Order of Man - January 20, 2023


Goal Planning That Actually Works ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES


Episode Stats

Length

23 minutes

Words per Minute

195.19185

Word Count

4,609

Sentence Count

362


Summary

In this episode, Ryan talks about a 4-part framework that he has developed over the course of 9 years that thousands of men have implemented in their life to be able to excel at levels they did not previously excel at and levels that they didn t even think were possible.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart
00:00:04.940 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
00:00:10.360 You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong. This is your life. This is who
00:00:17.000 you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
00:00:22.500 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler.
00:00:27.540 I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. I'm glad you're here with
00:00:31.680 us. It's my goal to give you the tools and resources. And in this podcast, the conversations
00:00:36.720 that you need to thrive as a man, a husband, a father, a business owner, a community leader,
00:00:42.240 a coach, a mentor, a friend, et cetera, et cetera. We are into the new year, about three or four
00:00:48.240 weeks into it as of the release of this podcast. And I hope things are going well for you. I wanted
00:00:52.600 to share something with you that I think could be invaluable if you implement it over the next
00:00:59.900 365 days. Because I really want 2023 to be your year. We say it all the time. 2022 is a warmup.
00:01:08.820 2023 is my year. We're catching strides. We say all these kinds of things. I actually want that to be
00:01:15.340 true. Because what I've seen a lot of us do is we end up saying that every single year, the same thing.
00:01:20.980 Like 2022 is a warmup. 2023 is a warmup. 2024 is a warmup. Great. You're warmed up. When are you
00:01:28.120 actually going to do something with your life? So today, I'm going to talk with you about a four-part
00:01:33.280 framework that I have developed over the course of eight, nine years now. And literally thousands of
00:01:40.700 men have implemented in their life to be able to excel at levels that they did not previously excel
00:01:48.300 at and levels that they didn't even think were possible in some cases. So we're going to be
00:01:52.320 talking about that. And I want you to know that I have a couple of resources that I can share with
00:01:56.220 you that will support what we're talking about today. Or if you don't want those resources and
00:02:01.440 you want to do it on your own, you're certainly welcome to do that. And I'm going to give you all
00:02:04.880 of the information you need. I'm not going to withhold anything like some people do. I'm going to give
00:02:09.260 you all the information so you can do it on your own. But if you want some help, I'll give you some
00:02:12.940 resources on that as well. So the two resources I want to give you as we talk about this is number
00:02:17.820 one, a free email series. It's 17 emails over a course of 30 days. That's going to walk you through
00:02:24.600 the exact steps that I'm going to share with you today in more detail. If you go to orderofman.com
00:02:29.560 slash battle ready, orderofman.com slash battle ready, you can pick up that free email series.
00:02:36.260 The other resource I want to give you is at store.orderofman.com. This is our battle planner.
00:02:42.360 This is what I use every single day. And it's a document, a notebook, if you will, for recording
00:02:50.620 your objectives, your vision, your tactics, your checkpoints, all of the things that I'm going to
00:02:55.580 talk with you about today are recorded on a daily basis in this battle planner. Because as it says
00:03:01.040 on the first page of this battle planner, what gets measured gets improved. What gets measured gets
00:03:06.480 improved. So let's get right into it. That is at store.orderofman.com. And then the
00:03:12.200 battle ready program is orderofman.com slash battle ready. Let's talk about this four-part
00:03:16.880 framework. I actually want new year's resolutions, your goals to actually work. Here's how we do it.
00:03:21.040 Number one, we're not going to start with goals. We're not going to start with goals. I know this
00:03:25.460 is about goals, but we're not starting with it because if you don't start with this, the vision
00:03:30.080 for your life, the vision for your life, then really the goals don't matter. You can move forward.
00:03:37.040 You can move sideways. You can move backwards. You can move in an infant number of ways,
00:03:40.040 but unless it's actually moving you to the desired outcome, to the desired result,
00:03:44.260 it really doesn't matter very much. So I want you to sit down and this is not a one-time exercise,
00:03:51.340 but I would love for you to sit down and really start to envision what your life could look like.
00:03:58.600 What would your life look like? Paint this picture, use words, journal, document, draw,
00:04:02.380 do a collage like we used to do in sixth grade. I don't care what you do, but start envisioning
00:04:10.320 what your life would look like if your fitness was in check, if you knew how to communicate
00:04:15.460 effectively with your wife and kids, if you knew how to handle your finances, if you were growing a
00:04:20.140 business, if you were serving in your community, if you were showing up in powerful ways, the ways
00:04:24.180 that you see and think that men should show up, what would that look like? Think about your vision.
00:04:29.460 Write it out. There's a lot of different ways to do this. Get a journal. Here's one way and write
00:04:34.980 out how you're feeling, how you're experiencing life, what it looks like, where you live, who you're
00:04:40.280 around, what you're doing, how you're spending your time, what you're doing for work, what virtues and
00:04:44.760 values are important to you and write it as if you've already achieved it. Write it as if you've
00:04:50.440 already achieved it. That's one way to do the vision. Another way is to write it as if you haven't
00:04:56.280 achieved it, but you're actually working towards it. And a vision isn't, I want to run a marathon.
00:05:01.340 That's not the vision. The vision might be, if we're talking about fitness, for example, and health
00:05:08.100 might be, I want to be a healthy individual that is alive and full of energy and feels younger than I
00:05:17.580 actually am in age. And I have the energy to do my work, to spend time with family, to be engaged
00:05:24.140 with friends, to go on trips and travel. And I want to be healthy so I can accomplish those things.
00:05:30.120 I want to serve. I want to live a long life so I can serve for a long time. That's more of the vision
00:05:34.860 than saying, I'd like to run a marathon. Now the marathon might support the vision, but it always has
00:05:41.220 to start there. And the reason that it starts at the vision is that if you start it with the objective
00:05:46.640 or your goal, it may not be strong enough to get you through the difficult times. And if your goals
00:05:53.540 are meaningful and significant as they should be, then there's going to be difficult times.
00:05:58.320 There's going to be obstacles and roadblocks and hurdles and barriers that you need to go through or
00:06:04.160 overcome. And we need to fixate our minds on the vision of how we see our lives. And if we don't have
00:06:12.660 that, we're probably going to end up somewhere that we're not completely satisfied because we
00:06:16.800 weren't deliberate and intentional about it. So all of your goal planning starts with this
00:06:21.220 overarching vision of where you want to be. Again, you can write it in the context of you've already
00:06:26.060 achieved it. You can write it in the context of what you want to accomplish. The way that I do my vision
00:06:31.960 is that I've already achieved it. And it's very focused on the way I show up. So I show up with honor.
00:06:40.780 I show up with respect. People around me are excited to have me there. I contribute. I engage.
00:06:47.540 I add to conversations. I'm a healthy individual who has lots of energy. I'm in the community and
00:06:54.100 I'm serving and I'm helping and I'm leading this organization. That's my vision. There's no
00:06:59.440 parameters on how short it needs to be, how long it needs to be, but it needs to be emotionally charged.
00:07:04.080 You need to read it. And in a way, almost tear up a little bit reading it because it's so powerful to
00:07:09.100 you. And maybe you don't literally tear up, but it's emotionally charged. A lot of times emotions
00:07:15.860 get a bad rap. And I've been talking a lot about how emotions aren't a bad thing. They can actually
00:07:20.480 be used to accomplish some very good and real things. So get that emotionally charged vision.
00:07:25.980 So that's step number one. All right. Step number two, once we have the vision and only once we have
00:07:32.500 the vision of what we want out of our lives over the next one or three or five, or maybe even 10 years,
00:07:37.180 I usually don't go out that long. I would say the next year to three years, maybe five at the most,
00:07:42.320 but in the next year to three years, here's my vision. The next thing that we do is we start
00:07:47.520 looking at our objectives. Okay. And our objectives, goals, whatever you want to call them. Our objectives
00:07:53.540 are things that are tangible that we want to complete in the next 90 days. I work in 90 day blocks.
00:08:01.580 Okay. That's it. This is a quarterly battle plan. I don't work in six month blocks. I don't work in
00:08:07.140 a year at a time. I don't work in five years or 10 years at a time. I have the vision for that,
00:08:11.520 but I work objectively towards those objectives in a 90 day window. So January, February, March,
00:08:19.380 I will have accomplished these things by March. And there's four key areas that I focus on.
00:08:24.320 So number one is I focus on calibration. Calibration is getting centered. It's getting
00:08:31.740 right spiritually, mentally, emotionally. Part of that is journaling. Part of that is my walk in
00:08:38.180 relationship with God. Part of that is how I feel about myself and my purpose on this earth,
00:08:42.480 but it's getting grounded in something higher than yourself, something bigger than yourself,
00:08:48.560 feeling good mentally and emotionally about who you are. That's calibration. A lot of things that
00:08:54.800 could be objectives for calibration. It could be completing a specific course that's going to help
00:09:01.180 you meditate better or completing a certain degree or certification that's going to help you again,
00:09:09.140 move towards your vision, but it's going to get you closer to God, right? There's things like an
00:09:14.160 objective would be, Hey, I'm going to finish the Bible this year. And if I finished the Bible,
00:09:19.660 then I feel like I'll be more knowledgeable. I'll be more educated. I'll have a greater relationship
00:09:23.620 with God. I'll be closer to God. And therefore my life will be better and it will move me towards
00:09:28.440 the vision I have for myself. So that's calibration. Okay. Next is connection. So connection is with the
00:09:36.100 relationships you have with other people. And sometimes these relationships are great and they're
00:09:40.880 firing on all cylinders and other times they're not, you're struggling. You know, you're struggling
00:09:45.400 to connect. You're struggling to relate. You're struggling to have conversations. You're struggling
00:09:48.900 to be connected with somebody. The relationships around you matter. No man is an Island and no man can
00:09:55.140 do this thing we call life on his own. So what is your relationship with your wife look like? What is
00:10:00.500 your relationship with your kids look like? What is your relationship with your, the rest of your
00:10:04.720 family or your friends? Maybe it's an employer. Maybe it's an employee. Maybe it's a, a young man that
00:10:09.960 you're mentoring or coaching in some aspect of life. And you really want to build out the relationship
00:10:13.900 with them. A great objective in the relationship or the connection quadrant is what I would call it
00:10:20.980 is doing a project, a meaningful project together. Could be coaching sports for your children. And
00:10:28.240 that's a great way to connect with them over something meaningful. It could be working on a woodworking
00:10:32.540 project, like building storage shelves for food supply. And you're doing that with your son or with
00:10:38.060 your daughter. A lot of different things that you can do. Uh, Kip Sorensen, a co-host of,
00:10:42.920 of the ask me anything podcast. Uh, one of his connection objectives, this was about a year or so
00:10:48.300 ago was he was going to do either a Ragnar or a, uh, triathlon with his wife. And that was the way
00:10:55.660 that they were going to connect. So it was to, the objective was to complete that. But in, in the process,
00:11:01.020 they were connecting at a much deeper level. So that's what the connection quadrant looks like.
00:11:05.520 Okay. Next we have condition and condition is your, your health. It's your physical body,
00:11:14.260 sleep, diet, nutrition, fuel, exercise, recovery, stamina, all of these things that we think about
00:11:21.700 when we think about our health and take a real honest look about where you are now and what that
00:11:27.140 vision you have for yourself is and try to bridge the gap. So if you're trying to develop strength and
00:11:32.980 build strength, then, okay, that's what you need to go to the gym. You need to get stronger. You need
00:11:38.460 to put on a certain amount of muscle. If you want to improve your, I don't know if you can hear the
00:11:45.780 noise in the background. You may or may not. My youngest son is out there yelling at something.
00:11:49.840 So speaking of a connection quadrant, like maybe I need to connect with him and figure out what's going
00:11:55.640 on. Uh, but with regards to condition, so back to what I was saying is if you're in martial arts,
00:12:00.800 a condition objective might be that, Hey, in the next 90 days, I'm going to compete in a jujitsu
00:12:06.020 tournament and that's going to help me be healthier. That's going to help me to feel
00:12:09.900 better about myself. That's going to help drive me towards results. It's going to make me a better
00:12:14.040 protector. A lot of things that that's going to drive you to when it comes to the vision that you
00:12:18.060 have for yourself. So what does that condition objective looks like for you? Complete Pete in a
00:12:24.440 marathon, uh, competing in a jujitsu tournament, uh, put on a certain amount of, of, of body mass,
00:12:32.140 muscle, lean muscle mass, lose a certain amount of weight. A lot of things that you could do. I find
00:12:37.860 that the condition quadrant is one of the easier for men because it's very quantifiable. So what is that
00:12:44.700 90 day objective for you in condition? And then the last is contribution. So I believe that men are
00:12:51.880 men of value. We add value, we enhance and enrich the lives of the people around us. And we give
00:12:58.460 back and we serve and we have to make ourselves more capable of doing so. So the finances fits into
00:13:04.880 this. The business fits into this charitable service fits into this. It's what you're doing
00:13:09.660 to improve not only yourself, but the environment around you. And I think a lot of times people ask me
00:13:16.120 about the money and the business side of things and why this is in contribution, because I think they're
00:13:20.140 in direct proportion to each other. I think the better you are at making money, the better you
00:13:24.360 are at being an entrepreneur or a business owner, or even an employee, the better you are at that,
00:13:29.080 the more proficient you are with your money, the more proficient you are with your resources,
00:13:32.300 the more likely it is that you're in the position to be able to serve others, help offer solutions
00:13:37.220 and give people what they need to thrive in life. So a contribution objective could be
00:13:46.500 gaining a new certification. That's going to help you offer a service to the world.
00:13:52.160 It could be starting a charitable organization. It could be donating so much money to a charitable
00:13:57.440 organization that you believe in. It could be starting a charitable organization. It could be
00:14:03.580 taking on a new project or task at work and completing that project, starting a new business,
00:14:09.600 a lot of different things that this could be. But again, it's about making yourself more valuable
00:14:13.720 and feeling good about that, of course, but then also giving that value to the world.
00:14:19.500 Some of it, you're going to be compensated for through work, like I am here in this business.
00:14:23.120 And some of it, you're doing it because you want to give back to the community or give back to the
00:14:26.660 people who helped you along the way somewhere. So let's step back for a minute. First, we have vision.
00:14:33.420 Next, we have our objectives in the four quadrants. So again, they're calibration,
00:14:38.720 connection, condition, and contribution. Now that we have our objectives, this is where the rubber meets
00:14:47.640 the road. Okay. This is where we start thinking about what specifically we need to do on a daily
00:14:54.160 basis. So if, for example, you want to run a marathon and that's your condition objective,
00:15:03.060 and you want to do that in 90 days, what are you going to do every single day to get to that point?
00:15:10.560 It might be that you're going to train an hour and a half or 45 minutes or an hour or whatever you
00:15:15.900 decide. You're going to train every single day to accomplish that. So I'm going to train an hour
00:15:21.840 every single day. That's going to be a combination of running, being in the gym, treadmill, conditioning,
00:15:27.240 cardio, all that kind of stuff. Sometimes I will add a secondary tactic is what I call these things.
00:15:33.060 A secondary tactic that I can do that isn't daily. That isn't daily. It might be, for example, is
00:15:39.700 Monday through Friday, I'm going to train running, cardio, strength training, et cetera.
00:15:46.700 And then on Saturday, I'm going to go out and run various lengths. So the first Saturday,
00:15:52.300 I might go out and run three miles. The next Saturday, I might go run eight miles. The next
00:15:56.140 Saturday, I might go run 10 miles and so on. You get the idea. But you need to have these daily
00:16:01.740 tactics in place that you can literally, whether you're using a battle planner or you're getting
00:16:09.360 the emails that I shared earlier, or you're just writing it down on a notepad and a piece of paper.
00:16:14.580 That's fine. If that works for you, do that. But you need to have something that you can check off
00:16:18.540 every single day. Yes, I worked out. Yes, I read my pages out of the Bible. Yes, I did some research
00:16:26.180 on that new credential I was trying to get. Yes, I coached my daughter or son's little league sports
00:16:30.460 team. And you can check it off every single day. We want to quantify it. We want to be able to put
00:16:34.780 it in front of us and see that you're actually moving the needle. This is why so many goal planning
00:16:41.440 softwares and strategies and tools fail is because you come up with what you want to do. And then it's
00:16:47.680 like, what now? I don't know. I'm just going to try to do it whenever. Doesn't work, gentlemen.
00:16:52.180 What works is being assertive. It's being proactive. It's documenting it. It's tracking
00:16:59.480 it. It's being ruthless in commitment to what you're trying to accomplish. If your objective
00:17:06.760 is to build the storage space out in your basement for food storage with one of your children,
00:17:15.600 because that's how you're going to connect with them, then what are you going to do on a daily
00:17:18.680 basis to make that a reality? Now, some of it's going to be planning and preparing.
00:17:22.800 Others, it's going to be cutting the equipment and getting the parts together. Other times,
00:17:27.660 it's going to be actually working on it and building the shelves themselves, installing
00:17:31.300 the shelves, painting, putting the cans and the food storage where it belongs.
00:17:36.760 But you can see if you do that every day for 90 days, and I'm talking about a lot here, guys,
00:17:41.940 I'm not talking about three, four, five hours a day. I'm talking about take a half an hour,
00:17:45.440 take an hour every single day and work on that. The gym, that's a great example. Wake up 45 minutes
00:17:50.840 earlier. Some of you don't have 45 minutes early. Do 30 minutes. I don't care, but do it every single
00:17:56.600 day. It's the consistency that's going to make the biggest results. It's the compounding and the
00:18:01.020 consistency that's going to produce those results for you. So we have the vision working backwards.
00:18:08.060 Now we have our objectives working backwards. We have daily tactics and sometimes a secondary tactic
00:18:12.880 that we would do weekly. For example, if you're trying to connect with your wife, a weekly tactic
00:18:19.640 might be weekly date night, but a daily tactic might be something as simple as letting her know
00:18:25.100 that you love her in some meaningful way. Maybe it's writing her a little note. Maybe it's buying a
00:18:31.920 small little gift on your way home. Maybe it's just carving out 20 minutes for a walk one day,
00:18:37.900 getting her flowers, sending her a message throughout your day, being creative, being
00:18:43.780 creative. You can do that daily and then you do your weekly date night. Okay. The last component
00:18:49.080 of this is your checkpoints. Now these checkpoints are something I don't see in a whole lot of planning
00:18:53.500 scenarios, but you have to know if you're on the right track because if you're doing, let's say
00:18:59.280 you're training for a marathon and you feel like that's going to move you towards the vision of being
00:19:03.660 in better health and being a strong man, strong, capable man. And you're doing training and you do
00:19:09.660 that for 30 days and you realize, man, I don't feel like I'm getting what I need. That's a problem.
00:19:15.740 Do we wait for 90 days to reevaluate? No, we can't wait for 90 days. So we have 30 day checkpoints
00:19:21.360 and we have 60 day checkpoints. And on the 30 day checkpoint, we evaluate where we are.
00:19:27.720 But if it's running a marathon, for example, am I able at this point, at this stage in the game,
00:19:33.620 am I capable of running, for example, half marathon? If you are, I would say you're probably
00:19:38.600 on the right track. If you're not, maybe the training needs to change. Maybe you need to do
00:19:43.280 something different. Maybe you need to spend some more time recovering. Maybe you need to spend more
00:19:47.480 time stretching. I don't know what it is, but the reason we have those checkpoints in place
00:19:51.660 is so that you can figure out what's going well and what's not going well. So you can either
00:19:57.240 maintain the current course you're on, if it's working, or you can move back, reevaluate and
00:20:03.540 pick a new course of action. So we do a, excuse me, a 30 day checkpoint and we do a 60 day check.
00:20:12.440 And as long as you're on the right trajectory, then you know, you're good. If you're not,
00:20:16.280 you can make the changes that you need. Guys, this is a very simple process. It doesn't have to be
00:20:21.200 complicated. It doesn't have to be a long process. I would say the most tedious part of this is
00:20:25.960 A, doing the work and B, making sure that you're documenting. That's a crucial, crucial component
00:20:32.000 of this game. You have to document it. If you're not, if you don't have a journal that you can write
00:20:37.900 down or you don't have the battle planner that you're using, it's, it's hit or miss. It's sporadic.
00:20:43.480 It's doing it when you want and doing things that you want to do when you want to do it probably got
00:20:49.380 you the results that you have in your life right now, which if you're listening to this podcast,
00:20:53.720 I assume that you want more out of life. So let's do things differently. In 2023, let's plan
00:21:00.800 differently. Let's strategize differently. Let's employ different tactics. Let's do things that
00:21:05.140 actually work. And the battle planning system has proven with thousands and thousands of men who
00:21:11.320 have gone through it on their own, who've gone through the emails, who have joined our exclusive
00:21:14.900 brotherhood, the iron council, thousands of men have gone through this and it's working.
00:21:19.180 They're making more money, starting businesses, charitable contributions are up. They're serving
00:21:25.420 their families. They're leading their wives. They're connecting with their kids. They're getting
00:21:29.260 in shape. They're losing weight. It's an amazing thing when you have a system that works and then you
00:21:35.900 have the tools to be able to do it. And also having the tools allows you to have some accountability in
00:21:40.480 there as well. So it's a very simple process. I don't want to complicate it. I don't need to
00:21:46.720 pretend that it's something greater and grander than it is so that you'll buy my stuff. It's not
00:21:52.400 what this is about. This is about serving each other. And so if you have questions, you can email
00:21:57.100 me, you can shoot me a message on Instagram. That's where I'm most active. And let me know what
00:22:01.080 your questions about the planning are. If you want additional resources, you can go to the battle
00:22:05.620 ready program, orderofman.com slash battle ready. That's a free course, free email series.
00:22:12.040 And then you can pick up if you want the battle planner, which you can find at store.orderofman.com.
00:22:18.700 And you'll get this leather bound planner for you to track all of these things that we share.
00:22:24.880 And it's going to give you some tools to walk you through as well. Guys, I really want 2023 to be a
00:22:29.360 killer year for you. I don't want it to be another warmup year. You've had enough warming up.
00:22:33.220 We've all warmed up. We're warm. It's time to get to work. It's time to produce results. It's time to
00:22:39.680 achieve what it is we want to achieve and no more warmup. Let's actually do something that moves the
00:22:44.180 needle forward. You can do this. I'm here to support you. The men that join us on the podcast
00:22:48.360 are here to support you. If you want to connect with us on the socials, we'll all support you.
00:22:53.700 If you want to join our exclusive brotherhood, the iron council, it's closed for now, but you can,
00:22:57.400 that's going to open up back in the spring. We're here to help. We're here to lead each other.
00:23:01.680 We're here to be led so we can learn new things and make the most of our lives. So guys, check it
00:23:07.480 out. Again, store.orderofman.com for the battle planner and the email series is at orderofman.com
00:23:14.540 slash battle ready. All right, guys, you have a marching orders. I hope that helps. If you have
00:23:18.700 clarifying questions or comments, let me know. I'll get an answer for you. Until then, let's go out
00:23:23.600 there, take action, become a man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man
00:23:28.600 Podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.
00:23:33.620 We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.