Order of Man - May 23, 2018


ITT 012： Overcoming the Grip of Depression and Suicide｜ John Gilliland

Hosted by
Ryan Michler
Guests
John Gilland
Mentioned
Ryan Bubba Downs Aaron
166： Why Men Should Compete ｜ Jake Thompson FFN 109： How We Stop School Shootings

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

175.25

Word count

3,752

Sentence count

310

Harmful content

Toxicity

16

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

On this episode of In The Trenches, I am joined by John Gilland, who shares his story of how he overcame depression and self-destructive behavior to become the man he is meant to be. In this episode, we dive deep into John s story and how he was able to turn his life around and become a better man.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.040 Gentlemen, welcome to In the Trenches, an Order of Man podcast dedicated to interviewing
00:00:04.360 ordinary, everyday men like you and me who are currently in the battle of becoming better
00:00:08.840 men.
00:00:09.460 You'll hear the good, the bad, and the ugly from guys who are striving to become stronger
00:00:13.680 husbands, fathers, business owners, and community leaders.
00:00:17.560 It's our mission to deliver the stories that will inspire you to become the man you are
00:00:21.620 meant to be.
00:00:22.320 Your host for this podcast is a man who is not only in the trenches, but has drastically
00:00:26.920 changed his life for the better over the past two years.
00:00:29.240 Here's Mr. Bubba Downs.
00:00:32.160 All right, gentlemen, Bubba here, back with In the Trenches.
00:00:34.840 Today, I am joined by John Gilland.
00:00:37.240 How's it going, man?
00:00:38.520 Good, man.
00:00:39.240 Good.
00:00:39.500 How are you?
00:00:40.080 I'm living the dream of doing the math, brother.
00:00:42.740 Right on.
00:00:43.860 So, John, your story has personally inspired me quite a few times.
00:00:49.440 So why don't we just kind of, why don't we back it up three or four years and let's talk
00:00:52.680 about where you were before you really got started on this journey.
00:00:57.020 I was in a bad place, man.
00:00:58.580 I, multiple suicide attempts.
00:01:04.960 I was in a very dark place mentally where depression had set in so greatly that, you 0.95
00:01:14.460 know, I was grasping at people, looking for answers, and ended up sucking them in for them
00:01:20.820 just to walk out of my life because it was too much, you know, extremely self-destructive.
00:01:26.880 And a lot of it was guilt from just years of wandering aimlessly through life with no
00:01:34.660 integrity, no, no direction, nothing.
00:01:37.620 And, you know, we can sit and talk about my childhood and how that contributed.
00:01:42.480 But at the end of the day, I was a grown man making decisions and they were just the wrong
00:01:47.860 ones because I didn't know.
00:01:49.480 I didn't, I didn't know.
00:01:50.140 So I didn't have any, um, guidelines for life, you know?
00:01:54.780 So I did a lot of bad things, man.
00:01:56.640 I cheated on my wife at the time, multiple times.
00:02:02.360 More, I'd say probably three affairs cheated more times than that by affairs.
00:02:09.020 I mean, full on affairs, you know, always provided monetarily and things like that.
00:02:15.200 But that's as far as it went, you know, no spiritual guides.
00:02:18.460 There's three Ps, man, not just one. 0.94
00:02:20.680 And that's right.
00:02:21.380 That's right.
00:02:21.960 That's right.
00:02:22.760 So I didn't do any of that, you know?
00:02:25.480 So that just led to a lot of guilt and shame, which I let control me.
00:02:30.540 And it just, it brought me to the very bottom.
00:02:36.000 You know, I wish I could say it was drugs and alcohol while I did those things.
00:02:40.840 I did all those things.
00:02:42.060 But that really wasn't the source of my downfall.
00:02:46.700 It was actually living without direction and without integrity.
00:02:50.040 Yeah.
00:02:50.200 Whenever you, whenever your, whenever your thoughts and your words and your actions don't line up,
00:02:54.800 it's real easy to fall down that rabbit hole.
00:02:57.800 Oh yeah, man.
00:02:58.860 Yeah.
00:02:59.340 And, you know, I really had no place to go, but up or dead.
00:03:03.900 And I was, you know, doing the one thing that I love the most, which is hunting.
00:03:08.460 That's, that's the one thing that I just truly love.
00:03:12.060 And I remember sitting in a deer stand and putting a rifle in my mouth, you know, at the one, doing the one thing that I would, you would think I would be the most at peace with, you know, but I wasn't at peace with myself.
00:03:25.200 So it didn't, I couldn't, I couldn't, I could not run it.
00:03:28.140 It was just there.
00:03:29.420 What, what stopped you from going ahead and pulling the trigger?
00:03:32.880 Looking back at it, I want to say it was cowardice. 0.54
00:03:36.260 You know, I remember sitting, thinking, telling myself how big of a coward I was at that moment.
00:03:44.040 It's like, why can't you do this?
00:03:45.220 Why can't you do this?
00:03:46.500 Because I was scared.
00:03:48.960 Even though I wanted the pain to stop.
00:03:52.020 Looking back now from where I'm at, at this moment, I want to say it was God just, just kind of holding me back from doing it.
00:03:58.260 Doing it for greater good.
00:04:00.380 I don't really know exactly what that is, but just the intro that you put in is, is, is enough for me to say, for you to say that, you know, I inspired you in so many ways.
00:04:11.540 That's, that's enough for the reason why I didn't do it.
00:04:14.080 Absolutely, man.
00:04:15.340 Yeah.
00:04:15.680 You, you and I have had a lot of conversations and.
00:04:18.780 Yeah, no doubt.
00:04:19.520 You know, your, your story is one that I think that a lot of people do need to hear just because of where you were to where you are today.
00:04:26.780 So let's get past, let's get past the suicide, the drugs, the affairs.
00:04:30.820 When did that start changing for you?
00:04:33.800 I took a step and I left my wife and it was just volatile and right or wrong.
00:04:39.820 That's what I did.
00:04:40.740 And I just, I knew I had to be alone.
00:04:44.480 As much as I feared it, I just had to be alone.
00:04:47.100 And so once I started doing that, I was a friend of mine getting, told me to listen to a podcast of a minister.
00:04:54.340 First time I'd ever even heard of podcasting.
00:04:57.980 I was on a desperate shirt search for what a man was.
00:05:02.340 Cause I had no idea.
00:05:03.860 And I ran across Ryan's podcast.
00:05:06.660 So once I found it, man, I listened to the first one, the second one, the third one.
00:05:10.900 And it was just, it was captivating.
00:05:15.220 Something about it drew me in.
00:05:17.100 It was like, this guy's, he's, he's onto something.
00:05:20.420 Something's, something really resonated.
00:05:22.840 So I just started doing that, man.
00:05:24.380 And then on my birthday, two years ago, I decided, you know what?
00:05:33.160 I'm signing up for the uprising.
00:05:35.280 I didn't have Facebook at the time.
00:05:36.940 It was pre-order of a man.
00:05:38.640 Like I didn't know anything about any of that kind of stuff.
00:05:40.900 Iron council, nothing.
00:05:42.080 I just knew a podcast and he talked about an uprising.
00:05:44.700 So I took a step, man.
00:05:47.940 Had only been on an airplane once in my life up until that point.
00:05:52.040 Yeah.
00:05:52.980 Petrified of going to the airport.
00:05:54.680 Not that I was scared of heights or flying.
00:05:56.720 It was just navigating airport.
00:05:58.860 You know, am I going to be on the plane on time?
00:06:01.440 And I'm, I'm traveling X amount of miles away with 20 guys that I have no idea who they are.
00:06:07.780 They're probably a bunch of rich dudes.
00:06:09.860 You know, I don't, these guys don't know where I'm at.
00:06:12.680 They don't, they don't know my story.
00:06:13.820 They've never been through anything, you know, blah, blah.
00:06:15.980 It's the same stories we tell ourselves, man.
00:06:17.720 Right.
00:06:18.480 Yeah.
00:06:19.560 You can talk yourself out of something that's definitely going to be good for you just because
00:06:24.740 you think that you're better than needing to do that.
00:06:27.700 Oh, absolutely.
00:06:28.960 But it really, it wasn't that I was better than needing to do it.
00:06:32.260 It was, I was trying to talk myself out of it because I was scared because I wasn't good
00:06:38.560 enough to be with those men.
00:06:40.180 Right.
00:06:40.480 You know, even though we were all going for the same sort of reason, you know, it's how 0.97
00:06:46.460 asinine is the stories we tell ourselves. 0.97
00:06:48.220 Right.
00:06:49.300 Yeah.
00:06:50.860 So at the uprising, man, I've, I've heard stories that things got a little emotional that,
00:06:56.680 that you came through with some pretty hardcore breakthroughs.
00:06:59.240 Why don't you give me a little bit of insight on that?
00:07:01.880 You know, I went to that first uprising.
00:07:03.780 I didn't, I didn't go for, to go hang out with guys and meet friends, man.
00:07:07.960 I went because I needed help and I was determined.
00:07:12.240 And as you and I have talked before, grateful to be an addict.
00:07:16.520 Once I got on the road of self-help, there was nothing that was going to stop me, man.
00:07:22.260 I mean, I was just addicted to it.
00:07:23.740 And, uh, you know, addiction comes in many forms and a lot of times they're bad, but in
00:07:28.600 this case it was good.
00:07:29.540 And I just told myself that I'm going to do everything I could possibly do.
00:07:33.920 So I showed up and I participated.
00:07:37.320 And when a question was asked, I answered it truthfully and I just put it all out there.
00:07:43.160 How, how, how freeing was that moment for you?
00:07:46.520 Man, I'm going to say it was the, the most life-changing moment in my entire life.
00:07:55.440 Like, like I'm really, it was more than my son being born.
00:08:00.780 It was more than anything, man.
00:08:02.240 It was, um, just a different person when I left there, you know?
00:08:08.560 And I remember sitting in the cabin with my bunkmate, just, I was just praying on the
00:08:14.160 inside, just, am I in the right place?
00:08:15.820 Am I in the right place?
00:08:17.020 And it was like, it was just like my bunkmate had said it to me.
00:08:21.220 He was like, yes, you're in the right place.
00:08:22.460 So before I walked out of that bunk, I said, I'm going to ask four people before I leave
00:08:28.660 here, what my problem is, what do they see when they see me?
00:08:34.120 And then whatever, whatever it is, I'm going to have no reaction and I'm going to work on
00:08:38.480 that. 0.99
00:08:39.440 I ended up asking five and I got five different answers and they were all a kicking the balls. 0.97
00:08:45.000 You know, Ryan being one of them, but, um, that's what we have to do, man. 0.92
00:08:53.420 We can't just go through life and ask ourselves these questions because we're going to tell
00:08:57.380 these stories.
00:08:58.800 You have to ask people on the outside and be willing to take it.
00:09:02.000 We hide so much of ourselves from ourselves.
00:09:04.660 The one thing that you said right there that is very important is that we have to take it.
00:09:08.820 You, you have got to give these guys permission or gals or whoever it is in your life to be
00:09:15.200 brutally honest with you and not get pissed off because whenever you get pissed off and 0.84
00:09:19.440 you start lashing out at them for telling you the damn truth, you break any and all trust 0.98
00:09:25.020 moving forward. 0.99
00:09:25.600 And then they can't do that with you anymore.
00:09:28.040 Absolutely, man.
00:09:28.980 Absolutely.
00:09:29.800 And it's, it's not always easy.
00:09:31.440 And you're going to have some people that they just enjoy kicking the hell out of you.
00:09:36.660 I don't think that's really the road to go, but you have to be willing to take it.
00:09:40.180 At least think about it, you know, take it what it is.
00:09:43.200 And there's going to be people that put you down, but yeah, if you, if you can't take criticism
00:09:47.060 at all, you're never going to grow.
00:09:48.760 And you know, if I would have had that attitude, I wouldn't have walked away from there a different
00:09:52.240 person, but you know, going back to second time to the uprising, I mean, you could ask
00:09:57.360 any of those guys there, man, completely different person.
00:09:59.900 Like it's almost as if it's a different man walked in the door.
00:10:05.860 So what you're saying is over that year, you didn't just show up, get motivated and go 0.99
00:10:10.660 home and go back to your shitty ways. 0.99
00:10:13.340 Hell no. 1.00
00:10:14.240 You, you went up there, took those lessons, came home and implemented the work.
00:10:19.460 Yeah, man.
00:10:21.060 It's all about the work, you know, and sometimes our, our greatest asset is our worst.
00:10:26.760 You know, I get in, I get in trouble sometimes with my, uh, now fiance because I'm always about
00:10:32.120 doing the work, doing the work.
00:10:33.660 Yeah, man.
00:10:34.280 You can't, we all get motivated real quick and that kind of fades away, whatever, but
00:10:38.440 you just, you just got to grind, dude.
00:10:40.980 You have to grind.
00:10:42.360 It's not easy.
00:10:43.260 It's not pretty.
00:10:44.420 Before I left there, I had Facebook because I didn't, I didn't have Facebook at the time.
00:10:48.520 So I'd signed up for Facebook, joined older man.
00:10:53.040 And then a day or two after I got back from the first uprising, I had joined the iron council
00:10:58.800 and I had a group of guys around me that they, they saw the want, they saw the need first
00:11:09.340 off, and then the want that, that I didn't want to stay where I was at.
00:11:12.740 And they just fed me, man.
00:11:15.160 They just fed and fed and fed as much as I could eat.
00:11:18.720 And you're a pretty, you're a pretty big boy.
00:11:20.380 So that was quite a bit.
00:11:21.580 Yeah.
00:11:22.260 Right.
00:11:23.960 And so, you know, some of those guys aren't there anymore.
00:11:27.380 Um, they, they've grown and they've moved on, but man, if it wasn't for the terrible 20,
00:11:34.940 I don't know if I would be where I'm at, you know, um, and, and Ryan, like I told Ryan
00:11:42.400 at one point, you know, I owe you so much.
00:11:44.420 He's, he kept telling me, no, you don't owe me.
00:11:47.180 And really though, and he's right.
00:11:49.420 I did the work, but the one payback that I could give Ryan is just, just live a life
00:11:55.440 fulfilling and provide preside for my family and just live a full life, man.
00:12:03.140 Yeah.
00:12:04.580 Yeah.
00:12:05.000 That's, that's something that you and I talked about before we started recording is that,
00:12:08.200 that, I mean, you, you kind of are the epitome of what this movement's about going from out
00:12:14.220 in the ocean, no anchor flailing away on the waves to being a lighthouse.
00:12:22.860 Yeah.
00:12:23.260 I'm proud to know you, man, because you really have, you've stood on that rock and you've
00:12:27.700 shown bright.
00:12:29.700 Absolutely.
00:12:30.280 Thank you.
00:12:30.640 And that, that's, and that's a hard concept to get around the lighthouse.
00:12:34.240 You know, we, you and I've had this conversation as many, many, many times of this.
00:12:38.380 We always want to, we, we tend to fall back on the tugboat, you know, and I've done this
00:12:44.160 before, you know, okay.
00:12:45.340 I've pulled myself out of all this muck.
00:12:47.680 So let me help you.
00:12:48.940 And we're going to pull together.
00:12:50.320 No, you just have to stand there.
00:12:51.940 Um, and it's, it's difficult, but the best reward that I could ever get other than the
00:12:59.400 peace of mind that I have right now is what you just said.
00:13:03.560 Like the fact that someone can look at my life and say, you know, he's been through hell
00:13:08.960 and back and he's standing up tall, you know?
00:13:13.420 So man, you, you've overcome some pretty significant hurdles.
00:13:16.760 What are some of the techniques, tools, and tricks that you've used in order to do so?
00:13:22.560 Number one thing, most importantly, that I have used is intentionality.
00:13:30.360 Leave nothing to chance if you can help it.
00:13:33.340 So schedule everything out, write it out.
00:13:37.500 You don't have to follow it a hundred percent, but you have to put it down on some paper.
00:13:41.980 You know, keeping all that stuff in your head, it doesn't work, you know?
00:13:47.680 So for me, writing everything out daily really helps keep me on track.
00:13:55.060 And then the second thing is letting go of the fear of being alone was huge for me, man.
00:14:05.400 Because once you do that, once you get on the self-help journey,
00:14:09.600 there's people in your life are going to fade away and you have to find people that are willing
00:14:17.020 to go on the same journey with you, not fight your battles, fight their own, but do it together.
00:14:24.060 And, you know, this movement that's going on with the order of man and iron council,
00:14:29.300 it's rare, man.
00:14:31.800 You can attest to that.
00:14:32.980 A local group of men is the hardest thing to find.
00:14:37.680 Absolutely is.
00:14:38.540 You know, because guys are people, humans in general, we're just surface level, dude.
00:14:44.640 You know?
00:14:45.180 Yeah.
00:14:45.620 Finding anybody that'll jump in the trenches with you on a local level, I mean, it's near impossible.
00:14:52.720 Yeah.
00:14:53.180 I'm very lucky that I have five or six IC guys within 45 minutes of me.
00:14:58.560 So, I mean, we can meet up once a month.
00:15:01.480 Right.
00:15:02.300 And be able to get through it.
00:15:03.400 I've started a small group here at home with some guys and they're great guys and we can
00:15:08.540 hang out together and all that.
00:15:10.720 And every now and again, they want to talk about some stuff.
00:15:15.160 But for the most part, it's just a once a month, we meet up, drink a few beers, eat some wings
00:15:21.180 and talk about whatever's going on around us.
00:15:24.480 You know, but to get down to the nuts and bolts of things and to find guys that are willing 0.99
00:15:29.360 to kick you in the ass if you're cheating on your wife or, or whatever the case might 0.99
00:15:33.640 be. 1.00
00:15:34.620 Yeah, man.
00:15:35.240 It's just, it's almost impossible.
00:15:37.600 And it's tough doing it virtually.
00:15:39.500 I mean, we all do it and it's helped me tremendously, but you know yourself something about meeting
00:15:45.680 the guy face to face.
00:15:48.060 It's a whole new level.
00:15:51.020 Absolutely.
00:15:51.580 That, that three days that we spent at Aaron's, that was, that was pretty transformative for
00:15:56.760 me.
00:15:56.960 I mean, just being able to, to be there shoulder to shoulder with you guys to, to really kind
00:16:02.540 of knock some of that stuff out was fantastic.
00:16:05.640 Yeah.
00:16:06.520 So what do you, what would you say has been your biggest takeaway since you've been on
00:16:09.780 this journey?
00:16:10.200 I guess the biggest thing that I learned was about myself again, is I was just a mess,
00:16:18.420 man.
00:16:18.760 And you know, that's a tough question for me because it was, it's, I've learned so much.
00:16:24.220 I've taken, I've taken away so much from this journey.
00:16:27.940 You know, I'm good enough where I'm at, but not good enough to stay there.
00:16:35.160 Yeah.
00:16:35.680 So there, there's a big difference between contentment and complacent.
00:16:39.340 Yes.
00:16:40.200 Absolutely.
00:16:40.860 You can be content and still want to get further.
00:16:43.920 Absolutely.
00:16:44.660 And it's a confidence thing, you know, and, and a lot of times we, we, we become complacent
00:16:48.960 because we're fearful of growth because, you know, growth, growth hurts, man.
00:16:55.840 It hurts bad.
00:16:57.380 You know, that one of the things that helped me when it, before I was in, before I got into
00:17:03.320 the iron council, before I met Ryan or the podcast or anything, I was still in that depression
00:17:07.960 state and I had a woman, a friend of mine's wife, she just stood nose to nose to me, man.
00:17:15.920 And said, you know, your, your, your problem is you need to grow up.
00:17:20.360 And it, it, it, it, it stung, man.
00:17:23.840 Cause I'm like, I'm a grown man.
00:17:24.960 What are you talking about?
00:17:25.420 I need to grow up.
00:17:26.220 But that one statement just, it went over my mind a hundred times a day, every day.
00:17:33.600 And at the end of the day, she was right.
00:17:39.820 I needed to grow up emotionally.
00:17:42.740 That was my problem.
00:17:44.680 You know, I was, I was a small child when it comes to emotions and integrity and living
00:17:50.500 my life.
00:17:51.040 So that's when I finally took a stand and said, I'm just not going to live this way anymore.
00:17:56.600 So speaking of taking a stand, man, each one of my guests, they get to challenge the members
00:18:03.220 of order of man to do something for a solid week.
00:18:06.440 What is that challenge from you?
00:18:09.360 For a solid week, I would say it, it would be ask one person every day for that week,
00:18:18.060 how they view you with no strings attached.
00:18:23.600 And this isn't sending the text.
00:18:27.140 I mean, you have to look at somebody to get this point to come across, but how do they
00:18:32.680 view you?
00:18:34.560 Where do they see that your shortcomings are?
00:18:37.940 And you have absolutely zero response to that.
00:18:42.360 You ask the question face to face, but do not ask for a reply.
00:18:46.680 Because if you ask for a reply face to face, they're not going to give you the truth.
00:18:51.520 People are afraid of confrontation.
00:18:53.600 That they are.
00:18:55.460 Let them send it however they want to send it.
00:18:58.740 But let them know it's very important to you for your growth.
00:19:03.760 The hard part is going to be not to react.
00:19:07.020 The next time that you see that person, not to have that little, little bit on your, you
00:19:11.160 know, that chip on your shoulder, little chip, right?
00:19:14.700 That's going to be the hard part.
00:19:17.520 Right on, man.
00:19:18.840 All right, brother.
00:19:19.260 I got one last question for you.
00:19:20.720 Didn't prepare you for this one.
00:19:22.360 But what does it mean to be a man?
00:19:26.360 Brother.
00:19:29.700 To me, to be a man.
00:19:31.840 Is to be a man that is full of action.
00:19:39.700 And that is confident in himself and is confident in his ability to fail.
00:19:45.660 And not let it cripple him.
00:19:50.400 Failure is a great thing, man.
00:19:52.820 And so, if you can live your life willing to do the work, no matter how hard it is, no
00:20:01.400 matter if you fail or not, then you're a man.
00:20:05.520 You're leading.
00:20:06.380 You're being a lighthouse.
00:20:08.440 Whether it be spiritually, financially, physically, it doesn't matter.
00:20:13.400 However you want to look at it.
00:20:14.700 And that's the thing.
00:20:15.340 People, men nowadays, they don't think about all the aspects.
00:20:19.360 I provide for my family with a job.
00:20:21.520 Yeah, well, are you teaching them spiritual control, emotional control, spirituality?
00:20:27.840 Are you teaching them those things?
00:20:30.040 Are you leading your wife in that direction to be emotionally mature?
00:20:36.520 So, be willing to fail at it.
00:20:38.900 Put it out there.
00:20:40.820 A lot of people aren't going to like you.
00:20:43.640 That's part of being a man.
00:20:45.440 That it is, man.
00:20:47.140 All right, brother.
00:20:47.800 Well, I do appreciate you taking some time out of your day and sitting down with me and
00:20:50.560 doing this.
00:20:51.600 Absolutely.
00:20:52.280 I really do appreciate you and I appreciate the way you show up.
00:20:55.460 Hashtag grateful to be an addict, brother.
00:20:57.540 Right on, brother.
00:20:58.840 All right, we'll catch you around.
00:21:00.140 Later.
00:21:02.420 If you've been inspired by this conversation, we encourage you to learn more about the steps,
00:21:06.680 tools, strategy, and resources these men are using inside of our exclusive brotherhood,
00:21:10.740 The Iron Council.
00:21:12.100 The Iron Council is a band of brothers dedicated to leveling up their lives and committed to helping
00:21:16.320 you do the same.
00:21:17.440 You can learn more at orderofman.com slash inthetrenches.
00:21:20.560 Until next week, take action and become the man you are meant to be.