be, and ask yourself, is there something going on with that person?
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Is there something that person needs to talk about? Is there some way that I could reach out to this
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individual and help them by lending them an ear or letting them express their concerns or just
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having an outlet to vent or talk or whatever it may be that they need? You never know how long that
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will go. And we quite literally have a moral responsibility and obligation. If we can't do that,
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nothing else really matters. That's why we're here on this planet. We're here to do good. We're here to
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grow. We're here to overcome challenges and hardship. And we're here to help other people do the same.
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And to me, although I haven't always been perfect at it, I am striving to do that.
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But to me, that is the mark of being a man. So that's my challenge to you. Inventory and reach
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out to one or two or three or 10 or however many people you need to reach out to and check your
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brothers. Make sure they're okay because they might not be. And you could be the catalyst for change
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and growth in their life. All right, guys, you have your marching orders. You have your challenge.
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Get it done. Let's go out there and help millions and millions of men this weekend over the next 24
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to 48 hours. And let's see what kind of good we can do. All right, guys, I'll be back next week.
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Until then, go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.
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Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life
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and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the Order at orderofman.com.