FFN 014： 10 Books Every Man Should Read
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
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Summary
In this Friday Field Notes episode, Ryan talks about the 10 nonfiction books that every single man should read by the end of the year. He also provides some nonfiction book recommendations and links to interviews with some of his favorite authors.
Transcript
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You're a man. You're committed to the work required to forge your own destiny.
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You will not be defeated. You cannot be deterred.
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Nothing stands between you and the victory you seek.
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You're a rock. Steadfast, resolute, and unwavering.
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And, at the end of the day, the job will be done.
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What's going on today, men? My name is Ryan Michler,
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And, as always, I want to welcome you to the show today.
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This is our Friday show. It's a short show of my ramblings each and every week.
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And, these shows typically last between five to eight minutes, but today's is a little bit longer.
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If you're interested now in our full show, make sure you subscribe to iTunes
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or wherever you get your fix of podcasts so you never miss our Friday episode or our Tuesday show.
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And, during our interview shows on Tuesday, we have conversations with some of the world's most successful people.
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We've got Navy SEAL Jocko Willink, Art of Manliness as Brett McKay, Art of Charms, Jordan Harbinger,
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Seal Fitz, Mark Devine, Spartan Race's Joe DeSena, just to name a few.
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Now, today, I want to cover a topic that is near and dear to my heart.
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If you've followed me and Order of Man for any amount of time, you know that I am an avid reader.
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I try to read between 40 to 50 books per year because I know how valuable new information is.
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So, today, I want to share with you 10 books that every single man should read by the end of the year.
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Without fail, whenever I give a book list, someone always wants to tell me that I don't have any fiction books on the list.
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That's correct because, again, this is my non-fiction book list.
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Now, a couple of resources that you need to be aware of before we get started, before I share with you these 10 resources,
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is that I put an article out a couple of months ago about speed reading.
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The tips I share in the article are the strategies and the tactics that I use to get through those 40 to 50 books every single year.
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So, if you're interested in reading a little bit faster and also comprehending that information, go to orderofman.com slash speedread.
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Second, if you want to gain access to all of the books that I mentioned today, head to orderofman.com slash FFN014.
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All the links and the book recommendations that I mentioned today will be there.
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And also, the links to interviews with a few of the authors of some of these books.
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All right, with that said, let's just dive into this.
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They're in the order that I pulled them off the bookshelf.
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This is a great read for anybody in the creative space.
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If you're creating art, whether that's content on a podcast or a blog or a social media outlet, or you're an artist,
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or even if you're offering services of some kind, you will want to dig into this book.
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It's a super quick read, and Steven digs into the mental obstacles and hurdles that get in the way of our success.
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And he refers to it as the resistance, which you may have heard me say before.
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So, if you've ever bumped up against some barriers, again, the resistance in your work,
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The book is actually written in an interesting format.
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Essentially, it's the correspondence between him and a SEAL brother who's struggling adapting to civilian life after time served in the SEALs.
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Now, I never personally experienced the struggle that he talks about in the book after my time in the military,
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but I do know that this is something a lot of veterans deal with after tours and deployments.
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It's for anyone who's ever experienced hardship in their life and needs some help in overcoming it.
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The next one, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday.
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This is a follow-up book to Ryan's incredible book, which I'm sure you've heard of and read, The Obstacle is the Way.
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In Ego is the Enemy, Ryan teaches us why our egos are probably the single biggest hindrance to our success
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and, more importantly, how we can remove or at least to a minimum reduce our egos.
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So, he shares with us how we have a tendency to be our own worst enemy
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and why the alternative to ego and pride, which is humility, is a better approach to life.
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If you are interested, you can check out one of our highest downloaded podcast interviews
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Now, the next book, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin.
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If you've listened to me for any amount of time, you know that I recommend this book
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as probably my favorite business, leadership, and self-development book.
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I had an incredible interview with Jocko Willink.
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That interview can be found at orderofman.com slash 060 about this book.
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The retired Navy SEAL commander of Task Unit Bruiser, Jocko Willink, and Leif Babin
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extract the lessons they've learned from the battlefield in Ramadi, Iraq,
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and coincidentally, we had some overlap of deployments.
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They were getting to Ramadi as I was leaving, but if you pick one book from this list,
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People are going to help you stop making excuses and take full ownership of every single element
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If you're not following Grant Cardone, you should be.
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This man is all about thinking big, like 10X big.
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In this book, Grant talks about why thinking big, bigger than you've ever thought before,
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He teaches us it's going to take bigger goals, bigger risk, more resources, more energy,
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and more time to create the life that we really want.
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So if you know in your life you need to think bigger than where you are right now, this
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Gary Keller has created, if you're not familiar with him, an incredible real estate force to
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And in this book, he shares with us some strategies for focusing on the things that are extremely,
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extremely important to help us accomplish big things in our life.
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And I use the lessons every single day in my daily and my weekly planning, which if you're
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interested in those, can be found at orderofman.com slash battle plan.
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The next book is The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.
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Every single one of us knows creating and actually sticking to habits is the key to success.
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But how many of us can actually say that we do it?
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In The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg shares with us the formula for creating any new habit
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in our lives and how we can actually reprogram our brains to stick with these new habits that
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The next book, Mansfield Book of Manly Men by Stephen Mansfield.
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This is a great book on what it means to be a man.
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And this is a question that I've been trying to answer for the past year and a half.
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But in this book, Stephen Mansfield breaks down what it actually means to be a man using
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four manly maxims he's identified every man should be living by.
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And he also breaks down some key virtues that we should strive to live by as well.
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So if you're interested in checking out my interview with Stephen Mansfield,
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you can find that interview at orderofman.com slash 038.
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I'm actually curious to listen to that one myself as it was done quite a bit ago.
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But if you've ever struggled with a question of what it means to be a man and how you can
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be more of a man, Stephen is going to answer that for you.
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Now, the next book is Relentless by Tim Grover.
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It's written by Tim Grover, who is the trainer to the likes of Michael Jordan, Dwayne Wade,
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Tim gets in your face about what it will take to help you succeed on a massive level in every
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I really enjoyed getting to peek inside the training regimen and requirements of some of
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And he also does a great job of sharing with the reader how those lessons actually transfer
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over into the lives of an everyday guy like you and me.
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So this book is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
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And then the last book, guys, that I want to share with you, number 10, again, not in any
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For those of you who have listened to me, you know that I am a huge proponent of planning
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The bottom line is that unless you plan out your day, you're never going to succeed at
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So Hal Elrod, the author of The Miracle Morning, breaks down the science of a perfect start
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to your day, how you can eliminate the things that are keeping you from starting the day
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off right, and how to make the most, again, of every single day.
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I did an interview with Hal, and it is, guys, the single highest download episode to date.
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So you'll want to check it out at orderofman.com slash 070.
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My book recommendations for the remainder of 2016.
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Let me just break these down again real quick for you.
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The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, Resilience by Eric Greitens, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan
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Holiday, Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, The 10x Rule by Grant Cardone,
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The One Thing by Gary Keller, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, Mansfield Book of Manly
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Men by Steven Mansfield, Relentless by Tim Grover, and The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod.
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Make sure you implement their teachings in your life because knowledge is only power when it
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So again, you can go to orderofman.com slash FFN014 for the links to the interviews I mentioned
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and access also to the books so you can buy them yourselves.
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Last thing, guys, if you're interested in exploring these concepts further, you do need
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This is a group of men all working together to help each other succeed.
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Next week, we're going to be implementing what I refer to as our 12-week battle plan where
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we're going to lay out our objectives over the next 12 weeks, identify the tactics to
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meet them, and then hold each other accountable in success.
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So you can learn more at orderofman.com slash Iron Council, and I hope to see you there.
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In the meantime, guys, take action this week and live manfully.
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Now it's time to crush your excuses, own your choices, accept responsibility, and live manfully.
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Learn how at orderofman.com forward slash Field Notes.