Order of Man - September 24, 2021


Developing a Healthy Relationship with Failure ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES


Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

193.00876

Word count

4,592

Sentence count

386

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Ryan talks about the importance of failure and how to deal with it in order to be a better man. He also talks about a recent experience that he had with failure and gives a framework for dealing with it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart
00:00:04.980 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
00:00:10.440 You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is
00:00:17.020 who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
00:00:22.720 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler.
00:00:28.080 I am your host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Thank you for being
00:00:33.440 here. Thank you for believing in the mission of reclaiming and restoring masculinity. It continues
00:00:37.880 to become more and more evident that we are lacking strong, virtuous, righteous, honorable,
00:00:45.020 capable men in society. And we're experiencing that with lockdowns and mandates and government
00:00:50.880 overreach and what we see not only here in America, but abroad. And I really believe that if more men
00:00:56.700 stepped up and knew how to step up and were more capable, we wouldn't see so much of this overreach
00:01:01.780 and those attempting to grasp for power over us. And I've got a lot to say about that. In fact,
00:01:08.140 in the coming weeks, I'm going to talk a lot about power and what is it and why should we fight and
00:01:14.120 rebel against it? And what do we replace it with? If we're not after power ourselves or we don't want
00:01:19.580 other people in power over us, then what do we replace it with? So I've got some thoughts that I'm
00:01:24.300 going to be sharing with you in the coming weeks on that. But today I wanted to talk with you about
00:01:29.100 our relationship with failure. I've got an experience that I'm going to share with you
00:01:32.760 here shortly. And then I'm going to give you a framework. And I share frameworks with you guys
00:01:36.940 because frameworks work best for me. If I have one, two, three, four, five steps, I can more accurately
00:01:42.380 and confidently accomplish what it is I'm after and what I want to accomplish. So guys, if you're new to
00:01:49.860 the podcast, we're interviewing incredible men. We just had Jason Wilson on the podcast,
00:01:54.720 the highest downloaded podcast to date since I started podcasting six years ago. We recently had
00:02:01.200 Dan Crenshaw. We had Madison Cawthorne, Andy Frisilla, Grant Cardone, Tim Kennedy, Steve Rinella,
00:02:09.320 John Eldridge. Guys, you know who I've had on the podcast. And then next week we've got Ben Shapiro.
00:02:15.140 So this lineup is phenomenal. And my goal is to help you with the tools and conversations and
00:02:22.920 resources you need to thrive as a man. And I've got a new book coming out. So be aware of that.
00:02:27.900 Make sure you subscribe to the newsletter at orderofman.com so you don't miss any of those.
00:02:32.580 And then just share what we're doing here. All right. That's it. Just share, tag, take a screenshot
00:02:36.200 of you listening to this or you watching this. Tag me at Ryan Mickler on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
00:02:41.500 wherever you're doing the social media thing. And this will help get the word out.
00:02:45.140 All right, guys, enough of that. Let's get to this conversation about a healthy relationship
00:02:49.580 with failure. So the other day I posted on Facebook in our Facebook group, in fact,
00:02:54.700 which you can check out at facebook.com slash groups slash order of man that we've got an event
00:03:00.280 this weekend. In fact, as you're listening to this, our event is currently running and it's a father-son
00:03:07.080 event. It's all designed to give 20 dads with 20 of their boys, the skills and conversations and
00:03:12.780 resources and everything they need to thrive. And I had made this post on the socials about our event
00:03:20.080 that happens to be sold out and how excited I am about it, especially since we're running it from
00:03:24.840 our new facility, which is here on my property in Maine. And what I had said is that five years ago,
00:03:33.720 we launched an event and not a single person signed up, not one, not that one signed up or three signed
00:03:42.820 up, but we just didn't have enough. No, no one signed up, not a single soul. And so I lost a lot
00:03:49.860 of money in that deal. I definitely lost some pride and I lost some sleep over it as well, because I was
00:03:57.160 concerned as to why I couldn't get anybody to sign up. And what I had said on this post is that in those
00:04:02.520 sleepless nights, I spent a bunch of time thinking about how I would make this order of man thing
00:04:07.260 work and how I would make these events work. And part of the solution is this event that we're
00:04:12.620 running here and having the property and the facility and everything else. And so the last three
00:04:17.300 or four years, we've sold out of every single event that we've ever put on and hosted. So I talked
00:04:23.180 about the embarrassing failure that was five years ago and that sort of thing. And I use the term fail,
00:04:28.280 failure, fail, right? And I was taken back. I was blown away with how many men came back and said,
00:04:35.060 you know, it's only a failure if you don't learn or failure is just your first attempt in learning.
00:04:39.520 And you didn't really fail because you got better. And while I appreciate the encouragement and the
00:04:45.620 positive support, I think there's a deeper conversation that needs to be had here. It's amazing
00:04:51.400 to me how incapable we as men are of saying the word fail. We refuse to say it. And so we come up
00:05:02.440 with little, little workarounds and clever little catchphrases. Like I said earlier, first attempt
00:05:08.320 in learning. It's only failure. If you didn't learn bullshit guys, it's failure. Let's, let's,
00:05:15.300 let's not change the definition of words to fit our own narrative or to attempt to make ourselves feel
00:05:21.320 better about our own inadequacies. And this is very important because if we don't acknowledge
00:05:26.680 and embrace the idea of failure, we're never going to improve. And I'm going to explain that here to
00:05:32.160 you in a minute. And you might think, well, you know, Ryan, it's just semantics and maybe to a degree
00:05:37.480 it is, but even if it's semantics, I want you to wrap your head around the concept of failure.
00:05:43.120 Failure. I've never once shied away from failing. I've never once shied away from fail-ure. Now I
00:05:50.620 don't believe that I'm a failure. I don't define myself by fails, but the truth of the matter is,
00:05:56.980 is that I've, I've fallen short of meeting an objective in my life. Whether that's the relationship
00:06:03.760 I have with my wife. A lot of you guys know, I went through a separation years, almost 12 years ago
00:06:08.380 with my wife. That was a failure. Now we didn't divorce. We're still together. And so you might
00:06:14.840 say, well, see, you didn't fail. Yes. In the grand scheme of things, we're still together, but there
00:06:18.980 were some failings on my part in my business. I struggled guys. I have struggled in so many
00:06:24.580 different areas and capacity of my business. I've failed when it comes to my health. I've failed when
00:06:29.480 it comes to other objectives that I have. And we need to acknowledge the fact that sometimes you're
00:06:35.160 going to fall short. And again, it doesn't mean you're a loser. It doesn't mean you're pathetic.
00:06:39.960 It doesn't mean you're a piece of shit. It just means you failed. And so if we can learn to
00:06:44.860 compartmentalize the experiences that we have, then we can better equip ourselves to not repeat the same
00:06:52.520 mistakes over and over again. But if we're trying to coddle ourselves through our own head talk and
00:06:59.360 through our own narrative about why, oh, I didn't really fail. This is a learning opportunity.
00:07:04.620 Like that ain't going to serve you gentlemen. Is it a learning opportunity? Sure. Is it a failure?
00:07:12.420 Yes. And both can exist. Learning and failing are not mutually exclusive.
00:07:19.860 You can fail and you can still learn. You can fail and not be a failure. You can fail and get
00:07:26.620 better. You can fail and do the things you need to do so that you don't repeat the same mistakes next
00:07:31.500 time. They don't exist in this little bubble of like, if I fail once, then I'm just done. My life's
00:07:38.280 over and I'm not a man. And like, just end it right here because there's nothing better I can do moving
00:07:43.640 forward. No guys, compartmentalize it. You failed. You failed to show your wife how much you appreciated
00:07:52.040 her. You failed to resist the temptations that come into your life. You failed to grow your business the
00:08:00.100 way that you wanted to. You failed to pay off debt. You failed everywhere all the time. All of us have
00:08:05.320 all failed. And we need a better relationship with the concept of failure because if we're running away
00:08:10.300 from it, whether we're trying to come up with clever little cute catchphrases or we're just not putting
00:08:15.400 ourselves in situations where we can fail at all, then how are you ever going to improve? How are you ever
00:08:20.320 going to get better? How are you going to make your life into something that it currently isn't? You're
00:08:25.500 not. So let's talk about a very, very simple framework. This is a three-part framework.
00:08:31.700 And I would love for you guys to start using the word fail more. Hey man, I really failed on this one
00:08:39.000 thing. And by the way, that's not the entirety of the thought process or conversation. Oh, I failed,
00:08:43.720 period. No, I failed, comma. So therefore, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z next time so I can be better
00:08:49.660 or achieve what it is I'm after. It's not, I failed is not the entirety of your thought process.
00:08:55.980 I failed. Therefore, I'm going to do this. That's starting to be more of a complete picture.
00:09:02.400 So let's break this down. I work best in frameworks. A lot of you guys do as well.
00:09:06.120 And then let's discuss, share with me on the socials, join our Facebook group, join the Iron
00:09:12.200 Council, which is our exclusive brotherhood at theorderofman.com slash Iron Council. And let's
00:09:17.300 discuss the concept of failure and start having a better relationship with it and not realize,
00:09:22.320 or excuse me, realize that it's not the end of the world if we failed in any one thing.
00:09:27.360 So the first thing that you need to do is you need to accept that sometimes you fall short.
00:09:33.080 And isn't that what failure is? You fell short of meeting a particular objective. And if you never
00:09:38.540 fail, what if that just means that you don't have any objectives, right? I've never failed. I've only
00:09:43.620 learned. Well, maybe you ought to come up with some goals and objectives that push you a little
00:09:47.600 further so that you actually fail. Because if you've never failed, then I got to ask, what have
00:09:52.740 you even tried? Have you even tried anything meaningful? Have you ever reached for the stars?
00:09:58.960 Have you ever pushed outside of your comfort zone? Have you ever done something that you did not think
00:10:02.660 you could do? And if you say to me, well, I've only learned. I've never failed. Okay, well,
00:10:07.240 you're playing it safe then. Embrace it, guys. There's the concept of failing forward or failing
00:10:14.800 fast. I actually like those phrases better than I've never failed or first attempt in learning.
00:10:19.500 Fail forward, fail fast. At least you're saying I failed. At least you're embracing it, accepting it.
00:10:25.540 If there's any sort of addiction in your life or struggles in your life,
00:10:28.460 what's the first step always? Accept it. You have to accept it.
00:10:35.820 And if you're not willing to accept it, then period, end of discussion, nothing further can
00:10:39.940 be done. But just accept it. You know what? I failed. And don't label yourself around it.
00:10:44.200 I learned this from my friends over at Mind Pump. If you're fat, it doesn't mean you're fat. It means
00:10:51.960 you have fat. So you would say, I have fat. I'm not fat, right? You're not defining yourself by it.
00:10:58.460 You're not a loser. You may have lost. You're not a failure. You may have failed. So we're not going
00:11:03.700 to attach a bunch of insignificant meaning to it. Actually, it is significant, but we're not going
00:11:08.660 to attach a bunch of meaning to it that just isn't there. And by the way, if you guys are interested
00:11:13.740 in Mind Pump, good friends of mine, you can go check out mindpumpman.com. Mind Pump Man.
00:11:19.700 They put together a resource for my listeners, four or five different articles on what they do,
00:11:25.720 health, fitness, all that stuff. But there's a lot of psychology. It's very entertaining that
00:11:29.420 goes behind it. Just check out mindpumpman.com. That's where I learned that concept of you're not
00:11:36.920 fat. You have fat. You're not a loser. You may have lost. You're not a failure. You may have failed.
00:11:41.660 So the first thing you need to do is accept it. And because we accept it, then we're able to move
00:11:46.720 forward into the next two steps. And the second step is that you have to analyze where you failed.
00:11:51.180 Now, look, none of us wants to wallow in our failure. If you fell short and you didn't do
00:11:57.660 what you wanted to accomplish, none of us want to spend any amount of time thinking about any longer
00:12:03.400 than we have to about that embarrassing moment. And guys, it is embarrassing, especially if other
00:12:09.340 people are involved. If I'm in a jujitsu competition or any sports competition or just in business in
00:12:15.500 general, or I've got clients or my family sees me struggle, that's embarrassing. And you know what?
00:12:21.640 That's okay too. Because at least it means I care about it. If I was indifferent to my failings,
00:12:27.640 that would probably mean that I don't care. And that's weird. There's not a single person listening
00:12:33.540 to this podcast who doesn't care about aspects of their life. And if there are some of you who are
00:12:39.500 listening, why are you even listening to this? Because this is about growth. This is about
00:12:44.620 progression. This is about expansion. It's about getting better. And so you accept it. And then
00:12:49.280 point number two, you analyze it. And so you have to revisit it. You have to wallow in the pain a
00:12:55.180 little bit. You have to feel the sting. You have to be uncomfortable. Tim Kennedy said it best in our
00:13:01.100 conversation months and months ago. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, you guys go back and listen to it,
00:13:06.240 it was very insightful. He said, if you could bottle up pain and discomfort and failing and losing and
00:13:16.860 not winning and the pain and the sting of defeat, he's like, bottle that up. I would drink that all
00:13:22.120 day long. And yet what most guys do is they go out and they go straight to the pill or straight to
00:13:26.420 the bottle or straight to the website, right? The pornography website, whatever. And that's where
00:13:31.860 they go. And they bottle that up. They package that and it's sold to them. And they think, well,
00:13:35.840 because I'm sedating myself, you know, that somehow this just goes away. Well, you guys all know that
00:13:42.940 an ostrich who buries his head in the sand isn't really free from threat. It just can't see it.
00:13:50.760 Our children do the same thing. I've got young children. I've got one who's five. And so every
00:13:54.560 once in a while, we'll play peekaboo. Not so much anymore because he's kind of grown out of that,
00:13:58.340 but even younger, they play peekaboo, right? They put their hands over their face and it's cute.
00:14:03.800 And then when you guys open your eyes, you say peekaboo and there you are. Well, they believe,
00:14:08.500 like they actually believe that if they cover their eyes, the threat goes away or that you're
00:14:12.580 not there anymore until of course they learn. And we laugh and it's cute and it's funny.
00:14:17.840 We do the same thing as men. We laugh at kids because they're stupid, right? And they're not stupid.
00:14:22.920 They're, they're ignorant. They're naive. They're innocent. And yet we don't learn any different
00:14:28.720 as men. Like, Oh, I failed. I'm going to go hide in the corner and talk and not talk about it. And
00:14:33.280 just like pretend it didn't exist. And hopefully nobody saw me. Does it go away? No, it doesn't
00:14:37.500 go away. It's still there. You just never addressed it like a man. And so it has time to grow and 0.56
00:14:44.240 metastasize. And then it will rear its ugly head in the worst possible scenario because you never
00:14:50.600 dealt with it like a man. And so you need to deal with it, wallow in it, feel it, feel the sting and
00:14:56.840 the pain and the agony and wallow in that defeat. Not for the sake of throwing yourself a pity party
00:15:02.420 or getting pity from other people, but that you can feel the weight of it. Like when I lose and I fail,
00:15:09.440 I want it to sting because I don't want that to happen again. I don't like the pain. And so I don't
00:15:14.360 want it to happen again. So what I do is I spend a lot of time analyzing. All right, where did I go wrong?
00:15:18.480 With this particular event I was telling you about, it's like, okay, well, what did I do?
00:15:22.960 Was my messaging off? Was my branding off? Do I not have a large enough audience? Was what I was
00:15:27.320 offering not compelling enough? Did people not get it? Was it too expensive? Did I not market it well?
00:15:33.640 There's an infinite number of variabilities and factors that it could have been. And I needed to
00:15:38.000 spend some real time digging into the failure and figuring out what the hell was the problem.
00:15:44.100 And the conclusion that I came to in that particular scenario was that my messaging was off.
00:15:51.080 I did not clearly articulate a unique selling proposition. I didn't have a great funnel for
00:15:57.500 letting people go through that process eventually to the registration page. And I really, really
00:16:03.380 failed in that department. And I didn't embrace it. And I didn't say, well, see, like this isn't meant
00:16:09.260 to be. That's what a lot of people say. Well, see, I guess it just wasn't meant to be, or even worse as
00:16:14.500 a Christian myself, what I hear other Christians say is they'll say, well, you know, it just wasn't
00:16:18.900 God's will. Really? You're going to put that shit on God? You're going to use the tools that he has
00:16:28.600 given you inadequately, inferior to the way that they could be used. And then when they don't work,
00:16:35.700 because you didn't use your tools, your voice, your health, your intellect, your connections,
00:16:41.960 the assets you have, you didn't use them to your ability. You're like, see, God doesn't want it to
00:16:45.620 work. No, maybe he actually did want it to work and you just didn't use it effectively. And so you
00:16:51.120 can pray to him for guidance and direction. Sure. You should. And you can look to other people and that
00:16:57.620 might be an answer to your prayers. Hey, what is this guy doing? What's that guy doing? But you can
00:17:01.560 only do that in this step two, this analyzation process. What did I do well? What didn't I do
00:17:08.000 well? Where did I thrive? Where did I fail? What assets did I have that were good? What assets do I
00:17:13.920 need that I didn't have access to? Who's done this before? What can they teach me? What questions should
00:17:19.120 I be asking? Break it down? Because when you break it down, you start to move into this third step.
00:17:26.820 And that third step is act, act. If you're wallowing in your own self-pity and you're like, see, you know,
00:17:34.360 it just wasn't meant to be. And God doesn't want it to be. And I'm a failure and I'm a loser and I'm a
00:17:38.360 piece of shit. And like, I'm never going to do anything because that hurts. Okay. Well, you didn't
00:17:43.040 complete the cycle guys. And that's why a lot of you have an unhealthy relationship with failure
00:17:48.760 because you're only hitting one of these things. You accepted it to the nth degree, but you didn't
00:17:54.200 do anything about it. So you failed in one particular instance, you accepted it. And then
00:17:59.820 you put all this weird packaging around it. And you said, see, I'm a failure. I'm a loser. I don't
00:18:04.400 deserve to be here. I don't deserve to have this level of success. My mother and dad did this to me,
00:18:09.120 the economy, the president, my friends, people are out to get me, karma, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:18:16.020 And you accepted it wholeheartedly. And you never did point number two or point number three.
00:18:22.100 And because you didn't want to feel like shit next time you failed, and there will be a next time.
00:18:26.020 Instead, you said, well, I didn't really fail guys. You know, it wasn't a failure. It was a learning
00:18:31.440 opportunity. It was a learning. I meant to learn. Come on now. Let's not fool.
00:18:39.120 We can fool ourselves. That's the worst thing we can do. We can spend a lot of time fooling other
00:18:45.620 people and dinking around and pretending, you know, like we didn't really struggle as much and
00:18:50.720 try to look good in their eyes, but you're never going to fool the man looking back at you in the
00:18:54.980 mirror. And so if you say, well, I didn't, I didn't fail guys. Like I, I was just learning. It's
00:19:00.440 just, I was, I was training. You know, it's like when you're at the golf course and you're,
00:19:03.680 you step up to the tee box and you take a rip and you miss it. You're like, oh, this is a warmup
00:19:07.820 swing. No, no, you just missed it. And everybody knows you just missed it. And you know, you just
00:19:11.520 missed it, but you tell yourself, I was just, I just, it was a warmup. No guys, come on now.
00:19:16.920 Let's be truthful. We talk about that a lot. Let's, let's have some integrity.
00:19:22.160 And part of having integrity is acknowledging that you aren't perfect and you aren't as good
00:19:26.600 as you think you are. And you don't always get it right. And when I say you might as well point it
00:19:30.980 back at me, cause I'm not always right. I'm not always perfect. I don't always nail it out of the park.
00:19:35.840 It just is what it is. So everybody's got the acceptance part, right? Where do you go from
00:19:44.160 there? Do you label that as, as being you, I'm a failure, or do you say, okay, well, you know,
00:19:50.480 like, look, yeah, I failed. I struggled. I'm at the golf, the golf, the tee box. And I swung and I
00:19:55.200 missed what do I have to do? Okay. Well, I was too, too far back. My knees weren't bent. My swing
00:19:59.600 wasn't proper. Okay. Oh, let's figure it out. Okay. Good. And then you step up, you hit it,
00:20:03.800 hit it on a line, hit it where you want, put the ball where it needs to be. But you only did that
00:20:08.360 because you accepted it. You analyzed where you went wrong. And then you acted, you took another
00:20:12.280 swing. There's a lot of guys out there who have this like false sense of bravado, this machismo,
00:20:23.620 this excessive pride. Like I'm strong. I'm bold. I'm assertive. I'm an alpha. I'm this,
00:20:30.080 I'm that. Oh, but no, I'd never get into another relationship. Oh, I know. No, my boss screwed
00:20:36.440 me. I'd never do that again. Oh, this. Okay. Are you really that tough or are you afraid?
00:20:44.540 And it's okay to be afraid guys, but it's not okay not to act in spite of your fear.
00:20:51.780 That's what men do. It isn't the absence of fear. I'm afraid. I'm afraid every time I get
00:20:59.100 behind this microphone, not to the point where it hinders my ability to do it, but I'm like, okay,
00:21:03.260 well, what are the guys going to think? Are they going to judge me? Are they going to like what I
00:21:06.480 have to say? And there's always a small percentage of people who don't, but I don't let it paralyze me
00:21:11.360 because I realized that their only way to complete this process and have a healthy relationship with
00:21:17.040 failure is by working through the entire process. And the last act, the last step is to act.
00:21:25.440 And then we measure our performance again through the acceptance. Hey, you know what? I did really
00:21:29.560 well that time, or no, I didn't do so well. And we go through this cycle over and over and over again.
00:21:34.880 And so let's cut out the nonsense with the first attempt in learning. And I didn't fail. I was just
00:21:40.360 practicing and I was just learning. And that wasn't a real swing. That was just a warmup. And then you
00:21:44.800 hear guys, this is the one I like a lot is 2021 was just a warmup. But you know, 2022 is, is, is for
00:21:55.340 real guys. 2022 is going to be the same as 2021 for the overwhelming majority of you, because you're
00:22:02.980 fooling yourself. You're willingly and openly fooling yourself. Stop, stop. You failed. I failed.
00:22:14.260 We've all failed. Now, what we do from there is what will define us as men. All right, guys,
00:22:23.880 let me know. Shoot me a message. Tell me about your relationship with failure. Maybe you think I'm an
00:22:28.700 idiot. Maybe I just spent, I don't know, 20 minutes explaining something that didn't land with you or
00:22:33.260 didn't, didn't resonate. Or you think, oh, that was stupid. It was semantics, but there's a deeper
00:22:37.040 conversation that needs to be had here. So if you think I'm an idiot, let me know. Not that I need to tell
00:22:41.540 you, you're going to tell me that anyways, but if you think I'm right, you think I'm wrong,
00:22:44.760 or you're going to fall somewhere in the middle, then let's, let's talk about it. Let's discuss.
00:22:48.320 This is what the Order of Man podcast and movement is all about. You can do that at the Facebook group,
00:22:53.540 facebook.com slash groups slash Order of Man, great conversations happening there. Or you can do that
00:23:00.000 in our exclusive brotherhood, which not only are great conversations happening, but also we're driving
00:23:05.140 each other towards action. We're completing the process, challenges, assignments, accountability,
00:23:12.260 camaraderie, brotherhood, pushing, motivating, pulling, inspiring us all in the same direction.
00:23:19.560 Orderofman.com slash Iron Council. All right, gentlemen, let's develop those healthy relationships
00:23:25.480 with failing and failure. All right, guys, we'll be back on next week. Ben Shapiro is on the podcast
00:23:32.280 next week. Until then, go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.
00:23:37.500 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life
00:23:42.000 and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.