Order of Man - How to Move on After Losing ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

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

00:00:17.020 you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:00:22.520 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler. I'm the

00:00:27.920 founder of the Order of Man podcasting movement. Welcome here today and welcome back. Just got

00:00:33.520 back from a week-long vacation to Scotland. Had a great time. And as much as I love my vacations

00:00:39.260 and trips like that, especially when I see something I've wanted to see for a long time

00:00:42.720 and get it checked off my bucket list, it's always good to come back because I enjoy this.

00:00:47.900 And if you're new, what I want you to know is this is a podcast and a movement dedicated to

00:00:51.680 helping you become a better, more proficient, more capable, more fulfilled man. And we do

00:00:57.220 that primarily through this podcast. This is your Friday field notes where you'll hear some

00:01:00.780 thoughts and ideas that I have from throughout the week. But we also have interviews with guys

00:01:05.840 like Jock Willink and David Goggins and Tim Kennedy and Tim Tebow and Ben Shapiro and Grant Cardone

00:01:12.040 and Andy Frisilla and Terry Cruz and Matthew McConaughey. I mean, I could go on and on and on

00:01:17.900 because I think we've done almost 500 interviews at this point. So I want to thank you for your

00:01:25.120 efforts. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for the work that you do. And thank you for

00:01:28.100 believing in the mission to reclaim and restore masculinity. Also on a similar note, we just

00:01:33.740 hit 300,000 subscribers over on YouTube. So if you're not following there, 300,000 other people

00:01:40.080 think that's a pretty good source of information to help you improve as a man. So you can check that

00:01:45.840 out at youtube.com slash order of man. Try as they may. YouTube is not going to quiet us. We've got

00:01:53.940 other avenues and things like that as well, but enough of you are saying, no, we want this content.

00:01:58.400 We want this information. And these little trick tricks that they play don't tend to hold up. So

00:02:04.580 glad you're tuning in there. Guys, I want to talk with you about moving on today because this is a

00:02:09.540 subject that I've had to really become intimately familiar with over the past year. A lot of you know

00:02:15.280 about my separation and then my subsequent divorce and overcoming that over the past year. And it has

00:02:22.180 been about a year, I think just under since we started this process, my ex-wife and I. And it's

00:02:31.840 been a hard year from that perspective. A lot of great things have come of this year as well. But from

00:02:36.140 that perspective, it's been a very difficult year and I've had to learn to move on maybe more so than I

00:02:41.000 ever have in my life. And as I began to be more vocal about what I was experiencing in that

00:02:46.000 relationship with other men, guys like you who are tuning in, I've heard a lot of stories about men

00:02:51.800 who are going through divorces and separations, men who have lost loved ones, maybe even lost jobs,

00:02:57.440 or a lot of veterans will also tell me how hard it is to move past their transition into the civilian

00:03:04.120 life. Moving on is just a part of life. Inevitably, we're going to be met with and have to deal with

00:03:11.220 loss and suffering and pain and remorse and regret and sorrow. And I think our ability as men to move

00:03:17.940 on is not only going to dictate the course of the rest of our lives, but also the influence that we

00:03:24.120 have with the people that we love. That could be your wife or your children, employees, colleagues,

00:03:29.360 co-workers, other people like you who might be inspired by a message that you may share or just

00:03:36.280 the way that you show up. So our ability to move on not only serves us, but it serves other people.

00:03:41.720 And I think that's at the root, the foundational root of what it means to be a man to serve.

00:03:46.200 Our motto is to protect, provide, preside. And if you look at what all three of those things have

00:03:50.900 in common, there's, there's a underlying facet of service to protect other people, to provide for

00:03:59.640 others, to preside, which is synonymous with leadership, to provide, or excuse me, preside

00:04:04.660 over and for those people who would be inspired and led by you. It's to serve. And if we can't move

00:04:11.040 on effectively, we're going to have a hard time doing that. So I'm going to share with you some

00:04:15.400 points that I had made in our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council. You can learn more

00:04:20.200 at orderofman.com slash ironcouncil, but I made this post the other day and I thought it was worthy

00:04:24.320 of sharing with you here. And I said this, I want you to understand something very important.

00:04:28.480 You're allowed to be happy. You're allowed to pursue things that interest you. You're allowed

00:04:33.820 to move forward in your life in spite of your mistakes. And I'm not just talking about women.

00:04:38.180 I'm talking about all aspects of your life. So you effed up royally. When do you give yourself

00:04:44.460 permission to move forward? The answer right now, that looks different for all of us,

00:04:49.040 but I want you to know there comes a point where you have to consider that maybe it's 0.96

00:04:52.960 time for you to get your ass up, wipe the dust and dirt off yourself and get back in the game 0.97

00:04:59.020 of life. What if you died today? Seriously, what if the last day of your life was spent wallowing 1.00

00:05:05.520 in all of your past mistakes? What a shame if this day was wasted on what you were rather

00:05:11.800 than what you can become. Look, I know it's not easy. There hasn't been a day for the past 363

00:05:17.720 days that I haven't thought about all the things I did wrong and all the things I wish I could have

00:05:22.860 done differently. I experienced the mental and emotional turmoil of my failures daily,

00:05:27.940 if not hourly, but that isn't going to hold me back from pursuing the man I have the potential

00:05:33.260 to become. I have great things left in me. I have people that I'm here to serve. I have love I'm meant

00:05:39.000 to share and you do too. And that means you can't, excuse me, that means you and I can't waste

00:05:44.860 another minute entrenched in misery. It does nothing to serve those who were meant to lead

00:05:50.700 like crabs in a bucket. There will be those who don't want you to move on. There'll be those who

00:05:56.080 actively work against it. They'll tell you you're wrong. They'll project their insecurities on you.

00:06:01.280 They'll ask you to be as miserable as they are. That isn't your load to carry. That's theirs.

00:06:07.900 It's your responsibility to take your licks, learn your lessons, get up and march forward.

00:06:13.500 That's the only thing that matters. Not what you could have done different, but what you will do

00:06:19.560 now. And if you need permission, you don't, you have it now go. And that's the premise of the

00:06:26.220 conversation I wanted to share with you today. So that was a posting and I made inside of the

00:06:29.520 iron council. And I thought I'd elaborate on that a little bit more and hopefully give you some

00:06:35.040 insight. I've got six steps here that I've personally used in my life. These are 30,000 foot view

00:06:40.160 steps, but I think these will serve you as you deal with a divorce, a loss of a loved one,

00:06:47.020 loss of a job, loss of a mission, loss of purpose. Anytime we're experiencing loss, how do we move on?

00:06:51.840 Number one is that we have to accept that we lost. You have to accept it. I mean, look,

00:06:57.540 let's talk about failure for a second. There are so many people out there who will tell you that

00:07:04.000 you didn't fail. You learned and failure is not bad and learn how to fail forward and fail quickly.

00:07:10.860 And I understand the sentiment. I'm not an idiot. I understand the sentiment of what they're saying,

00:07:14.980 but I don't necessarily agree with that sentiment. Failure isn't something I want to do. Now it's

00:07:20.340 something that inevitably is going to happen, but I'm not interested in pursuing failure. I'm

00:07:24.800 interested in pursuing growth and success and results. Failure is an inevitable part of the

00:07:30.220 process, but it's not something I'm excited about. And so I'm okay with failure. But if we make all

00:07:36.420 these cute little euphemisms and excuses as to why failure is not wrong, I don't think we do ourselves

00:07:43.280 any justice because we're not putting any sort of negativity or associating any sort of negativity

00:07:49.660 with the concept of failure. Guys, we don't want to fail. All right. I don't care how many clever

00:07:55.640 quotes you've heard. I don't care how many platitudes or euphemisms we've, people have

00:08:01.040 regurgitated, like nobody wants to fail. So let's just get over that bull crap right now. Okay. You, 0.98

00:08:07.360 but you do have to accept that you failed and that's not comfortable. That's painful. There's tears and

00:08:13.280 there's turmoil and there's sorrow and there's regret and there's remorse and there's guilt and there's

00:08:17.600 shame with failure. But you know what? If we want to move forward, we have to accept the L.

00:08:23.260 Well, you have to accept that you lost. All right. You lost your wife. You lost your girlfriend.

00:08:28.860 You lost the quote unquote love of your life. You lost a loved one. You lost that job. You lost that

00:08:34.180 purpose. You lost that mission. You have to sit with that. You have to, you have to realize that you

00:08:39.340 lot, look, if there's, if there's no pain, then there's no reason to improve. There's no reason to

00:08:44.360 get better. So I'm not saying that we're going to try to find pain, but if there's pain, that's a pretty

00:08:48.980 good motivating factor for us improving. All of us spend so much time avoiding confrontation,

00:08:56.400 avoiding things that are painful, avoiding difficult conversations, avoiding anything that

00:09:02.040 might cause us distress. What a shame because in those moments we can learn and we can grow.

00:09:06.920 So number one, accept that you lost something and it was valuable and it was important to you and you

00:09:13.520 cared about it and you maybe even cherished it. And it was a big part of your life,

00:09:17.800 but you lost and you lost it. That's the first step. Number two, you've got to sit with it.

00:09:24.420 You've got to sit with it. Okay. What exactly did you lose? How did this happen? What led to this,

00:09:32.000 this loss that you dealt with? Like get comfortable being uncomfortable. I mean, how, how often do we

00:09:38.180 run away from silence? How many of you can be silent? I have a hard time with it personally.

00:09:42.540 I don't want to be silent. I don't want to sit alone because I want to be distracted, right? I

00:09:49.120 want to be distracted from the pain. I want to be distracted from the sorrow and the turmoil. We

00:09:53.240 can't do that. We actually have to fully embrace the emotion of pain, sorrow, sadness, regret, remorse,

00:10:00.640 guilt, shame, all the things that you experience. You have to internalize it. You have to feel it.

00:10:06.060 You have to feel it because your body needs to learn how to process it. And we haven't learned

00:10:10.880 primarily how to do that because any little inconvenience, we run and we hide and we distract

00:10:18.280 and we sedate. I used to do it with alcohol, sedate myself constantly because I didn't want to feel a

00:10:23.420 certain thing. And so I ran away like a coward and I hid from it rather than just embraced it and

00:10:30.120 realized it's okay to be sad. It's okay to feel shame. It's okay to feel guilt. It's okay to experience

00:10:38.300 the loss, but sit with it a little bit and experience it. As I was starting training in jujitsu,

00:10:44.760 every once in a while, somebody would wrap their arm around my neck and try to submit and choke me.

00:10:49.540 And I remember when I very first started, the minute that I felt that I tapped quickly because

00:10:53.280 there was some discomfort, but I began to become more comfortable with the discomfort. And in fact,

00:10:59.000 there was times where I thought, okay, this person's got me in a good hold, a good submission.

00:11:03.460 They're probably going to get with me or get me, excuse me, uh, to submit, but I'd rather just sit

00:11:08.440 here for a minute and feel it. Like just experience it. Like how long can I go before I must, and I have

00:11:15.700 to tap. And what I found through that process is I began to become more comfortable with that scenario.

00:11:23.820 And what I also found is that a lot of guys, because I didn't react to their attempted submission

00:11:31.060 would actually let go because I was calm and I was cool and I was collected. And the only way I got to

00:11:37.360 that point is that I was willing to sit in the, the turmoil, the fire and brimstone, if you will.

00:11:44.400 And the more that we can sit in it, not, not to, to beat ourselves up, but to become comfortable

00:11:50.780 with it and teach our bodies and our minds and our souls, how to deal with and interact with the

00:11:56.220 mental and emotional pain we're experiencing, the better off we're going to be for it.

00:12:00.540 So number one is realizing that there's a loss and accepting the loss. Like you can't hide from

00:12:05.140 that and pretend like you won by saying failures. The first step, no failure is a failure. It means you

00:12:09.860 did not hit your objective or you lost something that was important to you. Number two is sit with

00:12:15.200 it. Number three is now, once you've accepted it and you've sat with it, now we're going to begin

00:12:22.460 to extract the lessons that can be learned from it. What did you do wrong? What led to the loss?

00:12:30.320 How could you have showed up differently? What should you have done? If you were in this same

00:12:35.440 circumstance moving forward and you likely will be, what are you going to do differently?

00:12:39.860 How are you going to carry yourself? How are you going to handle yourself? In what ways are you

00:12:44.040 going to show up as a man more effectively than you did before? Now, this is where hope starts to

00:12:48.520 come in because up to this point, I've just been talking about despair, wallow in your own self-pity,

00:12:53.940 accept the loss, sit in your pain. Now I'm talking about hope and optimism. All right. When we start

00:12:59.560 thinking about, Hey, you know, I did these things. Here's how I showed up with my ex-wife and I wasn't

00:13:05.260 always there for her mentally and emotionally. That's hard to admit. That's hard to face. That's hard

00:13:09.840 to sit with. But given the opportunity with another woman to come into my life, here's what I would

00:13:14.960 do next. Here's how I would show up moving forward. Now we're talking about forward thinking, hope and

00:13:21.620 optimism. And now we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And so we've been sitting in this

00:13:26.460 darkness and this discomfort and this pain. And now we're thinking about the lessons and thinking

00:13:30.460 to ourselves, I might have another opportunity. You know, me personally, I'm 42 years old. I'm going to

00:13:36.300 have another opportunity in a lot of different aspects of my life and I can do it differently.

00:13:41.080 And that excites me, that energizes me, that rejuvenates me. And so in spite of the pain,

00:13:47.120 I still experience and feel, which I do daily, I know that I can be better, that I can do better,

00:13:53.680 that I can show up in a more powerful way. And I will extract the lessons. Journaling is huge for me,

00:13:59.780 guys. I've got a journal here in my drawer that I go through and I write down things that I've learned

00:14:05.680 from throughout the day and how the day went and why I feel the way I feel and where that came from

00:14:09.860 and what victories I had and what setbacks I confronted. I do that daily because I want to

00:14:15.620 have documentation of the lessons that I can apply in my life moving forward. Now, number four is it's

00:14:23.220 not just enough to begin to extract the lessons, the shoulda, coulda, wouldas, if you will, you now

00:14:28.620 have to apply those in some measurable way. So if we're talking about the way that you communicated

00:14:34.600 with your wife and children, for example, like, like in my situation, now, when I have those same

00:14:40.780 moments that come up with my kids, what am I doing to respond to those situations where I would have

00:14:46.880 done it one way, maybe a year or two ago, in what way am I going to show up now? How am I going to

00:14:52.820 respond to this situation in a completely different and unique way? And look, we need to realize that just

00:14:59.740 because you do it in a different way, doesn't mean people are always going to respond in a favorable way.

00:15:04.540 Because you've been used to doing it one way for so long, and they're used to that. And they may not

00:15:11.040 even believe the change that they see. They may think that you're just putting on a front or putting

00:15:16.820 on a performance or a show. And so that's going to take a lot of time. But we don't do that for the

00:15:21.940 accolades, approval, or validation of others. We do it because it's the right thing to do. And we want to be

00:15:28.380 a different breed of man moving forward. So we're going to apply the lessons that we extracted from

00:15:34.660 step three into step four, and we're going to document it. We're going to write it down.

00:15:39.960 Okay. We're going to, we're going to get our journals out. We're going to write those things.

00:15:44.240 Here's what I did. My kids were, were rowdy or rambunctious or saying mean things to each other

00:15:49.700 or misbehaving or disrespecting. And here's what I normally would have done. But today,

00:15:54.280 here's what I did and how, here's how it went. Now it becomes measurable. Hey, I got home from,

00:15:59.980 from work today and I was tired and I was exhausted. And my wife, she also had a bad day

00:16:04.420 at work or with the kids or whatever her dynamic is. And normally I would have shut her down

00:16:09.800 mentally and emotionally and not really communicated with her because I was tired. But instead I exerted a

00:16:14.820 little bit more effort and I asked about her day and I've, I showed interest in her and I,

00:16:20.660 and I invested in, in her development and here's how that went. Okay. Now these are measurable ways

00:16:26.840 for improvement. And you can see that the failures and the losses that you had are actually moving

00:16:32.500 you towards something better. All right. Number five is we have to have selective memory. When you've

00:16:39.560 lost, let's say it's a divorce, for example, and you carry the weight of that loss on your shoulders

00:16:47.000 as you should, as I should. It's our responsibility as men. And in a lot of ways we failed, not in every

00:16:54.600 way. We should also compartmentalize, but in that particular way we failed. I failed. I failed in my

00:17:01.400 marriage. I failed my ex-wife and I failed my children, not comfortable, but I've sat with it

00:17:06.000 long enough that I can say that and not, you know, let it cripple me. But that said, I'm going to be

00:17:12.920 selective in my memory. Okay. I'm not going to wallow in things that are going to make me feel

00:17:17.520 horrible and depressed and want to sit around and not move forward. I'm going to remember certain

00:17:24.260 things only to the degree that they can serve me moving forward. And those are the things I'm going

00:17:29.840 to choose to remember. So if I'm remembering a particular instance and how I showed up, I'm only

00:17:34.380 remembering that so that I can show up different moving forward. But if I just want to complain and

00:17:40.780 whine and cry and throw myself a pity party, gentlemen, that ain't it. All right. That's

00:17:45.440 not going to work for you. It's not going to work for me. So when I start to get into those ruts and

00:17:49.780 I do, I nip that as quickly as I possibly can, because I know it's not healthy and it's not

00:17:54.820 productive. Now I'm not saying shut everything off. Again, I told you, we want to sit with it. We

00:18:00.000 want to extract the lessons. We want to accept the loss. We want to apply new lessons in a measurable

00:18:04.120 way. We can't do that if we completely shut it off, but we only want to access the parts that are

00:18:09.380 going to help us move forward in positive and constructive ways. So we're going to have selective

00:18:13.240 memory. And how do you do this? Awareness, having a little margin and space in your life. When you

00:18:18.640 start thinking about a thought, ask yourself, is this serving me? Is the thought that I'm having

00:18:23.180 about my relationship or the thought I'm having about that job or the thought I'm having about

00:18:26.680 this loss that I experienced, is this serving me right now? Is this helping me be able to be a

00:18:30.220 better man? Yeah, it is because you're learning lessons and you're moving forward and then good,

00:18:35.380 do that. Or if it's, no, I just want to sit here and cry and complain and bitch and moan or have a 1.00

00:18:40.360 drink or smoke a joint. Okay. That's probably not serving you. So that's where we're going to be 0.99

00:18:45.180 selective and we're going to choose consciously to shut that part of it off. Number six, this is

00:18:50.440 really, really important. This is something that I have a hard time doing personally. So I imagine a

00:18:55.400 lot of other men do as well. I told you that number one was accept the losses. And if we're going to

00:19:01.540 accept the losses, then point number six is we also have to accept our wins. All right. You don't live

00:19:07.280 life in a vacuum. You're not a one-dimensional person. You are not a failure. You may have failed,

00:19:14.040 but you're not a failure collectively. All right. If you're going to own the losses, which I'm

00:19:19.200 suggesting that you do, then it's also acceptable to own the wins. And trust me, gentlemen, there are

00:19:24.820 some things that you are doing absolutely right. And in spite of everything that you've done

00:19:29.580 and how horrible that you've been and all the things that you've done to other people and all 0.76

00:19:34.860 the ways that you've made yourself and other people miserable, you've done some pretty darn 0.52

00:19:39.020 good things too. And if you're going to accept the failures, you also ought to accept the losses.

00:19:43.880 Or if you're not going to accept anything, maybe that's a strategy too, but I don't suggest it.

00:19:49.480 I suggest that you own your failures, own your mistakes, own your mess ups, but that also means

00:19:55.620 celebrate and honor the fact that you're getting better, that you're healing, that you're improving,

00:20:00.960 that you're learning and growing and developing and applying new lessons that you've learned

00:20:05.700 and who you are today. As in my case, a year later than I, what I was a year earlier,

00:20:12.400 I'm a different man. I'm better. I'm a better father. I'm a better friend. I'm a better business

00:20:19.140 owner. I'm a better communicator. I'm more in tune and more aware of what's going on in my own

00:20:23.960 life. I'm more connected to my emotions. So they don't dictate my life. They just are used as an

00:20:28.700 element of my life. I'm better. And I don't say that to boast or be prideful, but I'm saying there

00:20:34.400 has been a lot of good that's come from a lot of bad. And that's how we move on. And it's a process.

00:20:40.640 You know, you don't do this six step process. And then all of a sudden you're better and healed

00:20:43.940 and wham, bam, and move on with your life. No, you continue to do this. Number one, accept the loss.

00:20:49.620 Number two, sit with the loss. Number three, extract the lessons. Number four, apply those

00:20:55.600 lessons in some measurable way. Number five, engage in some selective memory. And then number six,

00:21:04.100 celebrate, honor, and accept the wins as well. All right, guys, I hope that helps. I hope that

00:21:09.980 serves you. I know firsthand how many of you are dealing with pain and turmoil and discomfort and

00:21:15.740 sadness and sorrow and remorse and guilt and shame and all the other so-called negative emotions.

00:21:21.660 I don't think they're negative. I think they can be used to serve you, but that's up to you.

00:21:25.200 And that's largely in part to how you decide to interpret and use, utilize, and move forward

00:21:32.120 with these lessons. All right, guys. If you want to check out what we're doing, I would suggest that

00:21:36.740 you check it out on Instagram, very active over there. And also YouTube, 300 and I think one or

00:21:42.240 2,000 subscribers at this point, probably be up to about 310 to 315 by the end of next month.

00:21:48.960 So I appreciate the contribution, the growth, the sharing, everything that you're doing.

00:21:52.440 Please share this episode, take a screenshot, shoot a text to somebody, leave a rating and review,

00:21:57.620 just help expand the mission. This is grassroots. All right. I have never poured a single dime into

00:22:02.200 advertising, marketing, any sort of that stuff. Equipment, podcasting, maybe some travel logistics,

00:22:07.860 things like that. Yes. But never into advertising because you're doing it. And I ask that you do that

00:22:12.000 if this is a value to you. All right, guys, we'll be back on Tuesday of next week. Until then,

00:22:18.040 let's you and I go out there, take action, move on with hope and optimism in our lives and become

00:22:24.780 the man we are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take

00:22:29.920 charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order

00:22:34.500 at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - July 28, 2023

How to Move on After Losing ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

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