Order of Man - KYLE THOMPSON ｜ Control the Controllable

00:00:00.160 With so much going on in culture and society, it's easy to drown yourself in the sea of relevant issues that need to be addressed.

00:00:08.280 Unfortunately, so much of what we see and hear is largely outside of our control, but you can control yourself, and that's the good news.

00:00:15.940 Today, I'm joined by Kyle Thompson with Undaunted Life to talk about how to do just that.

00:00:20.560 We discuss ignorance and initiative, why diversity alone doesn't really mean much, what Kyle has dubbed the 11th commandment,

00:00:28.900 and why we should not abide by it, why compromise isn't all it's cracked up to be, and how to be the man your people need you to be.

00:00:38.240 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.

00:00:43.900 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:48.600 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.

00:00:53.680 This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.

00:00:57.500 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:03.700 Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast. My name is Ryan Michler.

00:01:07.420 I'm your host and the founder of this movement. I am glad that you're here.

00:01:11.300 I'm glad you're tuning in, and I'm glad that you're taking the information that me and my guests share and applying it to your life.

00:01:17.040 And I know that you are because I get messages every single day from the men who listen to this podcast

00:01:21.960 and are rekindling their marriages, starting new businesses, building their bank account, getting in shape,

00:01:28.160 and doing all the things that probably for years, if not decades, have had a desire to do.

00:01:33.200 Now, I've got a really good one for you today with Kyle Thompson.

00:01:35.920 I've known Kyle for quite a while now and really admire the work that he's doing and the message that he's putting out.

00:01:41.840 Before I get into that, I just want to mention that my friends over at montananifecompany.com

00:01:49.800 have a brand new knife coming out this week.

00:01:52.760 It's called the War Goat, and it is their very first foray into the world of tactical knives.

00:01:59.580 They've done a lot of hunting knives. They've got their culinary sets, but this is going to be their very first tactical knife.

00:02:04.800 Again, it's called the War Goat, and it drops this Thursday at 7 p.m. Mountain Time, I believe.

00:02:12.880 Don't quote me on that. I should have had that information ready for you, and I apologize.

00:02:16.900 But if you go to montananifecompany.com, sign up for their newsletter, sign up for their email alerts,

00:02:22.800 you're going to be notified when this knife drops,

00:02:26.720 and you're going to be one of the first to be able to take advantage of their brand new American-made tactical knife called the War Goat.

00:02:32.380 Now, when you sign up or go to purchase one of those knives this week, make sure you use the code ORDER OF MAN.

00:02:37.840 That does two things. It lets them know that you heard about them here, which helps me and our movement here,

00:02:44.260 and it also saves you some money when you do.

00:02:47.200 So again, montananifecompany.com, the War Goat, and use the code ORDER OF MAN at checkout.

00:02:53.420 All right, guys, let me introduce you to my guest. His name, again, is Kyle Thompson.

00:02:57.200 He founded Undaunted Life in 2017 with the mission of equipping men to push back darkness.

00:03:05.260 Now, they do this by providing content that leads men to forge spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.

00:03:13.100 He's also the host of The Undaunted Life, a man's podcast,

00:03:16.040 which has reached the top 10 and top 15 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify charts, respectively.

00:03:21.300 On the show, he talks about hot-button issues that most pastors won't touch,

00:03:29.600 such as the lack of true masculinity in the church, supposed, quote-unquote, toxic masculinity in culture,

00:03:36.620 how to defeat pro-abortion arguments, wokeness, and cancel culture, critical race theory,

00:03:41.640 LGBTQ plus cultural revolutions, and so much more. Enjoy this one, guys.

00:03:46.980 Kyle, good to see you, brother. It's been a long time. I figured we'd run it back.

00:03:51.800 I was on your podcast, who knows how long ago. It all kind of blends together at this point.

00:03:55.980 It was a long time ago, but hey, we finally made it happen. I know both of our schedules,

00:03:59.680 it's like two ships passing in the night, but we finally made it happen.

00:04:02.280 You're a busy man. It sounds like you've got some credit card processing issues right now.

00:04:06.480 I'd actually like to talk about that because this assault, I don't know if you'd call it that,

00:04:11.300 but I say it's an assault on free speech. Businesses are free to do what they want,

00:04:17.060 and I think they can decide who they want to do business with. An unpopular opinion is even

00:04:22.340 companies that decide they want to discriminate based on immutable characteristics is something

00:04:28.180 that I think should be allowed. That's not a popular opinion, but I'm not saying I advocate for

00:04:33.180 it, but those businesses will bury themselves. But I am curious what you're going through because I

00:04:38.960 think this is a very real threat when it comes to the concept of free speech.

00:04:43.100 Yeah. Well, Ryan, let me just echo your sentiment there. I think businesses should be allowed to

00:04:48.040 discriminate against people. So if you put a sign on your door that says, we do not serve Asians

00:04:52.440 and it's Monday, you should be out of business by tomorrow. Right. And so you should have probably

00:04:57.760 not against Asians though. Right. I use them as an example because they're not the lightning rod that

00:05:03.180 a lot of other groups are. But if you picked a group that has immutable characteristics that they

00:05:07.060 can't change and you say, we're not going to serve these people, you should have the right to run

00:05:10.560 your business into the ground. Okay. But as entrepreneurs, Ryan, and you, you understand

00:05:14.220 this as well, we're always going to run into issues. There's always going to be things that come up and

00:05:18.040 you know, we don't have a staff of a thousand people to just like dump our problems onto a lot

00:05:22.380 of times, especially if you're a solopreneur, you just have to deal with it. But what we're going

00:05:26.200 through right now, and we're in the final stages and I have to be kind of cagey in how we talk about

00:05:30.360 it. But roughly a month ago, I get an email from our credit card processor that says,

00:05:35.220 you know, we're deleting your account. You have 30 days to find a new processor.

00:05:38.900 So I'm in the middle of like, I have like 10 meetings that day or something like that. And

00:05:42.620 so I'm like, this, this is nonsense. This had to have been some sort of AI generated thing,

00:05:46.400 or maybe some low level staffer made a mistake. So I just emailed back and say, Hey, I think there

00:05:50.180 was some, some sort of mistake. You know, nothing has changed in terms of how we process nothing in

00:05:54.560 our business has changed. And they're like, no, no, this, this is for real. And so I put in a,

00:06:00.080 you know, a review like, Hey, let's get a review. It's rejected, Ryan. And if you've ever

00:06:04.740 experienced this on YouTube, you get the rejection letter in less time than it takes to somebody to

00:06:08.920 actually review the video. Right. So it was like that type of rejection. And so they're like, well,

00:06:13.580 you violated our terms of service. I was like, okay, tell me what, where in the terms of service

00:06:18.180 we violated. They wouldn't tell us. They just kept sending us a link to the terms of service. I'm like,

00:06:22.660 got it, got the link. I got it in the last two emails. What line, what page are you on? And what did

00:06:28.800 we violate specifically? And they wouldn't tell us. I was like, Hey, I just need to get on the phone

00:06:32.840 with somebody. I think there's, there's gotta be some sort of mistake that that's happened.

00:06:36.120 Let me just get on the phone with somebody. They refused. They would not get on the phone. They're

00:06:39.120 like, we've, we've done your review. It's been manually reviewed and the, the decision stands.

00:06:44.920 And so I'm trying to get something out of these emails back and forth, Ryan. And basically the last

00:06:49.560 email they sent me was, look, we think you need to be with a company that's more aligned with you

00:06:54.620 that, you know, shares your values and will help you and your company grow and blah, blah. And I was like,

00:06:58.800 Oh, okay. Now it makes a whole lot more sense. So what very likely happened, if I were to guess,

00:07:06.380 if I were to, you know, you know, put the house on it, bet the house on it, some low level staffer

00:07:10.400 with, you know, purple hair and a nose ring saw some of the things that we were saying during pride

00:07:14.140 month about how, you know, pride's an abomination and, you know, all these different sinful behaviors.

00:07:18.280 And we, we say all kinds of crazy stuff on our show. Like, you know, we shouldn't kill babies when

00:07:22.020 they're in the womb. You know, 14 year old girls shouldn't have their breasts removed because 1.00

00:07:25.500 they're, you know, gender confused. We say crazy stuff like that. So I'm sure some staffers absolutely 1.00

00:07:30.200 crazy, you know, things you're saying here. Yeah. And so I'm sure some staffer saw that

00:07:35.020 didn't appreciate it. And they put us on a list and, and we weren't doing massive numbers on there,

00:07:40.120 but that is where all of our donations go through Ryan. And so the main reason I say this all the time

00:07:45.500 on the show, the main reason why Undaunted Life's even a thing is because we have donors. We have guys

00:07:48.860 like you and I that are given 10 bucks a month, 25 bucks a month, 50 bucks a month, because they like the

00:07:53.300 content and they want to see it continue. Well, this credit card processor processes every single

00:07:58.320 one of those donations. And just like that, they could turn it off. Now they thought they were

00:08:02.240 doing me a favor because it's like, Oh, we'll give you 30 days. But then they're in charge of all the

00:08:06.260 vaulted information, which is the credit card information, which is the most important stuff.

00:08:10.500 And so if the new company I go to can't take that vaulted information and transfer it directly over,

00:08:16.820 you know what happens. Second hardest thing to do is to get someone to sign up to be a monthly donor. 0.93

00:08:20.540 First hardest thing to do is to get them to re-sign up to be a monthly donor, right?

00:08:23.820 Right. Sign them up twice.

00:08:25.560 Yeah. And so it's like, Oh, Hey, can you go to this new website and set up a new account so that

00:08:30.120 you can give me money for my benefit only? And so, you know, that, that's the, the long and short

00:08:35.300 of the situation we're going through. But to your larger point, Ryan, there is a movement.

00:08:40.000 Before you get to that, Kyle, before you get to that, do you mind if I ask what, I know you're

00:08:45.280 trying to be a little bit, and I get it. You're trying to be, be strategic, be intelligent. I get

00:08:50.860 all that. I understand. Can you tell us the credit card processor? Is that something you're

00:08:55.180 comfortable telling us? Because I think it's important. We know that I'll tell you offline

00:08:58.920 as of right now, the sense I get is this company is fairly litigious because the people I've talked

00:09:05.160 to in the credit card space, like there are credit card companies out there that you would know

00:09:10.180 that you're, they're like, Oh yeah, these people have a huge reputation for canceling people.

00:09:13.640 So this company, all the people I said, they're like, Oh, I'd never heard of this company doing

00:09:17.920 that. And so I'll tell you offline as of right now, since we're right in the thick of it,

00:09:22.400 we haven't transferred over all for altered information yet. So if we start saying things

00:09:26.920 publicly, then the last thing I need for them is to make my life even harder.

00:09:30.500 Yeah. And I don't want to do that to you. Obviously, you know, I think it's important.

00:09:33.720 We all are aware of this, but I wouldn't want to do that to you. You know, if I don't know

00:09:37.240 if you're looking at other, uh, card processors or anything like that right now, I'm sure you are.

00:09:41.720 Uh, you should look into a program called Apogee pay. That's by, uh, a good friend of mine,

00:09:47.860 uh, Matt Boudreau and Ryan King. They're doing phenomenal stuff.

00:09:52.020 Yeah. I was just on a, I was just on Matt's show not long ago.

00:09:54.660 Oh yeah. Did you guys talk about it at all?

00:09:56.840 Uh, we didn't talk about this at all. I didn't know that that was the thing that Apogee was doing.

00:09:59.800 Yeah. So what they do is they actually take a portion of the processing fees because you're

00:10:04.480 going to pay fees, whether you're with them or any other organization that makes sense.

00:10:07.580 But they take a, a portion of those processing fees and they apply it directly to these organizations

00:10:14.960 like Apogee and, and, and other organizations that guys like you and I believe in. So if I'm

00:10:19.900 going to pay fees and I am, and I don't have a problem with fees, they're businesses. It's,

00:10:24.120 I've got a business, I've got fees, they've got a business, they've got fees. But if I know my money

00:10:28.500 is going towards something I believe in and something that I think is going to move the needle

00:10:31.940 of the country in the right direction, I'm good with that. I can, I can swallow that at night.

00:10:36.220 Yeah. We're in the final stages with a couple of different companies that have a similar model

00:10:39.820 to that. But the overall thing guys is, you know, we always talk about, Oh, people are getting

00:10:44.160 canceled on social media and blah, blah. Well, look, if someone, if you're a private citizen

00:10:48.160 and someone turns off your, your Twitter account or something like that, that really sucks. And that 0.96

00:10:51.920 is, that is tamping down your free speech. But what they want to do is they want to take out

00:10:55.740 business owners. They want to take out people that employ other people. They want to take out

00:10:59.460 content creators. Cause if you're putting out a counter narrative to the, the accepted narrative,

00:11:04.520 whether it's on any subject, whether it's, you know, the C word from 2020 or BLM or any

00:11:09.100 of these types of things, if you go counter to the narrative that is accepted, they will

00:11:12.680 do what they can to crush you. And they can use things like the federal government, like

00:11:16.120 the, uh, the IRS, they can use the, you know, small business bureaus, even in your city to

00:11:21.100 try and make your life a living hell. And the thing is, is, you know, we, we constantly

00:11:24.900 talk about resilience and being resilient in the face of these challenges. But even as Christians, 1.00

00:11:29.500 it's like, we should expect these things to come. Not everything is persecution. If someone

00:11:33.960 leaves a negative comment on your YouTube channel, because they don't like the fact that you

00:11:37.460 say the word Jesus, that's not persecution. This is though, this is them trying to shut

00:11:42.200 down a dissenting opinion that doesn't go with the accepted orthodoxy of the LGBTQ plus lobby

00:11:47.060 or just leftism in general.

00:11:48.620 I'm glad that you said that not everything's persecution. Cause we do live in a culture where

00:11:52.720 everybody feels victimized. Everybody feels burdened with, you know, some sort of, uh, victimization.

00:11:58.800 Somebody is out to get them. There's always a villain. There's always a victim. I don't

00:12:01.900 think that's the case. You know, we, you and I might get on this podcast and disagree with

00:12:05.480 a few things. Um, I actually had a really, I would say sharp disagreement and discussion

00:12:11.240 with somebody I really respect and admire. And I, and I think she respects and admires what

00:12:15.320 we're doing here. We vehemently disagreed on some things that I shared. We, we got on, we,

00:12:21.900 uh, I sent her a private message on Instagram with a really quick discussion. I said, Hey, here's

00:12:26.540 my number. Like shoot me a text. So she sent me a text. We had a little discussion. I'm

00:12:31.480 like, Hey, let's jump on a phone call this week. You know, I, I know that we're not going

00:12:35.900 to agree. There's two topics in particular, feminism and the concept of vulnerability. 1.00

00:12:40.980 Those two topics specifically her and I are not going to agree on, but we can have a discussion

00:12:46.940 about it. And I think that's one of the biggest breakdowns in society today is that she's not

00:12:52.740 my enemy. The people who disagree with me are not my enemies, but there are enemies and

00:12:59.000 we need to be able to differentiate between the two. Somebody saying something mean about

00:13:03.000 you or mean to you, they're not necessarily your enemy. They just might disagree, but there

00:13:06.980 are people who are bad actors doing bad things and they're deliberately and intentionally trying

00:13:12.000 to sabotage our efforts.

00:13:14.080 I mean, that's absolutely true. And I think that you're, you're on a really good point here

00:13:17.780 because I tell people on my show all the time, if you disagree with my opinion about

00:13:21.980 something or the way that I've expressed my opinion, I'm just going to tell you, if

00:13:25.820 you send me a long email telling me about how my opinion is wrong, I'm not going to take

00:13:30.240 that seriously. I'm not going to take advice from or critique from someone I wouldn't take

00:13:34.380 advice from. But if I'm ever factually inaccurate about something, if I've said something that

00:13:38.780 isn't actually true, please correct the record. It's incumbent upon you as my follower to

00:13:44.560 correct the record on something like that. But we should be able to agree to disagree

00:13:48.540 on a myriad of subjects. The problem is that I see people taking the good advice that you

00:13:53.160 just gave them to the opposite extreme and they add an 11th commandment, which is thou

00:13:57.480 shalt be nice. And we're like, okay, agree to disagree on abortion. It's like, actually,

00:14:01.040 no, we're not going to agree to disagree on abortion because that is a human being that

00:14:04.900 is alive, that deserves our protection. And so we can disagree on policy and we can disagree

00:14:10.240 on how it's, you know, figured out on a state level or federal level or things

00:14:13.780 like that. But no, we're not going to agree to disagree on whether or not that is a biologically

00:14:19.080 separate entity than the mother that it is inside of. And I feel like we cede way too

00:14:23.880 much ground to people on these subject matters because we're scared of the kerfuffle. We're

00:14:28.080 scared of getting into a problem with people because we assume that every problem is going

00:14:32.700 to go to level 10. But it's like we need to practice sitting in front of people that have

00:14:37.640 a strong disagreement with us and both of us trying to keep our heart rates down and our

00:14:42.300 blood pressure low and just figuring out where that goes. But eventually you do have

00:14:47.700 to come to bedrock. There's the one particular friend in mind that is probably similar to

00:14:51.820 this gal with you. He and I disagree about everything except for a handful of bands and

00:14:56.100 a handful of movies. But we love sitting together, having a cigar and a whiskey and talking through

00:15:01.360 the things we disagree on. Like he's an atheist. I'm a Christian. Like he thinks prog rock is

00:15:06.340 good. And I think metal core is the best ever. Like, you know, we just kind of go back

00:15:09.660 and forth. But he and I have probably debated five or six hours on abortion. Just him and

00:15:14.580 I eyeball to eyeball. And we both can leave those conversations going, hey, man, love you.

00:15:19.580 Have a good rest of your day. Tell your wife I said hello. As opposed to what we see on social

00:15:23.860 media and these man on the street interviews where it's people like literally almost coming

00:15:27.720 to or coming to fisticuffs over a subject matter that is incredibly important. But it's

00:15:31.460 like if you can't elucidate it in a way that can change a heart, that can logically destroy

00:15:37.200 an argument. It's like, dude, you're just making noise. That's enough.

00:15:40.780 I'm writing this down. You said changing hearts. I actually like that because, you know, I get

00:15:45.100 into the weeds and, you know, it's hard not to, especially on social media. But when you're

00:15:50.400 talking about changing hearts and changing your opinions, you're not going to be able to

00:15:53.420 do that if you're just bickering at each other and bitching and moaning and griping about your

00:15:57.120 grievances. The other thing I wrote down here, Kyle, is this concept of tolerance and acceptance.

00:16:01.940 People use those terms synonymously. Yeah, they're not synonymous. I can tolerate a lot

00:16:07.400 of things that I don't need to accept. The other one that comes to mind is compromise. Oh, we need

00:16:11.420 to compromise. Sure. You know, we can compromise on some things, but there's some things I'm not

00:16:17.140 interested in compromising with you on. And the thing that I hear a lot from people, this is actually

00:16:25.000 something that you hear in conservative circles. We need to come together as a country, bro. There's

00:16:31.140 things I'm not interested in coming together on. So, I mean, I can appreciate the quote-unquote

00:16:39.320 concept of solidarity. I can appreciate the concept of being nice and being kind and acquiescing to

00:16:46.640 people's wishes and desires and things like that. I can appreciate some of that. But there's some

00:16:50.920 things I'm not interested in unifying on. And I see that a lot in society today where everybody's

00:16:56.520 like, just be nice, be kind, get along. That has taken us in a horrible, horrible direction. It's

00:17:02.100 only going to get worse. Well, you said it about conservatives. Here's what conservatives have done

00:17:07.280 for a long time. It's like, they just keep getting backed up and backed up and backed up and backed up.

00:17:13.160 And then finally they get their back in. So while they're like, Hey, now, don't you push me anymore?

00:17:17.080 See, because you don't want to see me when I'm angry. See? And then they just keep getting pushed

00:17:20.140 back, push back, push back. And what conservatives and I'll even lump in Christian conservatives have

00:17:24.280 done is one day they will wake up. The war will be over and they will realize that they'd never

00:17:29.800 picked up their shield. They never picked up their sword and they never got in the fight because they

00:17:32.960 never found a hill that was worth dying on. Right? Because they've accepted the 11th commandment.

00:17:37.900 Thou shalt be nice. Also, they have been, they've bought the cultural lie that tolerance is a

00:17:44.260 biblical value because you will have non-Christians scream in the faces of Christians and say, 0.98

00:17:49.100 well, why don't you just be tolerant? Aren't you supposed to be loving? It's like, yes,

00:17:53.240 I am called to be loving, but I'm not called to tolerate sinful behavior. When you look at Jesus

00:17:57.740 of Nazareth and see, you know, his life depicted in the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

00:18:01.680 you do not see the tolerance of sin. You see him talking to the heart and speaking to the heart of

00:18:08.260 the sinner, but also telling them to go and sin no more. It wasn't like, Hey, woman at the well,

00:18:13.660 who's, you know, uh, shacking up with the dude who's been married a bunch of different times.

00:18:17.000 She's an adulterer. She's all these different things. He didn't say, you know what? I love

00:18:20.900 you regardless of your decisions, go and have a good rest of your day. It was like, I don't condemn

00:18:25.380 you, but also go and sin no more. Like there is, there is something that we need to do. Cause

00:18:30.060 here's the other thing that these people, when you talk about compromise, I love the fact that

00:18:33.240 you brought that up. And this is why, what is the middle position on cutting off the healthy breast 0.98

00:18:37.760 tissue of a 13 year old girl? That's gender confused. What is the compromise position? Exactly. 0.99

00:18:42.300 Right. And so it's like, Oh, do I just cut off part of her breasts? Do, do, do I just 1.00

00:18:48.040 give her partial, uh, you know, uh, these hormones? Do I give these little boys just part of the 1.00

00:18:53.700 hormones? Are we going to legislate the exact amount that are injected into their bodies 0.85

00:18:58.200 that stopped their puberty and healthy development as a young boy or young girl? What exactly is

00:19:02.940 the middle position? There are middle positions on a lot of different issues, immigration, tax policy,

00:19:08.320 foreign policy. I'm sure there are middle, you know, compromising positions, but there are things

00:19:13.080 that we just cannot go along to get along on. And so many Christians, because they're pussies, 1.00

00:19:18.760 because they're worried about being called out for being bigoted. They will say things like, 1.00

00:19:23.140 I want to be known for what I'm for, not what I'm against. Well, look dummy. When you communicate 0.97

00:19:27.420 that you're for something, you're communicating that you're against other things. Cause that's how words

00:19:32.180 work. And so when we're talking about these huge topics, like specifically transgenderism,

00:19:37.540 especially in children and abortion and all these other topics, there are certain things that we

00:19:41.960 cannot compromise on. So this idea of kumbaya and let's all get around, like even Jesus said,

00:19:47.720 like he was coming to defied families, like there would be brother against brother. And like,

00:19:52.840 you know, let the dead bury their dead. There's so many different things that he said that was so

00:19:56.120 incendiary and so exclusive, Ryan. And we just think about Jesus as this hippie that just included

00:20:01.500 everybody and put his arms around everybody. And Hey, I'm going to love you no matter what. Well,

00:20:05.480 guess what? God doesn't need to send himself in the form of his son down to earth to die,

00:20:09.960 to pay for our sin debt. If he just accepted us the way that we are, it's nonsense.

00:20:15.380 Yeah. You know, the other thing that comes to mind as you're talking about this is this concept of

00:20:18.880 being judgmental. You know, you'll hear a lot of Christians and conservatives say, well, you know,

00:20:23.420 we shouldn't be judgmental. I don't actually agree with that. I think maybe judgmental is not the

00:20:27.800 right word, but discerning, you know, if somebody's engaged in a behavior that I think is not

00:20:33.260 conducive to themselves or other people, we ought to exercise some level of discernment

00:20:37.720 or judgment, use the word you want to say that I'm not judging the person. I'm judging the behavior.

00:20:43.820 And that's from a Christian perspective. That's what Jesus would teach, you know, hate the sin, 0.92

00:20:49.500 not the sinner. Right. So I can, I can have an intolerance for certain behavior, but still really 0.98

00:20:56.140 care about the individual. You know, even in myself, you know, there's certain behaviors that I

00:21:00.720 engage in and I have in the past that I don't consider healthy or beneficial for myself or

00:21:07.380 other people. I don't hate myself, but damn, if I don't try to improve and eliminate those 0.91

00:21:12.960 temptations and those vices and the things that aren't serving me in some way, call it judgment, 0.93

00:21:18.300 call it discernment, call it whatever you want, but it's not a free pass to let people do whatever

00:21:23.980 they want, especially when it's going to impact in the, in the case of transgenderism, children

00:21:29.560 that can't defend themselves and can't make decisions for themselves or impact other people

00:21:34.500 like ourselves and the people we have responsibility to care for. Well, you say judgment, you say

00:21:38.840 discernment, but also it's because we've lost the thread on what the word love means. So I use this

00:21:44.420 example a lot, but there was a good buddy of mine who his two best friends growing up ended up becoming

00:21:50.600 gay for each other. Right. And my buddy came to me, this was, you know, 10 years ago. And he's like,

00:21:57.100 Hey man, I know my buddies are going to eventually want to get married. Right. You know, once everything's

00:22:02.100 legalized here in Oklahoma and all that kind of stuff, I know they're going to want to get married

00:22:04.820 and they're going to ask me to be a part of it. Like either like a best man or like, I don't know

00:22:10.100 how they're going to do it, but they're going to ask me to be a part of it. What should I do?

00:22:12.880 And I said, well, you can't, as a believer, go to a ceremony that is celebrating something that

00:22:20.440 God calls abominable. You can't do that. But I have an idea for you. How about you and your wife 0.99

00:22:26.700 be the first family to host them for dinner after they get back from whatever honeymoon that they

00:22:32.400 take and you bring them into your house and you show them the love of Christ and you love on that

00:22:36.740 couple. Right. Because, you know, some people will acquiesce and say, even Alistair Begg came out

00:22:42.140 recently and said, yeah, not only am I going to go to the gay wedding, I'm going to buy him a

00:22:44.860 present. It's like, well, no, you can't go because a wedding is not a private affair. It is a public

00:22:50.080 affair. It is a public declaration of a commitment that you're making by design, which is the closest

00:22:56.500 thing that human beings on this earth have to understanding God's love because God gave us his

00:23:02.860 son to pay for our sin debt. Right. And Jesus laid down his life for the church. As men, we are called

00:23:09.300 to lay down our lives for our brides. Jesus's bride was the church. Our brides are our brides.

00:23:15.160 So as a man, it's the closest thing. It's the closest thing we get to understanding Jesus's love

00:23:20.200 and Jesus's sacrifice for us. So, of course, everything that God creates, Satan counterfeits,

00:23:25.180 right? So you have, you know, true intimacy inside of a marriage covenant between one man and one woman

00:23:30.160 for life. And then you have porn and homosexuality and multiple relationships and all this sexual 0.74

00:23:35.620 brokenness over here that Satan's going to counterfeit and try to tell you that it's okay 0.98

00:23:40.020 and morally acceptable. But that's what I told my friend to do. It's like, look, in this moment,

00:23:45.420 we are called, Paul tells us in one of his letters, we are called to judge other Christians. But if

00:23:50.940 people are non-Christians, that's an evangelism conversation, brother. Like this isn't where you 1.00

00:23:55.240 pull out the 10 commandments and start saying, yeah, this is where you went wrong. It's like,

00:23:58.720 we are told who to judge. We are to judge the people that are inside of the church,

00:24:02.540 the people that are outside of the church, people that are non-Christians, you need to talk to them

00:24:06.260 about Christ and how they need him or else they have no chance after this life is over. And so

00:24:11.320 again, yeah, discernment, fine. I'm with you. I'm with you on that. We discern all the time. We go

00:24:16.180 left as opposed to right. We go to this restaurant as opposed to that one. We take this route because

00:24:20.060 that guy looks a little funny over there. We always do that, but it's this rotting away of what love

00:24:25.280 actually means. Well, guess what? If you truly love someone, you're not going to allow them to

00:24:28.800 continue doing something that you, that is going to destroy them. We talk, I talk about kids all the

00:24:33.480 time. If you're not a yeller and you've dedicated yourself because your dad yelled and everybody

00:24:37.920 yelled and it made you feel funny that you're never going to yell at your kids, but you see your kid

00:24:42.020 taking off running towards the street and there's heavy traffic in that moment. Are you going to hang 0.71

00:24:47.680 on to that? Well, I'm just not going to yell at my kid because when I yell, they're going to cry.

00:24:51.580 Or are you going to do whatever it takes to stop them from doing something that will destroy them?

00:24:55.540 It's the same thing with love. You know, I'm, I'm glad that you're talking about that because

00:24:59.300 there's this, this idea of like reading the room, right? I think that's where these black and white

00:25:04.960 measures of I'm never going to yell, for example, or this is how I talk to people and if they don't

00:25:11.000 like it, that's their problem. I'm like, you're a man, you know, you're capable of understanding

00:25:16.500 what the situation calls for. And we may not always be great at our delivery or communication or

00:25:22.460 articulating ideas, but damn, if you can't see what somebody else is dealing with and approach 0.71

00:25:29.880 it, like you said, in love, that doesn't mean that you need to be soft and it doesn't mean you 0.99

00:25:34.800 need to be a hard ass. It means that you need to see what they're going through, read the room a 0.94

00:25:40.680 little bit, and then ultimately serve that individual in a way they need to be served.

00:25:46.720 Well, there's a time when an ax is appropriate and there's a time when an ax is destructive,

00:25:51.100 right? And same thing with a scalpel. There's a time where you need the ax. So I literally have

00:25:55.700 this on the background of my phone. And so I'll show it to you. It says, I don't know if you can

00:25:59.860 see it, but it says lion for them, lamb with them, lion for them, lamb with them. I made that.

00:26:05.840 And the reason is, is because children or we could, you can use your household. So that's,

00:26:13.280 you know, wife and, and your children. So I've got two boys and my spouse.

00:26:17.600 If all they ever see is lamb and they never see the lion and they don't think the lion is even

00:26:24.540 available, they're going to be insecure because they know if somebody comes, if a wolf comes to

00:26:30.180 try to destroy them or take from them and all they've ever seen is lamb, docile and all that,

00:26:35.440 and they don't think the lion's available, they're going to be really, really terrified if

00:26:38.360 something pops off and gets kinetic, right? But then if you're always lion and they only ever see

00:26:44.460 lion, they're terrified, right? They're terrified of making dad mad. They're terrified of triggering dad

00:26:50.400 again or making a noise when dad, you know, didn't want noise to be made and all that. And all they

00:26:54.360 ever see is lion. That's a problem as well. So the perfect thing right there in the middle, I didn't

00:26:59.780 come up with this. Some, some pastor did. I can't remember, but like the perfect thing is where you

00:27:04.780 are lamb with them, but they know the lion is available, right? That is the definition of

00:27:11.340 meekness. So when you hear the scripture about the meek shall inherit the earth, we have bought into

00:27:16.700 the idea that meek means weak. And a lot of people talked about this. I'm certainly not, you know,

00:27:20.460 talking about it for the first time. Jordan Peterson's talking to, talked about it, a bunch

00:27:23.240 of different pastors. The actual root word of what's being described there in meekness is closer to

00:27:29.180 having a sword, but leaving it sheet until you need it, knowing how to use the sword, but not

00:27:35.960 just pulling it out in every situation. That's what meekness is. If you are weak and incapable of

00:27:42.140 violence, you are not virtuous. You are useless as a man. You are absolutely useless as a man. That's 1.00

00:27:47.840 why you should train jujitsu. That's why you should train with blades and with firearms and different

00:27:52.620 things like that. Because if the Imago Dei, if the image of God is being violated, one of his image

00:27:56.820 bears is being violated in that moment, guess what? You don't have time for, you don't have time for a

00:28:00.660 Bible study. You don't have time for a prayer circle. You have time to act. I talked about this 0.91

00:28:04.700 quite a bit. A couple of years back, there was a woman that was being raped on a train car in

00:28:08.700 Philadelphia. Okay. Woman's being violently penetrated by, by an absolutely horrific piece

00:28:14.800 of human debris. When the police show up after the act had been consummated, I guess you could call

00:28:19.340 it a bunch of people walked up to the police officers with their phones and said, Hey, I have video of

00:28:25.420 the attack. Wait, we have video. You were on the car when this was happening. Yes. There were a bunch

00:28:31.740 of men and women, but there were a bunch of men that took video of the attack as opposed to

00:28:35.620 interceding because these, these men, maybe they had been convinced that if they had acted out

00:28:40.480 physically, that that was bad because their fifth grade teacher told them that violence is wrong. No

00:28:44.400 matter what the circumstances, maybe they've been convinced that, you know, no matter what, you know,

00:28:49.320 shows of machismo or, or, or aggression, that that's toxic masculinity and we shouldn't do those

00:28:55.400 things. And so that this is part of the problem that we run into is when we're downstream of what

00:29:01.480 feminist culture or leftist culture is telling us to do. It has real world consequences for actual 0.99

00:29:07.020 people because we're not ready and raring to go. Because again, we think the meek shall inherit the 1.00

00:29:12.520 earth. So I just need to navel gaze and like never really tell anyone what I want to have happen.

00:29:17.020 It's a problem. Man, let me step away from the conversation with Kyle very briefly. Now, look,

00:29:22.320 so many of you listening are really wanting to figure out how to tap into your more primal nature

00:29:28.500 and simultaneously meet other good men to bandwidth. I hear this a lot. And this is exactly why I co-founded

00:29:35.340 earlier in the year, a company called M42 adventures. I wanted to create a movement that facilitated

00:29:42.480 outdoor adventures from surfing and hunting to humanitarian missions and horseback riding.

00:29:48.360 If you are looking for your very next adventure, uh, we've got several trips planned, including an

00:29:54.580 African hunt that's coming up in, in about three weeks. So if you're interested in that one,

00:29:59.480 we still have a few spots that you'd be able to take advantage of. Uh, that's also a safari and some

00:30:05.240 humanitarian work we're going to do there. Uh, we've also got a Costa Rica surf school. We've got planned

00:30:10.040 for later, or I should say the early part of next year and also a mountain biking excursion in Southern

00:30:16.420 Utah. So guys, if you're looking for a really cool adventure, maybe you want to get into one of these

00:30:22.180 things, but don't quite know how to do that. We have everything covered from the agenda to the

00:30:28.980 curriculum, to bringing in guest experts, to working you through the programs, and then also making sure

00:30:34.040 that other high caliber, high quality people are there that you can connect with, work with,

00:30:38.720 become friends with. It's very, very exciting. And you can find all about that and plan your next

00:30:44.060 adventure at m42adventures.com. Again, that's m42adventures.com. Do that right after the show.

00:30:51.860 Let's get back to it with Kyle. Well, I mean, this is the issue. I, the scenario you just gave us

00:30:57.920 is the same issue that we see with a gentleman by the name of Daniel Penny, uh, former, uh, military

00:31:03.840 member who, uh, was being threatened, not only him, but other passengers in a subway. I believe

00:31:09.940 it was. Don't correct. Don't, don't quote me on that. I'm a subway in New York city. Right. And so

00:31:15.320 this, this guy was threatening other people. He stepped up, stepped into action, subdued the

00:31:22.180 individual, ended up killing him. You know, and that's unfortunate. And I think he would probably

00:31:26.020 say that as well. Didn't intend to by what I've seen anyways, I don't have all the information and,

00:31:31.300 and, and here he is being convicted with, I don't know if it's murder or manslaughter,

00:31:35.800 but this is exactly what you're talking about. You know, you've got a guy who's actually stepping

00:31:39.920 up to be a man, to exercise discernment. He's using his skillset to neutralize a potential threat.

00:31:47.580 And here we are as a culture, throwing him another bus, throwing them to the wolves and saying that

00:31:52.780 he's quote unquote toxic. And it's, uh, it, it really does call into question. I see this a lot,

00:31:58.440 actually. And I want to ask you about this. You see this on social media a lot where guys will,

00:32:04.020 uh, you know, say, Hey, you know, with regards to feminism, for example, we'll say, well, you know, 1.00

00:32:08.800 this is what they wanted. So this is what they get. And I can agree with that argument. It's like,

00:32:12.980 yep, I see where you're coming from. And I also believe that we, as men have an obligation

00:32:19.660 responsibility. One thing that comes to mind, for example, is women being, uh, and I don't know if

00:32:26.040 this, this hasn't passed yet, but it's been introduced, uh, a lot of it essentially, uh,

00:32:31.120 automatically enrolls women into selective service or AKA the draft as a culture, as a society

00:32:37.860 that allows its women to do its fighting for them. That's, that's a broken, lost degenerate 1.00

00:32:44.800 culture. And also this is what people wanted. So here are the results.

00:32:50.520 Yeah. You're, you're, you wanted it and you're getting it good and hard. And so, uh, I mean,

00:32:54.600 just this morning, I saw a couple of different things. One, I think this was over in the UK,

00:32:58.940 there was a woman that was being sexually assaulted. She fought off her attacker by using

00:33:03.480 pepper spray. She was arrested because she was walking around with a weapon because pepper 1.00

00:33:07.860 spray in this jurisdiction was considered to be a weapon. It's like, okay, I saw another video of

00:33:12.040 two female cops trying to subdue a normal sized American male. And this video went on for minutes

00:33:18.420 and minutes and minutes, and they can't cuff this guy. And this guy, he was probably drunk or high

00:33:23.300 or something like he would, you could just tell he was kind of glazed over in his eyes

00:33:26.240 and they couldn't subdue this guy. What if that guy had murderous intent? What if there

00:33:31.440 was a playground nearby with a bunch of like families and children walking around and he

00:33:35.480 was trying to shed as much blood as possible. And you have these two female cops. And, and 0.97

00:33:39.900 again, like, this is where we're getting into all these like terrible subject matters, but

00:33:43.740 it's like, no, women should not be in combat roles in the military. That should not happen. 1.00

00:33:49.280 Well, if you're a cop, you're always in a combat role, right? So if you're in this, this goes to

00:33:53.980 the, the, you know, big gutted, you know, male cops that don't take care of themselves and couldn't 0.99

00:33:59.940 chase down a perpetrator if they needed to, you have all these people that are going around trying

00:34:04.100 to protect individuals, but they're not able to even protect themselves. And we're just supposed

00:34:08.840 to sit by as these men that are a little bit more sheepdoggish in our disposition and in our

00:34:13.560 training and are in, we're supposed to just acquiesce to you. We're going to allow the

00:34:18.780 government to take care of us. We're just going to outsource our protection and our safety to you.

00:34:24.060 I'm like, I'm sorry, because every June I see the Marine Corps not talking about how lethal they can

00:34:30.300 be in a conflict. I see them talking about how accepting they are of the LGBTQ plus identity,

00:34:35.800 uh, folks and how diverse they're there. The military is becoming in all these different things

00:34:40.420 and diversity in and of itself is not problematic, but it's not in and of itself virtuous either,

00:34:45.380 because I don't care what the military looks like. If they all end up looking the same,

00:34:49.880 but they're really, really good at killing people and breaking stuff. That's what I need 0.90

00:34:53.840 the military to be good at. They don't need to be good at, you know, checking off the cultural 0.97

00:34:57.800 boxes that make people in a, you know, the upper West side of New York feel better. It's just one of

00:35:02.700 those, one of those things that for us, we have to choose whether or not we're going to acquiesce to what

00:35:07.220 the government and what these in, these individualistic structures are telling us to

00:35:11.380 do, or if we're going to take care of business on our own. Well, so the question that naturally

00:35:15.420 comes up when we talk about these things and this is, I've heard people ask me this and this is valid

00:35:19.900 is like, okay, great. I agree with what you're saying. I think everybody listening here probably

00:35:25.120 would for the most part. Um, they probably listen to me because they agree with our largely what I

00:35:29.440 have to say. So we're on, we're all on the same page. So what do we do about it? That's,

00:35:35.820 that's the, that's the million dollar question right there. Got it. Check. We agree. Now what?

00:35:41.280 So it starts at the individual level. Like this is going to be a whole bunch of crap that you guys 0.99

00:35:45.980 have heard before, but just listen in. It'll be a nice reminder for you. You can control the 0.97

00:35:49.940 controllables because what I can't control is to the T what all of my elected officials in my

00:35:55.700 municipality or the people that I can, you know, cast a ballot for what they do. I can't completely

00:36:01.060 control everything that they do. So Mark Wayne Mullen, Senator from the state of Oklahoma

00:36:05.000 represents us in the United States Senate. He and I are on a, you know, text basis and all those

00:36:09.820 types of things. Well, guess what? He's voted some ways that I didn't really appreciate, but I still

00:36:13.000 voted for him, but I can only control me. I can have direct influence over my spouse and my two young

00:36:19.060 boys, but I can only control me. And so if you are not equipped to be able to push back darkness

00:36:25.740 individually on a spiritual, mental, or physical level, that is deeply problematic. It's kind of like

00:36:30.960 Jordan Peterson thing. It's like, why are you concerned so much about what's happening

00:36:33.740 in society when your room is so dirty? It's like clean, clean your room, like make your bed,

00:36:38.560 like take care of your world, provide dominion over the areas where you have influence and then

00:36:44.980 allow it to work out from there. But Ryan, I mean, we could go into a lot of different things. It's

00:36:49.060 how we catechize our children. It's how we raise up our children. We raise up our girls to look for 0.98

00:36:53.740 strong men to take care of them. This idea that girls need to be independent. It's foolish. They don't 1.00

00:36:58.000 need to be independent. They need to be dependent on a male that is providing headship over their 0.99

00:37:02.140 household to our young sons, that they would grow up into these men that can protect, provide,

00:37:07.200 and preside, and that they can do all these different things that they should be trained

00:37:10.440 to do that the society and the public schools are not going to teach them outright. Those are the

00:37:15.280 things that we can handle and get a bunch of dudes like that around you. Get a bunch of dudes that are 1.00

00:37:20.120 like cultivating spiritual, mental, and physical resilience on a daily basis, because that will have

00:37:25.520 a tremendous impact on your household, on your neighborhood, on your congregation, on your city.

00:37:31.300 And again, it does overflow into a culture that is sick right now. The American culture, 0.69

00:37:37.460 the West is on life support, and it's only going to happen not from, you know, electing the right

00:37:43.400 guy in November or not, you know, getting, you know, the House and the Senate and, you know,

00:37:47.500 taking care of all this. It starts with us guys. If we're not taking care of it, it doesn't matter

00:37:51.580 if Trump or Biden wins. Well, I like that. I mean, that's, that's ultimately like puts the ball

00:37:55.800 on your court. It's hard though, because a lot of guys are like, oh, that's not enough, right?

00:38:00.340 It's like, well, it may not be with you alone, and I'll admit that, but if we can get hundreds

00:38:06.000 of thousands or millions of men to buy into the idea that you take care of yourself physically,

00:38:10.520 mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, like you're talking about, then what we can do is we can start

00:38:16.040 running for office and we can start sitting on our school boards and our HOA boards and our city

00:38:23.860 council boards, and we can start running for mayor and governors and representatives and senators.

00:38:30.200 Like I, I think the solution is that men like us need to start getting more political, but there's

00:38:37.520 so many men and I've, and I get it. I fully understand it. Who are like, why would I do that?

00:38:43.820 I've had the same questions. Why in the world would I do that? And, you know, on the back of

00:38:49.720 4th of July here in the US, I, I'm assuming that our founding fathers probably wrestled with the same

00:38:58.320 notion. Why would I do that? I'm rich. I'm wealthy. I've got lands. I've got titles. I've got this. I've got

00:39:06.860 that. I've got a life. Why in the world would I do that? And yet they did. So it's, it's like, we got to

00:39:13.400 get more of us involved in the political realm, even though I know how many of us do not want to

00:39:18.280 get involved in the political realm. Well, the men that signed the bottom of the declaration of

00:39:22.240 independence, they, they knew what they were signing. They were signing their death warrant

00:39:26.220 that, that they, they knew that from the beginning. And you're right. These people did have titles.

00:39:32.020 They had property. They had people that they had all kinds of stuff, everything that you could want

00:39:36.520 in the 1700s. Right. And they had it all, but there was something that they wanted more than that,

00:39:41.060 which was liberty and freedom. So we've lived downstream of their sacrifice for over 200 years

00:39:47.580 coming up on, you know, a quarter of a millennium. And it's that same poem. It's like, you know,

00:39:55.540 hard times make strong men, strong men make good times. Good times make weak men, weak men make hard

00:39:59.760 times. That's where we're at right now. We're all fat. We're all happy. And we're all technically

00:40:04.140 satisfied. We might be in a little bit of a Twitter spat with this person over here. We might be a little

00:40:10.200 bit disappointed in how our life is going over there, but guess what? There's no hordes of

00:40:14.140 barbarians coming over the hill, trying to take our women and cattle. And so we just basically get to

00:40:19.380 operate as if we're insulated because we think that we are. And it's only in a culture like that,

00:40:25.700 excuse me, where you are worrying about things that aren't, think about this in the early days of

00:40:32.560 COVID. Before we knew really what it was, before we knew who it was going to target and how these

00:40:38.560 people, the survivability and all that, we didn't hear a whole lot about Black Lives Matter. We didn't

00:40:44.160 hear a whole lot about transgenderism. We didn't hear a whole lot about pronoun hospitality. Why?

00:40:48.980 Because we had an existential threat that was a virus that we couldn't see. Go also to September the

00:40:56.000 12th of 2001, the day after the 9-11 attacks, people weren't terribly concerned about their own

00:41:03.020 problems. We were all galvanized as a country against this evil, which was fundamentalist Islam. 1.00

00:41:08.120 And we just don't have that fight right now, Ryan. Like we think it's the election, but it's not really

00:41:14.380 the election. We think it's, you know, maybe it's Ukraine and Russia. We think that's it, but that's 0.95

00:41:19.060 not it either. And, but there's a rot that is coming from the very basis of our culture. And it's

00:41:26.400 coming downstream of communism and these, these ideals that have come over. They're like, okay,

00:41:31.360 we can't attack America from the left or the right because they got oceans on either side. And then

00:41:36.080 they've got people in the North and the South that are basically okay with them. So we're going to try

00:41:40.240 to rot away the culture from the inside. And I got to tell you, it's worked like a charm.

00:41:44.600 Yeah. I mean, you're totally right. And look at one thing that you had talked about is,

00:41:48.620 is even just knowing who your representatives and your congressmen are. You know, you talked about

00:41:52.800 the, uh, the individual who's representing you and it's like, you know, who that person is. You're,

00:41:57.220 you're on text basis with them. Um, how many of us could name our, our, uh, senators and our

00:42:02.840 representatives? Probably not many. And it's crucial that we start to get involved in more meaningful

00:42:08.600 and significant ways. Otherwise you're going to allow other people to dictate your life. I mean,

00:42:12.700 you wouldn't do that at home. You wouldn't let your children dictate how you run your home, 0.99

00:42:17.060 you know, even at work, you're not going to let, I mean, for the most part, you're not going to let

00:42:21.000 other people dictate, uh, the way that you do things. If you're an employee, you still have

00:42:25.760 boundaries, but unless you know the game and you're willing to get involved in the game,

00:42:29.940 like there's nothing that you can do about it. So I, this is something I lean more and more heavily

00:42:33.880 towards because I know how important it is that we get involved and don't let other people who do not

00:42:39.460 want the best for us, uh, having their say and, and speaking on our behalf.

00:42:44.620 Yeah. I'll, I'll briefly elucidate that even a little bit further. Like when, when the lockdowns

00:42:49.740 and all that were going on here a few years ago, it wasn't the federal stuff that was bothering you

00:42:54.320 as much. It was the local stuff, but people found out good and fast. They had no idea who their mayor

00:42:59.880 was. They had no idea who the sheriff was. They had no idea who the school board was. They had no idea

00:43:05.000 who any of these people were. And it's like, wait a minute, what are y'all showing my kids

00:43:08.240 in sixth grade? What, what are y'all, what books are y'all allowing in the libraries that my kids

00:43:13.400 wait, what? It's like, you don't know any of these people. And so they were operating basically

00:43:18.020 via fiat. They could do whatever they wanted and they went unchecked. And so look, I know it's a lot

00:43:24.260 harder to be involved locally, seemingly because you can't just open up your Twitter account and know

00:43:29.080 exactly what the mayor of your town is probably thinking that day, but you can have a tremendous

00:43:34.360 impact on those people. You can be on a first name basis because if you're walking into the

00:43:40.500 mayor's office and he's extending his hand to introduce himself, consider yourself behind.

00:43:45.480 He should be shaking your hand or she should be shaking your hand and saying, good to see you

00:43:49.180 again, right? Because you should be a concerned and involved citizen. The same goes with your

00:43:53.960 church. You want to see, you want to see things change at your church? Maybe some, some other

00:43:57.460 issues. Does the pastor know your name, right? Whether it's a small congregation or large one,

00:44:01.920 doesn't matter. Does the pastor know who you are? Are you consequential to them? Like think about

00:44:06.320 for, for some of your younger listeners, right? I go back to college. So there was one particular

00:44:12.080 class. It was the hardest class in our degree program. You knew that before you even got into

00:44:15.820 the program. There were three things you did in that class. There was a midterm, a final and a paper.

00:44:20.200 That was it. Did not do well in the midterm. I crushed the paper. Mathematically, I could not get a high

00:44:25.600 enough grade on the final to get an A in the class, but I sat in the front row. I'd gone to

00:44:31.420 every single class except for one class. Cause I was out of the country and I go in the week of

00:44:36.240 finals. And I talked to this professor and I say, Hey, I understand. I worked my butt off for the

00:44:41.180 midterm. It just didn't work out for me. I know I can't mathematically get an A in the class, but I

00:44:45.520 want to do my best to earn it. What can you do for me? And he didn't say, sorry, what was your name

00:44:50.920 again? Which class is it? He said, okay, Kyle, if you can get an A on my final, I'll give you an A

00:44:56.540 in my class. Right? So I got an A on the final. I got an A in the class. That may seem like a small

00:45:00.780 example, but it's because he knew me, Ryan. It's because he knew that I was busting my butt all 0.98

00:45:06.280 semester. I just had a bad test day on the midterm, right? It wasn't from lack of preparation. It was 0.86

00:45:10.720 from lack of, you know, follow through, I guess you could say, but we don't treat our local

00:45:15.820 municipalities that way. We don't treat the elder board at our church that way. And then we're shocked

00:45:19.520 when things don't go the way that we want it to. It's like, well, you're not influencing anybody in

00:45:22.900 the direction that you want to influence them in. That's on you. I actually saw a study the other

00:45:27.760 day where they were talking about out of the five, the big five personality traits. And I can't

00:45:32.220 remember exactly what they are, but Jordan Peterson talks a lot about this, but one of them is

00:45:37.360 agreeableness. And in the study, it suggested that people who were more agreeable got better grades

00:45:43.940 in college exams. Of course they did. Of course. Because if a professor likes you, knows you,

00:45:52.060 knows a little bit about, about your own personal story or your dynamic, of course, you're going to

00:45:57.140 get a better grade. If you take two people that are equally, you know, qualified and one person knows

00:46:03.680 one and doesn't know the other, the one person that's known is going to get the opportunity.

00:46:07.800 You know, the same thing you're talking about with work is, uh, I just call it initiative.

00:46:14.480 You know, how many people are so passive, especially men who are like, Oh, you know,

00:46:18.280 I got passed over for the promotion again. Cause it's all politics. Well, damn brother. If you

00:46:23.240 understand it's all politics and you're not playing the game, then shame on you.

00:46:27.100 Play the game. You know, the game, get involved, start playing the game. Well, I feel like I'm

00:46:32.660 sucking up. Well then stop complaining when you get passed over for the promotion, man. I wish more 0.99

00:46:38.980 of us just took initiative. You see a problem, fix it. You see an opportunity at work, step in.

00:46:44.500 Somebody asked you to volunteer, step up. Like this is easy, easy stuff. It's, it's not even hard.

00:46:50.880 The beauty of doing things like this is that you get to be in control of your own life. And in the

00:46:56.620 situations that impact you, I had a really good weekend with some friends and, uh, they had just,

00:47:01.760 uh, three or four years ago, bought this really nice piece of land on a lake here in Utah.

00:47:07.720 And they built this beautiful home. And I was talking with them as we were celebrating 4th of

00:47:11.880 July with them as a family. And, uh, she said that, or, or I guess he, my friend said that his wife,

00:47:18.880 as soon as they bought that land, got involved with the HOA and she now sit up, sits on the HOA board. 0.98

00:47:25.460 Yep. Right. Bingo. Exactly. Because everything that HOA board is deciding is going to impact you

00:47:34.480 personally. And so if you can get involved, get involved. Of course, things are going to work

00:47:40.420 out better in their scenario because she's involved in the way that she needs to be involved.

00:47:43.800 Well, that's another big five personality trait conscientiousness. And so it's like,

00:47:47.920 do you see the opportunity? And are you going to put this, the things in play to make that happen?

00:47:52.880 Right. Cause some people are focused on the openness part, which is my ability to create,

00:47:57.240 but then they're also affected by their neuroticism score, which is their propensity for negative

00:48:01.660 emotion. But it's like the one thing that you can really control. Cause you can't really control

00:48:05.840 whether or not you're creative, whether or not you see the world differently or whether or not you

00:48:09.700 have a propensity for melancholy or which we, what we call modern in modern days, depression,

00:48:14.060 but you can control how conscientious you are. You can control when you wake up, you can control

00:48:19.300 when you show up and you can control what you do and what, how you perform. Now there are always

00:48:24.840 going to be politics. And there are some times where you're just going to lose the political game

00:48:28.300 in your office and you may get passed over, but think about it this way. If you walk into your

00:48:33.180 boss's office and you say, Hey, I got passed over for another promotion and I don't like it.

00:48:38.520 How do you think they're going to respond to that? They're a manager. They got a bunch of

00:48:42.340 crap that they got to do. And the last thing that they want to do is to add you and your whininess 0.99

00:48:46.560 to the end, to the end of their to-do list for the week. How about you go in and say something like

00:48:51.780 this? You go, Hey, uh, I know that, that Tom got the promotion this week. I understand that.

00:48:56.340 Tom, Tom's a great guy. I probably would have made the same decision. The next time there is a

00:49:00.520 promotion, I would like to be the person that gets that promotion. I would like to continue to

00:49:06.280 develop inside of this organization. I would like to continue to increase my worth, which will

00:49:11.320 obviously be to the redounding benefit of this organization as well. Let's say that we're to

00:49:15.500 come up in the next six months. What are the things in the next six months that I could do to put

00:49:19.580 myself in a great place to be the number one pick for that promotion? Isn't that a lot different than

00:49:24.860 where I didn't get the promotion. Give me money. Because again, if I'm paying you $50,000 a year,

00:49:30.560 you at the very minimum need to be bringing me $50,001 worth of value. Otherwise you don't need

00:49:36.700 to work here anymore. And so you need to look for opportunities to increase your value, not to

00:49:42.020 increase your whininess. What do you think keeps most men from doing that? Is it, is it fear? Is it

00:49:48.480 just complete unawareness of it? Uh, maybe the mindset of thinking that it's just a series of fortunate

00:49:55.500 events that gets people to some positions. What is it that keeps men from doing that?

00:49:59.440 It's probably a lot of that. If, if you were to give them a menu of options, it's probably a little

00:50:03.900 bit of fear. They don't want to go in and have a disputatious, potentially disputatious conversation

00:50:07.940 with the superior. Maybe they've never heard someone say that before. Maybe they don't read

00:50:11.800 business books or leadership books, or maybe their dad didn't teach them how to negotiate.

00:50:15.720 I think a lot of it, Ryan, is pride because it is a whole lot easier to just assume that the world's

00:50:21.500 against you. One of my favorite people on this planet, I swear to God, he, he thinks the world is

00:50:25.660 completely against him. No matter what happens, he's been dealt a raw hand and a raw deal. Well,

00:50:30.780 guess what? One of the best poker players on the planet is Daniel Negreanu. And that guy can play

00:50:35.320 two, seven offsuit better than I can play aces because he understands the game. He understands

00:50:40.400 that it's not just the cards that I'm dealt. It's how that I'm playing them. But most guys are just too

00:50:44.680 prideful. They're like, ah, well, it can't be a problem with me. It certainly can't be a me problem.

00:50:49.300 It's that boss that doesn't like me because, you know, I like a different football team,

00:50:52.840 or it's this manager that just like passed me over because they didn't like the joke I told in the

00:50:57.200 break room. It's a lot easier to do that. But if we can be humble and humble ourselves and go into

00:51:02.900 our manager's office with our, with our hands out, not our pockets out, but our hands out to say,

00:51:07.420 I'm ready to receive the wisdom that you have for me. I'm ready to be a better version of what I am

00:51:12.580 now. I want us both to be able to look back, you know, six months from now to look back to this

00:51:17.040 moment and say that I'm certainly a better version of who I was then. And I'm ready to take the next

00:51:22.240 step with this organization. But yeah, it's a whole lot easier to just point your fingers at

00:51:25.860 the rest of the world and complain. It is interesting because you say, you know,

00:51:28.920 guys might take this personally. It's actually not personal. No, very few people think about you,

00:51:33.800 you know, Kyle, with all due respect, the last time I thought about you was, you know,

00:51:36.820 like when we did our podcast together, right? Yeah. And I see some stuff on social media or I get,

00:51:41.380 I get your emails here and there and I'm like, oh yeah, cool. You know, and, but that's it.

00:51:45.500 And it's not because I don't like you. It's not because I'm not interested in what you have to say.

00:51:49.700 It's not because I don't think you have anything interesting to say. It's because I'm consumed

00:51:54.340 with my own life. So the less that we can take things personally and just realize, Hey,

00:52:02.600 that guy's probably not out to get me. In fact, he's pretty neutral towards me and he just wants

00:52:09.560 to win. The more that I can position myself in places that allow me to help that individual win,

00:52:15.100 which just through the nature of congregating and working together will help me inevitably win.

00:52:21.360 Basically take care of your own lawn. Like most people aren't just overwhelmingly obsessed with

00:52:26.020 whether or not like, you know, you get done what you need to get done today. Like you got to focus

00:52:30.980 on yourself. Well, and I think that idea is, is pretty liberating. You know, once you realize that

00:52:36.100 not everybody is thinking about you, not everybody's out to get you, they don't really care about what

00:52:40.100 you have to say or what you're doing. It allows you to freely express yourself and live the life

00:52:45.220 that you think is important. I think where we run into problems is where we start believing that

00:52:51.240 other people have a vested interest in our lives and they care deeply about what we're doing and

00:52:56.020 what we're saying, where you start to maybe change who you are and start to massage maybe some of your

00:53:01.400 messaging. So you don't, you know, upset or offend those people who, you know, you care about.

00:53:06.940 Well, Ryan, think about it this way. So when I go and speak live, like I'm the guy with the mic on

00:53:12.120 his face, right up on stage, I'm the only one talking, right? So I'm the most important person

00:53:16.340 in the room, right? No, of course I'm not. Also, I recognize that you are hearing probably about 50%

00:53:24.700 of what I'm saying. And you're going to remember probably less than 2% of what I've said. And so the

00:53:29.980 way I construct my public speak, my public speeches is I try to put as many hooks in the water as

00:53:35.380 possible, as many hooks in the water as possible, because I have no idea what's going to get your

00:53:39.000 attention, right? I understand primacy and recency. People typically remember the first thing they hear

00:53:44.240 and see and the last thing they hear and see. So I understand that. So I try to start with a bang

00:53:48.440 and end with a, you know, a bigger bang. But in between, I'm just putting a whole bunch of hooks

00:53:53.680 in the water. And the way that I know that this has been effective is because when people come and talk

00:53:57.400 to me after a speech, they all say something different about the thing that, oh man, when you said that,

00:54:02.720 it really resonated with me. Or, oh, when you brought up this story, like I had never heard

00:54:05.900 it that way before. And so, but again, I can only control me. I am 100% involved in what I'm saying

00:54:13.420 because I'm the one saying it, but you're sitting there and you're like, crap, did I, did I close

00:54:17.920 the garage on my way here? Shoot. I forgot to set my fantasy football lineup and my kickers out this 0.99

00:54:22.600 week. Like, and you're just, you're thinking through all these different scenarios that have nothing to do

00:54:26.720 with what I'm giving you. It's my job to keep you interested. But again, I just have to recognize

00:54:31.380 my job, especially if I'm speaking in front of a men's group at a church or something like that,

00:54:35.620 is to be a reflection of the father. That if you're looking to me for stuff, that is a problem.

00:54:39.920 Because when we go back to Ezekiel and we go back to the descriptions of, you know, Lucifer being cast

00:54:43.960 out of heaven, it's because Lucifer was being looked through as people looked to God. Because

00:54:49.060 Lucifer was basically the worship leader in heaven. So he was being looked through as people worship

00:54:53.700 God. And he was tired of being looked through and wanted to be looked to. And so again, it's all about

00:54:59.700 taking the pressure off of us. It's not about us. We're not the point. We're to work as under the

00:55:05.300 Lord. We're to work our butts off. Christians should be, and conservatives should be the best

00:55:09.940 employees. You should hire as much of them as you want, as there are available to hire. But we have

00:55:15.520 to control ourselves in those circumstances. And if we don't perform, we shouldn't get the job. We

00:55:20.660 shouldn't get the thing. We shouldn't get all of the extra plaudits that we so earnestly seek.

00:55:25.280 Well, and I don't want to diminish or take away from what you're talking about. I'm Christian as well,

00:55:28.600 but we have a lot of men who aren't believers that way. And what I would tell an individual

00:55:34.640 like that is serve something greater than yourself, something virtuous, something righteous,

00:55:38.940 something noble, whether you believe in God or not. You can do that, right? You can have a standard.

00:55:44.460 You can have something you aspire to be. You can have moral principles. You can have...

00:55:49.000 Now, look, I believe those are derived from God himself. But if you don't, there's still an

00:55:54.360 opportunity for you to look outside of yourself and have some sort of standard. I think where we run

00:55:59.360 into problems, we believe we're so individualistic and that we worship ourselves. And we think that

00:56:05.180 we are the center of the universe. And that's clearly a problem. Whether you're a believer or

00:56:11.280 not, that is a problem. It's not going to get you anywhere good in life.

00:56:15.400 Well, Ryan, you use the word standards there. I try to tell people all the time, look, you should have

00:56:20.260 standards, not goals. Because like, so let's say you set a weight loss goal, right? I want to lose

00:56:25.960 30 pounds. Well, you get to the goal and then what typically happens? People start reversing back to

00:56:31.760 the mean, which was who they were 30 pounds ago, right? They don't typically keep going on that

00:56:36.700 journey. That certainly does happen. It's because they set a goal and once they attain the goal,

00:56:40.480 they're like, well, I attained the goal. So I guess I'll go back to what I was doing before.

00:56:44.480 But if you set a standard, like, guess what? I didn't have a goal to wake up and work out this

00:56:49.280 morning in my garage gym. You know why? Because I hate it. I hate doing it. I don't want to do it.

00:56:53.600 If I could have all the benefits of powerlifting and jujitsu without actually having to get on the

00:56:57.600 mat and get tortured or to get under that bar and get tortured, I would take it. But that's not the

00:57:02.860 world we live in. You actually have to do the thing to get the benefits. So I've set a standard

00:57:07.740 that says when healthy, I will work out, right? In these different modalities, in these different

00:57:14.680 areas, whether I'm on the road or whether I'm at home, it's a standard. It's a discipline.

00:57:19.280 But we don't focus as much on that. We allow our circumstances to kind of dictate. That's why

00:57:24.100 like this fancy watch thing, you know, you can wear this and you can wake up and it'll tell you how

00:57:28.400 good a sleep you got and all those different things. And so for a few weeks there, I was looking

00:57:32.500 at my phone and let's say I woke up and I felt pretty good. I would look at my phone and it would

00:57:37.100 be like, oh, well, your body battery is only at 40 out of 100. And then I would automatically start

00:57:41.240 feeling bad, right? Like, oh, maybe I don't feel so good. And then the mornings when I felt terrible,

00:57:46.100 I would look at my phone. It's like, oh, body batteries at 95. And I'm like, I should feel

00:57:49.440 better. I'm not going to let a phone, I'm not going to let an app, I'm not going to let a watch

00:57:52.800 dictate whether or not I have a standard or I do the disciplined things that are required of me to

00:57:58.060 get after it today. Imagine looking at your app on your phone to decide whether or not you're going

00:58:03.020 to be loving to your wife today or whether or not you're going to be helpful to your children or

00:58:07.400 something like that. Oh, well, you know, my body battery, because Garmin says it's like, get out of

00:58:11.540 here. It's like at the end of the day, you have to set the standard and it's up to you to attain it

00:58:15.180 daily. Well, the beauty of that is, I'll say it this way. When we have goals, a lot of the times

00:58:20.360 we're unrealistic about what goals that we have. For example, I hear from a lot of guys who want to

00:58:25.260 start organizations like you might have or I have. And I've often heard people say things like, oh,

00:58:31.960 well, you know, you're just dinking around on Facebook all day. It's like, well, if that's what

00:58:37.260 you think I'm doing, just dinking around on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or wherever we're doing

00:58:41.100 our social media, just do it. Go for it. Go for it. All the power. I'll help you. I'll tell you what

00:58:47.400 you need to do on Facebook and IG and all these other platforms. But what we have a tendency of

00:58:52.480 doing is overestimating our ability to get to that place a lot quicker than it's actually going to

00:59:01.240 take. And so what ends up happening, at least in my experience and personally, if you have this false

00:59:06.980 expectation of what it's going to take to achieve your goal, you're going to burn up and burn out

00:59:11.640 really, really quickly because you're not going to look, have that six pack as quickly as you want.

00:59:16.580 You're not going to have the Instagram followers as fast as you'd like. You're not going to have

00:59:20.200 the bank account that you always wished you'd had as soon as you possibly want. It's going to take you

00:59:24.800 a lot longer. But the standard is the standard regardless of the outcome. So you can stick to that,

00:59:30.940 not because there's an outcome, but because it's the right thing to do.

00:59:34.720 Ryan, I've had a bunch of dudes reach out that are fired up and boy, they want to start a podcast

00:59:40.220 and they want my help to start a podcast. The barrier to entry to starting a podcast is pretty

00:59:44.580 low. You could buy a $50 mic and just use your web camera and stuff like that. And so the barrier

00:59:51.140 to entry is not very high. But when guys ask me for advice on starting a show, I tell them, don't.

00:59:57.540 They're like, wait, I was asking for advice. I'm really ready to do this. I'm like, I don't believe

01:00:01.620 you. And you kind of get into this back and forth. And it's like, look, if you're not willing to look

01:00:07.100 at a blank screen and turn that into an hour's worth of incendiary and attention grabbing content

01:00:15.360 a week for years before you make a single cent or have more than 10 followers or listeners that live

01:00:22.540 outside of your household, then don't do it. Because when I started this, on Dawn of Life,

01:00:28.200 we're well over 600 episodes now. When I started our podcast, on Dawn of Life, a man's podcast,

01:00:32.840 I was working as unto the Lord. I had written a devotional for the YouVirgin Bible app that did

01:00:37.220 astonishingly well in the men's space. I didn't want to write another one. So I was like, I'd rather 1.00

01:00:42.340 put notes on a sheet of paper and then just flow for 30 to 45 minutes. And then it turned into whatever

01:00:47.680 the show has become, right? But for years and years and years, we didn't get a ton of traction.

01:00:53.540 It was little by little by little. And then we've had some huge bumps over the years. But guess

01:00:59.540 what? If my entire focus was getting X number of Instagram followers or X number of monthly donors

01:01:04.960 or X number of listens or downloads or something like that, I would have stopped doing this a long

01:01:09.080 time ago. That wasn't the point as to why I was doing it. And also guys, just because you're

01:01:13.320 passionate about it doesn't mean that you're going to be successful, right? Sometimes you can be

01:01:17.520 passionate about something that you suck at. I mean, look at back when American Idol was like a big thing.

01:01:22.120 That's why everybody watched those first couple of weeks because there were people that were

01:01:25.100 passionate about singing, passionate about becoming a pop star, but they didn't have what

01:01:29.240 it took to be that. They didn't have the voice, right? And so just because you're passionate about

01:01:33.680 it doesn't mean that you should do it. Because if your voice isn't unique, and I don't mean your

01:01:36.800 vocal folds, I mean your actual voice in the space isn't unique, then you're just adding noise to a

01:01:42.380 space that already has noise in it. And so if you've got something unique, if you've got a unique

01:01:46.640 perspective or a unique approach or a unique way of doing it, then sure. But there's like six million

01:01:51.520 podcasts out there. Like we don't need another one that's just saying the same stuff that's

01:01:56.820 repackaged crap that Ryan or I say, right? And so that's the thing that I would just encourage guys

01:02:02.000 to do is like work is under the Lord and let the results take care of themselves. And if you don't

01:02:08.240 want to work that hard, then guess what? Don't do it. No one's forcing you. You get an option. You

01:02:13.100 don't have to. Well, brother, this is fascinating, man. I love talking about this stuff and I'm glad we

01:02:16.640 could do this. Will you let the guys know who are listening how to connect more with you and learn more

01:02:20.300 about what you're up to? Absolutely. Our website is undaunted.life and we are available on all

01:02:25.600 platforms. The biggest thing that we do is the podcast, Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. It's on

01:02:29.400 Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all those other different places. And we're working on a few things behind

01:02:34.000 the scenes with the credit card stuff, but the way that we're able to keep the lights on and keep

01:02:37.200 putting out content is through our monthly donors. And so it's those $10 a month, $50 a month, $100 a month

01:02:41.940 guys. And so if you like content like that, support. Like if you like Order of Man, you got to buy the

01:02:46.620 hats. You got to buy the t-shirts. You got to go to the events. You got to do all that kind of

01:02:49.600 stuff. Guys, don't take for granted what a little bit can do for the content creators out there. So

01:02:56.880 you're consuming all this stuff for free and all that's great. But if you can do something to support

01:03:01.500 those people that can keep them afloat in a time, you know, when they're in the valley of the shadow

01:03:06.120 of death, dealing with credit card nonsense, like make sure you go and do that. Support guys like

01:03:10.360 Ryan, support stuff like what we're doing at Undaunted Life. We'd love to have you on board.

01:03:13.580 Brother, we'll sync everything up. I really appreciate your message and your word.

01:03:16.900 It's been invaluable to me. You know, I listen to what you're doing. I listen to your podcast. I get

01:03:21.520 your stuff and man, it's, it's instrumental in helping me be on the path that I want to be on

01:03:27.400 as well. So much, much obliged, much privileged to be able to have this conversation with you.

01:03:32.700 Thanks again for having me on.

01:03:35.440 Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with Kyle Thompson. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I

01:03:40.120 did. Him and I are obviously very much aligned and I would, I would highly, highly encourage that if you

01:03:45.460 enjoy what we're doing here, that you follow up with Kyle and connect with him and learn more about

01:03:50.000 what he's up to. Also, please make sure that you check out the new War Goat Tactical Knife by Montana

01:03:56.640 Knife Company at montananifecompany.com and m42adventures at m42, the number 42adventures.com.

01:04:07.520 Guys, those are your marching orders. As a parting word, please make sure that you share this episode,

01:04:13.540 screenshot it, tag me, tag Kyle in it. Also, maybe just send a text to somebody who needs to hear

01:04:19.600 this episode and let's get this grassroots movement of reclaiming and restoring masculinity

01:04:24.020 out to the masses. We will be back tomorrow for our Ask Me Anything. Until then, go out there,

01:04:29.080 take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

01:04:33.300 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready to take charge of your life

01:04:38.000 and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the Order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - July 09, 2024

KYLE THOMPSON ｜ Control the Controllable

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