Order of Man - Living Life on Your Terms

00:00:00.000 Many of us are living for or through someone else, and we don't even know it, but if left

00:00:05.200 unchecked, not only does it lead to a life of emptiness, but it also leads to content and

00:00:11.060 disdain and distrust for those we care about most. Today, I'm joined by my good friend,

00:00:17.040 former Superbowl champion, and one of the realest men I know, Steve Weatherford.

00:00:21.060 We cover a lot of ground in this one as he gets real about why sports were such an important

00:00:26.880 part of his life, his transition from professional football, the concept of life mastery versus life

00:00:33.960 balance, how results born from insecurity do not serve us, and how ultimately to live life on our

00:00:41.420 own terms. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly

00:00:46.660 chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You

00:00:52.500 are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is

00:00:59.000 who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:01:04.720 you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler,

00:01:09.920 and I am the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. Welcome here and welcome

00:01:14.500 back. We have had some incredible, incredible guests over the past several weeks and months,

00:01:19.800 and I'm glad that you're tuned in. If you are just tuning in, I would ask that you please

00:01:25.460 subscribe. Also, if you would and have not yet done this, please leave a rating and review. Guys,

00:01:30.220 it goes such a long ways in promoting what we're doing here. And you know, as well as I do,

00:01:34.840 if you've been around for any amount of time, how needed this movement is, this is a mission to

00:01:39.580 reclaim and restore masculinity in a society that, as I've said before, is increasingly dismissive of it.

00:01:45.260 And we're seeing the problems, right? We're seeing the civil unrest. We're seeing the violence. We're

00:01:49.480 seeing the tearing down of the fabric of democracy. Families are being dismantled. Churches are going

00:01:56.460 by the wayside. It's pretty tragic if you stop and think about it. Now, I know there's a lot to be

00:02:01.480 hopeful for, but there's a lot to be worried about. And it's going to take strong, assertive,

00:02:06.380 bold, competent men to combat this, what I've dubbed the doctrine of popular culture. And that's

00:02:12.620 exactly what we're doing here. We do that via this podcast. We've got programs and we've got

00:02:16.760 our brotherhood and all these kinds of things. But ultimately the reason I was telling you that

00:02:20.760 is because we need to advance this mission. And we do that through this grassroots movement called

00:02:26.040 order of man. So please share it, shoot a text with your favorite episode to somebody,

00:02:30.680 leave a rating and review, tag somebody on our socials, whatever you can do to get this message out.

00:02:36.760 It's a great way to share what we're doing here and to reclaim, like I said before,

00:02:40.600 masculinity in this world that doesn't seem to, to want to do that, but needs to do that.

00:02:47.600 Guys, as always, I've got an incredible, actually one of my favorite podcasts to date. I know that's

00:02:52.540 easy for me to say, but you guys are really going to agree. I think as you listen to this one,

00:02:56.320 but before I get into my guest, let me just briefly mention my friends at show and show sponsors

00:03:02.180 origin main. Now it's getting a little cool. I, I hate to admit, but I actually turned the heat on

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00:03:17.500 turning it on, but, uh, it's been a little cool. I was going to blame it on my kids, but truth be

00:03:22.640 told, having those nice radiators on was actually pretty nice. The other couple of days, I say that

00:03:28.760 because it's time to bust out your boots, put away the sandals, put away the flip-flops, put away the

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00:04:00.540 very impressed with the quality and comfort. You can check it out at origin, main.com. Oh,

00:04:04.820 and by the way, use the code order, O R D E R use the code order at checkout because you're going to

00:04:10.620 get a discount when you do again, origin, main.com use the code order. All right, guys, let me

00:04:16.760 introduce you to Steve. Uh, him and I met years ago. Uh, he invited me and my family to visit him

00:04:21.460 and his family, uh, in California for the weekend. And we just hit it off immediately. We connected,

00:04:26.860 we became good friends. And I know not everyone gets the chance to build a solid relationship with

00:04:31.680 people they admire and respect, but Steve is definitely one of those people for me. Um,

00:04:36.380 he's an incredible athlete. He's an incredible man. Of course, he's a Superbowl champion with

00:04:40.160 the New York giants. Uh, and then after leaving the NFL, he went on to broadcasting. He's since

00:04:44.940 started and grown this incredible fitness business and supplement business called Weatherford fit.

00:04:49.900 Uh, and he's also the host of his podcast, the Steve Weatherford show. All of that stuff is

00:04:54.340 wonderful. And I think that's what matters to you. But what matters to me is he's a friend.

00:04:58.020 He's somebody I admire. I respect him. I look up to him. I turned to him for advice. Uh, and I think

00:05:03.660 you're going to see why that's the case guys. Enjoy Steve. What's up, man. So good to see you as

00:05:09.440 always, man, dude, I'll tell you what, before we even get into this, Ryan, I follow a lot of guys on

00:05:17.580 Instagram. And, um, and I have to tell you, man, you are, you are the most informational father,

00:05:25.600 um, that I follow, man. And you're so consistent. So before we even get going on this, man, I just

00:05:30.840 wanted to honor you for the father and the husband that you show up as on Instagram, but I've been

00:05:35.640 blessed enough to be able to get to know you and do life with you, do some hard stuff with you before.

00:05:40.760 And, uh, man, I just want to honor you before we get going, man. Cause I think you're a hell of a guy.

00:05:44.560 Yeah. I appreciate that. The feeling is definitely mutual. I see you and your, your oldest ace, uh,

00:05:49.940 out there doing your workouts, doing your thing together. And I'm like, man, this is exactly what

00:05:56.560 the world needs. You know, like we're so inundated with business and entrepreneurship and, and there's

00:06:03.280 nothing wrong with that by any means. You and I are both entrepreneurs, but I just want to see dads

00:06:08.980 turn to their sons. I want to see sons turn to their dads. And I want to see that connection

00:06:12.840 forged and you, my friend are living it, which I love.

00:06:16.800 And yeah, thank you, man. It's been, uh, man, it's been evolution. I mean, think about it,

00:06:21.280 dude. We're young dads, you know, how old is your oldest?

00:06:24.420 He's 12.

00:06:25.860 Yeah. So my oldest is 12 too. I thought they were about the same age. My son's about to be a teenager.

00:06:30.400 I'm not even 40 yet. You know, I, I had my son when I was 24 years old and man, I've learned so much.

00:06:37.220 I feel like the first eight years of his life, I was really trying to figure out who I was,

00:06:42.700 you know? And then when you talk about, Hey man, it's, you know, I think you do such a great job,

00:06:46.680 Steve, dude. Hey man, you should have caught me like four or five, six years ago when I was like

00:06:52.080 really in the middle of trying to figure out like who I am, because, uh, I feel like that's a difficulty

00:06:57.560 of a lot of men is like, they want to be great fathers and they want to be great leaders. But

00:07:01.620 I mean, deep down, they don't really like, they're, they're not okay with who they are and

00:07:07.000 who, what their identity is. And so how can you have like a family mission statement or a family

00:07:12.440 mantra if you don't really have like truly have an identity for who you are and to be able to be

00:07:17.780 comfortable with that. And I feel like a lot of men are uneasy. Yeah. Oh, no doubt. But what do you

00:07:23.820 think has changed for yourself? I, you know, I certainly feel what you're saying for me personally as

00:07:28.060 well. Um, but I'm really curious, you know, what has changed in your life, whether it's personal

00:07:34.200 work or extenuating circumstances that have made you feel more grounded in who you are and then you're

00:07:39.360 more capable of serving your wife and children. Yeah. I mean, there's no, like, there's no manual

00:07:45.840 for being a dad. There's no manual for, uh, being a professional athlete and a dad. There's no,

00:07:53.520 there's no manual for doing what you're doing right now. Like you literally are blazing

00:07:57.880 your own path. And so really what I, what I want to get to in mentioning that is, man, as, as I've

00:08:04.920 evolved as a person, um, the thing that I believe that has changed the most in me and really kind of

00:08:10.760 like when you and I first connected, Ryan, I was really starting to go through a lot of that deep

00:08:15.300 work. And, um, and for a lot of my life, I spent a lot of time working on the extrinsic things,

00:08:22.980 meaning like, uh, I wanted to be able to achieve with my abilities because I mean, dating back to

00:08:29.300 like when I was five years old and I know I'm skipping around a lot here, listeners, man, I'm

00:08:33.080 honored you guys are sticking with me, but we will skip around. No, it's good, man. This is the stories

00:08:36.220 we want to hear. So it's all good. Yeah. Cause, cause I've got ADHD, man. So we will go a couple

00:08:41.160 of places, but I mean, just kind of starting back at five years old is really when I started to kind

00:08:45.640 of like form my identity and my worth. Um, and I remember getting sent home from the principal's

00:08:51.320 office, the first five days in school, just for different stuff, you know, talking, pulling

00:08:55.740 people's chair out and laughing, disrupting point is, is after that first week of school was the

00:09:00.700 first really realized, Ryan, that I was really different than everybody else, you know, because

00:09:05.760 of my extreme level of ADHD. Um, cause I know I was different than my brothers and my sister.

00:09:11.300 That's apparent because you get to live with them, but it was the first exposure I had to a

00:09:15.280 large group of people and realizing that I was like the alien in the group. Um, and so it was

00:09:21.320 kind of like at that form, I hate to say, but I started to hate myself for being so much different

00:09:26.060 than everybody else because I'd go to Sunday school and I'd, I'd make trouble. I'd go to school and I'd

00:09:31.460 make trouble. We would go on car trips and I would make trouble. I couldn't sit still. And the only time

00:09:36.460 like that overabundance of energy or that like ridiculous drive, uh, was celebrated was when I was

00:09:43.120 playing sports. And so that was the place that made me feel like worthy. That was the place people

00:09:48.280 were like, Oh, Steve, you can't sit still and you're the busiest person out there. That's awesome.

00:09:52.640 Great job. Keep going. And so that kind of like in my mind, it formed that, you know, I created the

00:09:58.700 story that I'm only worthy when I'm on, when I'm playing sports and when I'm achieving and when I'm

00:10:04.440 winning. And so it really kind of formed a relationship with sports early on that ended up

00:10:10.060 achieving greatness. And, you know, I made some money and achieved championships and stuff like

00:10:14.160 that. But, uh, from a little boy standpoint, the reason, one of the reasons I was able to have that

00:10:19.080 much drive is like sports to me, weren't just like for fun to compete. I felt like as a little boy and

00:10:24.860 even my mom will like, uh, you know, she mentioned this to me a couple of years ago when we were

00:10:30.100 watching my son, she, she mentioned that when I played sports, I never smiled. Like I never celebrated

00:10:35.460 wins and I would get upset if we would lose, but I never celebrated wins because it was, she,

00:10:40.080 she always felt like I took it so seriously. But to me, it was life or death because think about

00:10:44.660 when you're a little boy and all you want to do is like make people notice you for a good reason,

00:10:51.440 especially your dad and my dad, just like most people's dads, you know, that are our age, Ryan

00:10:56.160 were old school. He was a Midwest dad. He wasn't a dad that like patted you on the head and said,

00:11:00.780 I love you. Good morning champion. Like, let's go up and be great today. Let's make the best of

00:11:06.340 the rest of our life, the best of our life. No, he was a type of dad that said, wake up,

00:11:10.360 there's work to get done, you know? And that's how I grew up. And so when I won games or when I

00:11:16.280 achieved, because I believe my dad had that mindset, that was an expectation. So celebrate the

00:11:22.120 wins. And this, you know, this kind of mindset followed me all the way through, you know, high school,

00:11:27.560 college, pros. And I mean, I remember holding a Super Bowl trophy with my family. You know,

00:11:34.700 this is obviously many years later. I think I was 27. I remember holding a Super Bowl trophy and

00:11:40.440 thinking, man, I've achieved everything every little boy would ever want to achieve. And I did

00:11:43.880 it 47 miles from my hometown, right? And I know I'm going on a little bit of a rant here, but just

00:11:49.220 be with me. So I'm from Terre Haute, Indiana, 47 miles from where my hometown is. I'm holding a Super

00:11:54.920 Bowl trophy and I broke the Super Bowl record for most punts inside the 20-yard line. I had the

00:12:00.860 best game of my life and the biggest game of my life. And I mean, let's just say this, guys,

00:12:04.800 I'm a punter. So it's really hard to like, at the end of the day, feel like you really influenced

00:12:09.620 the outcome of the day. Yeah, but come on, you're not just a punter. You were a badass punter at the

00:12:14.480 same time. Well, that's the deal. Like, you really have to be like the next level of that position

00:12:20.020 because that position doesn't have that much influence, right? I mean, you weren't the

00:12:23.560 quintessential punter that we all think of. All right, let's be real about this, which I do

00:12:27.820 appreciate about you. Yeah, thank you, man. I try to max out every area of my life, like our friend

00:12:33.180 Milet says. And so point is, is like I had the best game of my life and you just, we've won a lot of

00:12:40.020 games in my 10 years in the pros. I won a lot of games. There was several games that we won that I

00:12:45.500 honestly didn't even touch the field. They would cut me a check for like 10, 20, $30,000 a week,

00:12:50.840 you know, when I was younger and I wouldn't even play because I wasn't even the holder for field

00:12:54.960 goals. So my point is I've, I've helped, I've been a part of teams that have won things and I've never

00:13:00.620 really felt like it was like important to me that because I didn't feel like I changed the outcome

00:13:05.620 of the game. But in this Superbowl, Superbowl 46 against Tom Brady, I'll never forget it. My first

00:13:11.100 punt of the game was from the 42 yard line. And man, that thing went up. It hit the ground on the

00:13:15.800 one yard line. It didn't bounce forward. It didn't bounce left. It didn't bounce right. It

00:13:19.200 bounced backwards. It bounced straight up in the air. And my long snapper had enough time to run

00:13:23.920 down there, down the ball at the two yard line. And then the very next play, Tom Brady drops back

00:13:28.120 in the pocket, looks, looks right, looks down the center of the field and see Justin Tuck coming at him.

00:13:34.060 So he chucks the ball. They get an intentional grounding. So the first two points of the game

00:13:38.280 were the play after my punt and one of my best friends. And it was really kind of a validating

00:13:43.220 point in my career as a man. And as a football players, Justin Tuck, our team captain, you know,

00:13:48.820 guys in the, he's going to be in the hall of fame. And as soon as he got that intentional ground,

00:13:53.220 he ran right over to the kicking that I'll never forget him. Like pulling me up off of the bench by

00:13:57.940 my, my breastplate of my pads and like almost holding me up like a little baby. I'm a pretty big dude,

00:14:02.180 right? Like a little baby. And he goes, dude, that was an alley-oop and let you let me dunk it.

00:14:07.300 You know what I mean? Essentially saying that, that punt set me up to be able to do what I just

00:14:13.380 did. And he validated my worth to the team. And really, I kind of want to circle this all back

00:14:18.280 to worth of the worth that I formed of myself as a little boy and how I formed my worth predicated

00:14:25.480 on what I could achieve or what I could provide. And so the game ended, we won 21, 17,

00:14:31.940 unfreaking believable. We beat Tom Brady. And I remember running across the field and then looking

00:14:38.180 to find my parents and my son and my wife, my daughter in the crowd. And I remember pulling

00:14:44.160 my son out of the crowd and holding him up. Confetti's coming down. It's, you know, this is

00:14:48.040 it, dude. And I remember him saying, daddy, daddy, we did it. We won it. And he was only four,

00:14:54.300 but then I put him down. And then instantly he was like, just wanting to play with the confetti.

00:14:57.540 The championship part was over. Um, but I'll never forget my family and bringing them up there

00:15:02.820 on top of the stage and holding the Lombardi trophy. And this thing's freaking huge. And

00:15:07.500 actually, hold on right here. Here's a, every player that wins, every player that wins one

00:15:13.520 has an opportunity to pay $21,000 and get a three quarter size of it. So you, I've touched that

00:15:20.620 one. Actually, I've held that one in my hands right there. And my son has as well.

00:15:24.440 Yeah, man. So, um, so point is, man, I'm holding this, I'm holding this trophy, uh, with my dad.

00:15:31.720 I mean, this is your dad. You know, the, the dad that started coaching me at four years old and

00:15:36.380 coached me all the way through up until when I went to college, he was my high school soccer coach.

00:15:40.500 So my dad was a super devoted dad, but wasn't like a hyper affirming dad. My dad still has never told

00:15:46.280 me like, Hey, I'm proud of you. And so point to kind of like getting into all of this is I never felt

00:15:52.760 so good as seeing my dad hold that trophy. Right. And then we go to the after party and my grandma

00:15:58.580 and everybody's telling me how awesome I am and how great I did and all these things, dude, I am

00:16:02.880 freaking sky high because my love language as a little boy like that. And my love language is

00:16:08.260 words of affirmation. And like, everybody's telling me how good I am and how wonderful I was. And the

00:16:12.540 spotlight was on me. And, you know, it was 120 million people just watched that game. Literally,

00:16:17.040 it couldn't, I couldn't have been higher, you know, and I've done a little bit of my life.

00:16:22.700 I've done enough to know that there is not a drug that will make you feel better than the way that

00:16:26.940 I felt in that moment when I was at that post Superbowl party and Kenny Chesney is on the stage

00:16:31.860 paying, playing for only like a hundred people, my mom, my dad, my grandma, grandpa. And I remember

00:16:37.180 telling my, my wife, because I've been dating my wife since pretty much I was 17 years old. I met her when

00:16:42.940 I was on my official visit to the university of Illinois. So we've been together for 10 years at

00:16:48.060 this point. And she's been with me through like the sloppy commenting on myself and blacked out,

00:16:53.780 you know, all the frat parties. And so I always said, man, if I ever win a Superbowl, I'm going to

00:16:58.340 get so trash. I remember finishing my first beer. And then she's like, I'm going to go get you another

00:17:03.500 beer. And that's the only time she's ever offered to go get me another beer. And I remember telling her,

00:17:10.920 I don't want to feel like I look around as soon as I left the after party, because in the NFL,

00:17:18.400 they won't let the even girlfriends or wives or anybody go back to your room. For obvious reasons,

00:17:22.760 you have to protect the integrity of the NFL. So I ended up sleeping by myself that night,

00:17:27.320 left the post party about two o'clock. And I walk into my room in Indianapolis, Indiana. I remember

00:17:32.760 going up to the window and looking down and seeing all of the people down there, just like raging,

00:17:39.160 having fun, wearing all types of different NFL jerseys. They were celebrating just that the

00:17:44.940 Superbowl happened. Not that they played in it. Not that they played the best game they've ever

00:17:49.280 played. Not that they played the best game they've ever played, set a Superbowl record,

00:17:52.580 and all of their family was there. None of that. They were just happy to be there. And I remember

00:17:57.460 taking a deep breath and it was like the first, you know, big breath that I took since I had been by

00:18:02.620 myself. And I remember before I could even exhale out, Ryan, I just remember like a freaking wave of

00:18:08.820 depression coming over me. Like, you got to be kidding me, man. Like, I feel like I did everything.

00:18:15.100 Every, all these boxes are checked that I thought like would fulfill me and make me happy and make

00:18:20.500 me worthy and make me this or that. And I remember feeling the exact same. And so like you have these

00:18:26.220 achievements that, and it was the reason it was depressing is because every time I feel like as

00:18:31.460 men, we go out and we achieve something that we, we even use the language, I'll be happy when,

00:18:38.120 well, when I can get here and we put like a dollar amount on our bank account or a size house or a car

00:18:44.780 or a size of a bicep or a body fat, like in here, we continue to, to create these, these moments of

00:18:52.980 I'll be happy. And every time we get to one of them and we don't feel good or we don't feel better

00:18:59.240 about ourselves, we continue to push that rock higher. And so we continue to push the point of

00:19:04.320 like happiness over the cognitive horizon. And so we just set up a hamster wheel of life where we

00:19:10.060 continue to, to go out and achieve things. And the sick part is Ryan is the longer you go, the harder

00:19:17.460 it is to get to these achievements and, and the less that it gives you, the less it fuels you. And so

00:19:22.900 the sacrifice is greater. The return is less. And that's why I believe that so many pro athletes,

00:19:28.260 so many elite performers, so many guys that get to the top. And then when, when it's time to shift

00:19:35.540 gears or recreate or evolve as a person, they struggle with that because their whole identity

00:19:40.800 is this thing that they have formed for themselves. It's not, that's what I was going to say is it's the

00:19:45.880 outside of them. Right. And that's what I was going to say is that must've been very difficult for you

00:19:51.200 where you wrapped up your identity and performing on the field to now, all right, I'm stepping away

00:19:56.140 from the game. So what, what, what was that like for you when you finally left the game, you wrapped

00:20:01.700 up your whole identity in there, you found your worth in being there and being a Superbowl champion and

00:20:05.980 elite level athlete. And now you're not that anymore. Like one day earlier, you are one day later.

00:20:11.860 You're not. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. That's, it's a great question, right? And so like this happened in my

00:20:17.140 seventh year in the NFL. So I ended up and I had been on five teams, four other teams previous to

00:20:23.600 that point. So I want all the listeners to understand that my, my career was not like roses up to this

00:20:29.200 point. I had been cut by three teams. I'd been cut by the saints. I'd been cut by the chiefs. I'd been

00:20:33.260 cut by the Jags. I'd been cut by the, or actually not cut by the jets, but the season before we won that

00:20:38.260 Superbowl, I broke an NFL record for the most punts inside the 20 yard line. And they'd said,

00:20:42.920 no, we just don't want to renew your contract. And so it was, yeah, that was for the jets. So

00:20:48.480 there was a lot of adversity that led up to this point in my career. And so it was almost kind of

00:20:53.040 like, it wasn't like the previous six, seven years of my NFL career were like achievement after

00:20:57.680 achievement after achievement. I'm like, Oh, I'm so good, but I'm so empty. No, bro. I was getting my

00:21:02.360 ass kicked. I was getting cut by teams. There was one time I got cut by the new Orleans saints and they

00:21:07.020 left me in the visitors locker room in, in the, beneath the stadium of the bank of America and

00:21:12.880 Charlotte, North Carolina. So point to like mentioning all of those things to you guys, man,

00:21:18.300 is, is man, I get it. Like I get where you guys are at. I understand like you probably made some

00:21:23.360 achievements in your life and they didn't make you feel the way that you thought it would make you

00:21:28.200 feel. And then you shift gears and you raised the bar higher and you thought like, Hey, maybe I get

00:21:32.400 to 10% body fat or a million dollars in the bank account. I'll feel good. And then you get there

00:21:36.980 and then it didn't do that thing for you. I understand exactly where you're at, but I believe

00:21:42.920 that there is a way that you can construct a blueprint for your life where there's not guilt

00:21:47.840 or shame about what happened in the past. And you can kind of step into a new identity. And I knew

00:21:52.960 when I, when I came into the professional football, Ryan, there's a thing that happens and they,

00:21:58.520 they put a piece of paper in front of you and it, and it has the deliverables on it and has a date

00:22:03.780 on it has the owner has the commissioner and it has the assistant manager on there. And you sign

00:22:10.360 your name to that. And when you sign your name to that contract, you are agreeing to be these things

00:22:16.040 for this team. And because of that, they will reward you with this money. And so when things really

00:22:22.720 kind of shifted for me, it was really kind of about when you came into my life, Ryan, when I left the

00:22:27.360 NFL, man, I really, really struggled. And it wasn't because I felt like my identity was so

00:22:33.280 wrapped up in football. I actually walked away from football before I needed to walk away from

00:22:37.880 football because I understood that there was nothing with inside of that game. It was going

00:22:42.940 to make me feel different about me. I knew there was something, it was almost kind of like I won the

00:22:49.000 Superbowl my seventh year. And then I played three more years trying to figure out what it was.

00:22:53.040 Is there something still inside? Is it the Pro Bowl? Is it, should I, well, you know, I won the

00:22:58.420 Superbowl and my dad didn't say, I'm so proud of you. And my dad's a Christian. What about if I become

00:23:04.920 like, like the most philanthropic guy in the NFL? Maybe I'll, I'll grab my dad's attention. Maybe he'll

00:23:10.700 be proud of me. Then maybe, maybe that'll be the thing that'll make me feel good about me. Right.

00:23:14.780 Hey, guess what? I checked that box too. Right. And I, I want you guys to hear me. I'm not bragging

00:23:20.220 about myself. This is like, this was a, like a depressed little boy that was so desperately

00:23:25.840 trying to get it from his dad. So like, as I talk about these achievements that I've had,

00:23:29.520 understand where it's coming from. It's coming from a little boy that just wanted to be loved.

00:23:33.620 It's coming from a little boy that just wanted to be worthy. It's coming from a little boy that just

00:23:37.420 wanted to fit in. Right. And so I became the most philanthropic man in the NFL. There's a word for that.

00:23:43.700 It's called the Walter Payton man of the year award. And it's something you could get nominated

00:23:49.180 for. And so point is, is I went out and did that still nothing from my dad went out and became the

00:23:55.280 fittest man in the NFL voted, voted by the men in the NFL, not once, but two times. So think about this

00:24:02.320 a hundred. And I was 108 pounds as a freshman in high school. Is that right? And he is freaked out

00:24:07.720 108 pounds. My son is 12 and he's 130. So I was five foot eight, 108 pounds. And, and because of

00:24:16.840 like this, this thing that I formed in my mindset as a kid, that I'm only valuable unless I achieve

00:24:23.280 and do things with myself or with my body, I'm not valuable, but what I can do can be valuable.

00:24:28.980 And therefore I can be valuable. And so I ravenously pursued these different goals

00:24:34.740 and was voted two times the fittest man in the NFL that happened. And then you get to 10 years

00:24:39.880 in the NFL, which is another achievement. That's a decade of pro sports. I'm from Terre Haute,

00:24:44.340 Indiana, man. People like me are not supposed to do that. Doesn't happen.

00:24:48.340 And so that happens. And then still, I just still, and then at that point I'm like, all right,

00:24:52.940 man, I'm out. I'm out. So I chucked them the deuces. I went and accepted a job at spike TV. I had

00:24:58.280 my own TV show. I did ESPN radio. I did that for one year and just incredibly unfulfilled there.

00:25:04.020 And so if you guys will notice, I'm bouncing from like one thing to one thing, to one thing.

00:25:09.500 And it wasn't for the money. It wasn't for the fame. Like, sure. Those were things that were

00:25:13.340 like beneficial, but looking back on it now, retrospectively, I was just looking to be happy,

00:25:19.340 bro. I was just looking for an identity that felt good for me. And I want to circle all of this back

00:25:23.920 Ryan really quickly to the pro contract. And when we talk about deliverables and so when things really

00:25:29.660 changed for me is, is when I created a contract for myself. And I said, if I can wake up every

00:25:36.280 single day and just be these three things, not do these three things, be these three things.

00:25:42.060 I know at the end of the day, when I'm brushing my teeth, I'm going to be proud of myself. And I feel

00:25:46.100 like for men, that is the ultimate hardest thing for us to do in the galaxy of things that we do

00:25:51.820 is to be proud of ourselves. And so I just created the game that I knew I could win because the game

00:25:58.320 that I was playing the hamster wheel that I was on was going to kill me, man. It was literally going

00:26:03.100 to kill me because they were requiring more of an investment and I was getting less of a return.

00:26:08.420 That is a recipe for killing yourself. So my point to this contract is I just wrote down on a piece

00:26:13.940 of, on a piece of paper. I am a man of integrity, honor, and accountability. So if you guys can hear me

00:26:21.480 and whatever your contract is to you, and I challenge you guys to create a contract for yourself,

00:26:26.720 not a contract that you can win, but something that is going to sharpen you, something that is

00:26:31.780 going to build on you day after day after day. And I, and integrity is not as something that you

00:26:37.600 can wake up and do. And so this is why it was important to me. And I want you guys to understand

00:26:41.480 the difference between being able to do something and being able to be something. I lived my whole life

00:26:47.660 trying to do things. And I understood what that, where that put me. It gave me a lot of achievements,

00:26:55.060 but it didn't do anything for me. And so I wanted to create a game that was about me personally

00:27:01.640 developing me because I understand if I improve me everywhere that I go is going to be affected

00:27:08.760 by what I do in myself. And so if I can wake up every day and be integrity, if I can wake up every

00:27:14.080 day and be accountable, if I can wake up every day and be honorable, I know that my podcast will be

00:27:21.760 great. I know that my supplement company is going to grow. I know that the men that I coach are going

00:27:26.200 to get the greatest version of me. And so I feel like we create like all of these different boxes

00:27:32.000 that we need to check to be happy. But I feel like it's about simplifying it. And at the end of the day,

00:27:38.240 if you can check those three boxes and you can be those three things, and I'm not sure what that is

00:27:43.100 to the people out there listening, but figure out what those three things are that are going to sharpen

00:27:47.580 you. And it says in scripture, iron sharpens iron. So one man sharpens another. And that's one of the

00:27:53.280 reasons, man, I'm so honored to be on here with you, Ryan, because that's literally what you have

00:27:56.680 dedicated your life to doing is to sharpening other men and to getting in the space with them and

00:28:02.200 forcing them into awkward conversations, into uncomfortable conversations. Because if you continue

00:28:07.960 to do things the way that you've always done them, meaning speaking the same ways, doing the same

00:28:12.080 ways and being the same ways, you're going to get the same freaking results.

00:28:14.820 No doubt. Do you feel like through this process, and I know it isn't an overnight thing,

00:28:19.660 but do you feel like the process you've taken that you no longer seek or require your dad's

00:28:25.840 validation or his words of affirmation, or do you still feel like that's, that's part of what drives

00:28:31.880 you and motivates you? Yeah. I mean, he's my dad, you know what I mean? It's always going to be

00:28:36.860 important to me. However, man, I played football in front of 120 million people and their opinions

00:28:46.240 were so important to me. I used to vomit before every single pro football game that I ever played

00:28:51.140 in because I was scared to death. Yeah. I was scared to death that they were going to figure

00:28:55.540 out I wasn't as good as what they thought I was. I was scared to death that my wife was going to

00:28:59.480 figure out I'm not as good as what she thought I was and the coaches and my teammates. And so as soon

00:29:04.780 as the game would start, I would be fine, but it's just what your mind does to you before the moment

00:29:09.360 of you actually practicing your skill and performing your skill. Um, I'm, I, my, I'm brain farting.

00:29:16.180 Where was I going with that? I was talking about your dad and seeking his approval and validation.

00:29:20.580 Yeah. So, right, right. So, um, so now the way that I've really kind of constructed my life

00:29:26.040 is man, I'm playing my life for an audience of one because we get on social media, Ryan,

00:29:31.080 and you and I have to do it. That's the way that we're able to communicate with

00:29:34.660 other men. I freaking hate it, man. I love sharing my life, but I hate being reminded

00:29:40.280 of everything that I'm not and everything I don't have because that's what I feel like

00:29:45.020 social media does. And here's the deal. You mean through comparison or other people's

00:29:49.640 comments or what do you mean by that? Just everybody's throwing their best stuff

00:29:54.260 out there. Yeah. Everybody's putting their best stuff out. Even me and you, Ryan, like we

00:29:59.540 won't put out a picture where we look like fat and stupid, you know what I mean? Unless we're

00:30:04.020 actually going to write in caps and we're about how we're fat and stupid. Right. Sure.

00:30:08.640 So, uh, my, my point is, it's like, when we want to grab people's attention, we want to put our best

00:30:14.220 writing out there. We want to put our best picture out there. Not that we want to, we want people to

00:30:19.240 think we're perfect, but we're playing the game of, of how Instagram wants us to play the way you

00:30:25.640 and I do it is completely different than the way we did it five years ago. It was much more about

00:30:30.400 the story that we're telling than about grabbing people's attention. But now that they change these

00:30:35.520 algorithms and it's like, you know what I mean? Hey, turn on your post notifications. I'm so sick

00:30:40.940 of asking people to do silly things like that. When really, dude, I just want to talk to you,

00:30:44.920 man. I want to have a conversation with you. I want to talk to you about your addiction. Oh,

00:30:48.940 you struggle with drugs. Oh, you struggle with porn. Oh, you cheated on your girlfriend. That's now

00:30:52.520 your wife. Me too, man. I've been there, but it makes it so much more difficult to be able to get in

00:30:57.700 their ear because I have 350,000 Instagram followers and some of my posts get 982 likes.

00:31:04.680 I used to get 11,000. And so it's not that I'm like so upset that I'm not getting those impressions.

00:31:09.920 It's just making the mission that you have. It's making the mission that I have

00:31:13.240 so much more difficult. And there's a scripture in, I forget what the verse, I know the verse,

00:31:20.940 the verses do not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of

00:31:25.920 your mind. And I believe that Instagram is absolutely reprogramming people's brains to

00:31:34.400 think, function, and react the way that it wants it to. And the sick part is the majority of society

00:31:40.760 is spending enough time on those platforms to allow that conditioning to take place.

00:31:45.820 And that's a scary thing, man.

00:31:48.080 Well, and this is why it's so important. You know, we did that. You invited me out to the Park City thing

00:31:52.700 that we did with the Wim Hof method months ago. This was like right before the whole COVID stuff.

00:31:58.100 So we timed that perfectly.

00:31:59.720 Like three days before.

00:32:01.200 Yeah. Yeah. And then I saw, in fact, I don't know if you know this, but when I came back from that trip,

00:32:07.100 there was talks that they were going to close the Boston airport and the entire city. We were supposed

00:32:11.900 to be in Southern Utah for another week. And I cut that trip short after our trip in Park City

00:32:16.440 and came home because I'm like, well, we need to be able to get home. If they close it down,

00:32:20.200 like we got to get home. But that was a very powerful weekend for me because it wasn't riddled

00:32:25.400 with Instagram and social media posts and things like that. It was like a deep connection. And I saw

00:32:30.580 you doing this thing with Jesse and Mitch and some of these other guys, humble, what last week.

00:32:36.880 And I said, that's exactly right. We need to get together with other men, turn off the phone,

00:32:42.900 put it away, you know, and have a deep and meaningful conversation face to face, shoulder

00:32:49.300 to shoulder, working through some of these things as men. We just don't get it, especially in the

00:32:53.600 light of COVID and these restrictions and masks and everything else. And it's a real shame because

00:32:59.600 it's what we need as men.

00:33:01.720 Yeah, man. I mean, if you think about it, when we were little kids and we did like little sleep away

00:33:06.540 camps, remember like how nutritious, and that's, I want to be like really specific with the word

00:33:11.980 that I use. Remember how nutritious that was for your spirit. You know, how, when you would go and

00:33:17.160 you would experience anything like that, it actually fed you. When you were around other little boys

00:33:23.060 that could do some of the things that you could do, and maybe they could make a fire without a lighter,

00:33:27.500 or maybe they could hold their breath for, they would go off the high diving board. The point is,

00:33:31.860 it was nutritious for us. It didn't alienate us. People weren't offended that somebody could make a fire

00:33:36.360 and, oh cool, teach me. Yeah, show me. And I believe that as we got into college and girls

00:33:43.720 became important and drugs, you know, made our bodies feel good and alcohol and things, then we go from

00:33:53.080 that phase of like kind of like brotherhood of like the reason we gathered around was to chase chicks

00:34:00.780 and to party, right? But then married families, we never go back to that nutritious part of

00:34:09.520 relationship. When we do get together as adults, and I've had this phase, but it's still around like

00:34:14.140 alcohol and we might smoke a joint or whatever the case may be, but it's not, it's not about going

00:34:18.920 and adventuring. It's not about jumping off a cliff. It's not about trying wakeboarding. Have you never

00:34:23.200 tried wakeboarding? It's, it's not about, it's going out and do things that, that kind of scare

00:34:29.300 you a little bit. But when you get around guys, like when I got around Humble, Humble can do things

00:34:33.960 that I can't do. When you're around Aubrey Marcus, Aubrey Darkus could do a lot of things that I can't

00:34:38.340 do, but it challenges me. And the same thing for you, Ryan, when I follow you on Instagram and I see

00:34:42.900 the things that you're doing with your family and I see the structure and hear me when I say this,

00:34:47.120 the structure and the order that you have implemented in the assembly line of how you are

00:34:53.140 raising your children and the mission statements that you have for your family, that inspires me.

00:34:58.020 That's nutritious to me. And I feel like a lot of us follow people on Instagram that aren't

00:35:03.080 nutritious for us. They're actually toxic pesticides for the tree that we are. And then when we produce

00:35:08.420 fruit, that's not the fruit that we want. We're wondering, well, dude, where are you getting your

00:35:12.440 seed from? Cause right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because, you know, you think about how often

00:35:17.900 like I'm on this phone and device and I'm adding people and I'm following this person and following

00:35:21.740 this individual and like what this person has to say, but you know, when's the last time you

00:35:25.240 actually went in there and said, yeah, this isn't good for me. Like this guy's message or what he's

00:35:29.960 sharing or what he's preaching. Like, I don't need that. And you actually went through and you spent

00:35:33.920 some time unfollowing and removing people from your sphere of influence who are, uh, well, you're

00:35:41.120 talking about scripture again, by their fruits, you shall know thee. Right. And so you see the

00:35:46.040 fruits that some of these people produce and you're consuming that toxicity, willingly consuming

00:35:51.500 it and being inundated and bombarded and living by it. Man, let me just hit the pause button on the

00:35:57.780 conversation really quickly. I know you're into it, but I just got to pause. It's going to be along

00:36:01.300 the same thread lines, uh, because we've been talking about living life on your own terms. And I

00:36:06.740 thought it would make sense for me to tell you about this 30 days to battle ready program that we

00:36:10.640 have now, uh, over last time I checked, it was over 10,000 men have gone through this course and

00:36:16.440 it's designed to give you the tools and roadmap that you need to identify objectives and then create

00:36:21.180 the perfect plan for making that roadmap a reality. Uh, this isn't a program where I tell you how to do

00:36:27.480 everything and what you should be working on. You can do that by yourself, but this is a program that

00:36:32.040 helps you. It helps you come up with your own plan and essentially, uh, help you start living life

00:36:38.900 on your own terms. So when you register for free, by the way, this is a free program. Uh, you're

00:36:43.400 going to gain access to a series of emails over 30 days to help you get your life on track the way

00:36:48.340 that you've always wanted it to be. And maybe you're on the path right now. Hopefully this will

00:36:52.780 accelerate that. So if you're interested in registering and going through our free 30 days

00:36:59.040 to battle ready program, you can get registered at order of man.com slash battle ready again,

00:37:04.380 order of man.com slash battle ready. Do that right after the conversation for now, get back to it with

00:37:09.080 Steve. You know, one of the, one of the things, and this is like completely off topic, but I love

00:37:14.040 you. And I know that you encourage this. I love your show, uh, because it's conversational, but you

00:37:18.180 know what? One thing that really bothers me is all of these like expert coaches that are out there

00:37:23.700 making like gobs of money with like mountains of, of influence and they ain't got no fruit in their

00:37:30.140 life. Yeah. It is, it is setting dudes up for the most ridiculous disappointment ever, because I know

00:37:37.280 some of these guys that have like big followings and make lots of money coaching people because

00:37:42.280 they're ridiculously good at business, but they're so unhappy. And so what ends up happening is people

00:37:48.880 come to this person that is really, really good at this one thing. And they get really,

00:37:53.040 really good at this one thing, but then they end up with the light exactly like that person

00:37:57.300 where his, his marriage is strained. You know, it's on the brink of divorce, his children,

00:38:02.060 like they know their dad, but they're scared to death to come up to their dad because their dad

00:38:06.200 is so busy and their dad's time is so important. I don't ever want to be that dad, but I've been

00:38:11.340 that dad before. You know what I mean? So that's how frustrated it is for you and I to understand

00:38:17.560 that some of these guys that are pursuing what they're pursuing, isn't going to make them happy,

00:38:21.800 man. You know what I mean? Like to me, it's really frustrating because they're spending a lot of

00:38:27.340 their, their time. And we only, we only got a limited amount of it on this earth and they're,

00:38:32.040 they're running a race that is going to lead them exactly where the starting line was. It's a

00:38:36.000 freaking hamster wheel, man. It takes a lot of reflection to do that though. I was actually

00:38:40.240 walking around in the field with my, my oldest Brecken, who of course, you know, and we were walking

00:38:45.320 around and I was looking at him cause he's getting big, he's leaning out, his muscles are getting

00:38:49.940 developed. He's wearing my stuff. Like he put on my shoes. He grabbed my hoodie. I'm like,

00:38:55.540 what the hell's happening? And I remember just listening to him talk as we were just walking

00:38:59.920 around the field. And I thought, dude, I only got six more years with you. That's not a lot of time,

00:39:07.280 man. And I'm like, I could, I could waste this time in a blink of an eye focusing too heavily on my

00:39:13.100 business or trying to win people over that have no relevancy in my life, uh, spending all my time

00:39:19.240 and attention on them and investing in them versus investing where I have the most influence, which

00:39:25.200 is with my wife and children. It was a very real wake up call for me, but I think so many men are on

00:39:30.960 the hamster wheel of life. Like busy. I wake up work. Somebody's telling me to do this. I got to do

00:39:35.400 this. I got this task and this project that I get home and I got to do this. And it's like, stop,

00:39:39.700 you know, timeout. It's the same thing in sports, right? You guys all, you guys all take a break

00:39:45.160 periodically. You know, you timeout, let's huddle up. Let's figure it. Let's like reset here.

00:39:49.600 Something is not working right. Let's come up with a plan. All right, ready break. And we get back

00:39:55.320 into it, but that's what we need in life too. We just don't do it. Well, I mean, I think a lot of men

00:40:02.620 kind of look at themselves the way I looked at myself the majority of my life, you know, I'm 37 for 35

00:40:07.940 years of my life. I looked at myself as an instrument. Like, what can I do? What can I

00:40:12.580 produce? What can I create? What can I protect? You know, I love your slogan, protect, provide,

00:40:17.600 preside. I mean, that's it. Like that's, that's what men, that's, that's what we do. And so we were

00:40:23.060 always looking for what can we do. And I think for me, it's a, it's a frustration because the way that

00:40:30.580 God designed us to live seems counterproductive to the way that we were raised. Like if you want to get,

00:40:36.820 go work hard. So it doesn't make sense to have a Sabbath. It doesn't make sense to take a day off.

00:40:43.080 And so men don't do that. And for 35 years, I didn't do that, but we don't give our bodies and

00:40:49.300 we don't give ourselves what we need. And so we try to pour into our wife. We try to pour into other

00:40:53.720 men. We try to pour into our children from an empty cup. And then when we don't do a good job or we're

00:41:00.140 irritable with our wife, or we yell at our kids, or we make a poor investing decision, we beat ourselves up

00:41:06.120 about it, but we never gave ourselves what we truly needed to be able to be our best.

00:41:10.520 And so I've learned a lot as a professional athlete, you know, kind of the different parts

00:41:15.600 of being your best. And for me, I needed to be my best for three hours every seven days. And so I

00:41:22.720 created a life that the other six and a half days of the week, those should be built to make me perform

00:41:30.260 my best on Sunday. And so I didn't pay attention, you know, to, to go into extra mile. I didn't ask

00:41:35.940 my wife like, Hey, how are you actually doing today? If it was during the season. And so that

00:41:41.100 really kind of formed and conditioned my wife to not really bring problems to me, you know, because

00:41:48.160 well, if it's during the season, I don't want to bring problems to Steve, because there was a few

00:41:51.760 times during the season when I was younger, 24, 25 years old, where she would bring me a problem on

00:41:56.440 Friday or Saturday. And maybe it would stress me out or somebody was sick and in the hospital and

00:42:01.260 I would play poorly on Sunday. And there was actually one time where she brought something

00:42:04.760 to me on Saturday. I played poorly on Sunday and I got cut on Monday. And so I didn't like try to

00:42:10.100 condition my wife that way, but the world conditioned my wife a certain way that, Hey, don't bring problems

00:42:16.020 to Steve because he's going to perform poorly. And then we're going to, and then you're going to get

00:42:20.700 fired. And so what that ended up doing was it retarded my growth from being able to,

00:42:26.440 to be the type of man that has capacity. It's, it's singled me. It said, Hey, continue to do this

00:42:32.800 and I'll take all of these different problems away. And so I really didn't start to deal with

00:42:36.900 family problems year round until I was like 34 years old. And so think about how juvenile my skills

00:42:44.960 were as a husband and as a father to handle real time problems for my family, because I had been

00:42:51.340 guarded for so long because I had an elite skill that produced. Does that make sense?

00:42:56.440 It makes total sense. But my question is, how do you balance the need to do? Because I mean,

00:43:03.700 let's be real. We have responsibility. We have bills, we have kids, we have a job, we have team

00:43:09.920 members, like we have people that yes, we do need to do in order to serve those individuals. So how do

00:43:15.940 you balance the idea of being and doing? Cause both are important.

00:43:23.820 We're after results. And I think that the, the shortest way I can tell, can say this is

00:43:29.900 detach yourself from the results and stop looking at the scoreboard. You know, I feel like men are

00:43:36.020 constantly looking at the scoreboard. And what happens when you're playing a game,

00:43:39.980 when you're playing a game and you're constantly looking at the score, you are, you are selectively

00:43:44.900 breaking your focus. We're about to go into the fourth quarter of 2000. I'm not sure when this

00:43:50.580 podcast is coming out, but we're about to go into the fourth quarter of 2020 as we record this thing.

00:43:55.060 2020 has punched all of us in the face, right? And I know you had plans and you had events

00:43:58.900 and those things didn't happen. And the same thing for every single man that is honest, we had family

00:44:04.100 vacations. We had things planned. Some of us missed funerals, weddings, lots of things. This

00:44:09.700 didn't go like we had it planned. So heading into the fourth quarter, you have to ask men, if you

00:44:14.440 don't feel like you're, you're, you're able to balance it, right. Which is a fallacy. Nobody's

00:44:19.180 ever going to be able to balance anything. It's, it's life mastery. If you ask me, but the, but the

00:44:24.040 point is, is, are you going to continue to play, to have the same offensive schematic going into this

00:44:30.640 fourth quarter? Cause when I was playing high school basketball, my high school

00:44:34.000 basketball coach was Larry Bird's high school basketball coach. Are you serious? He's so old

00:44:39.200 and our, our, our shorts were short enough that our nuts could have hung out. It depends on your

00:44:45.040 size though, right? You could laugh at the guys that couldn't drop out of their shorts.

00:44:50.820 It was bad, but, but point, point to the next step, put me back on the tracks. We were talking about

00:44:55.200 mentorship. Yeah. And, uh, you were talking about life mastery versus, versus balance and then also

00:45:02.580 balancing between being a, uh, uh, being versus doing.

00:45:07.960 Being versus doing. So I was talking about my high school coach. I lost my train of thought.

00:45:13.540 I don't know, man. I got you distracted with that image that I shouldn't have planted in your mind.

00:45:17.620 We were going somewhere good though, dude. Uh, what was the thing that we stopped? We were talking

00:45:24.360 about, uh, before that. I can't remember. We were talking about life mastery. Give me another

00:45:29.820 question. I'm sorry. That's okay. It's okay. Yeah. So how do you balance now? Since we're on the,

00:45:36.960 on the subject of balance, you're running your, your groups, you've got your supplement company,

00:45:41.460 you've got your fitness stuff. By the way, um, both my wife and son are doing your, your fitness

00:45:46.980 program. Again, my wife did it about a year or so ago and crushed it. And my son's doing it right

00:45:53.320 now with her. He's lost, I think in the last, I want to say couple of weeks, maybe two, two and a

00:46:01.040 half weeks has lost, uh, 10 pounds. He's put on a percentage of muscle. He, I see, I catch him every

00:46:09.400 once in a while looking in the mirror and it's not about looking in the mirror. It's that I see

00:46:13.700 that he's proud of himself. And I'm like, this is awesome, man. And he's even kept us on in line.

00:46:19.320 He's like, dad, come on now. We're not going to get donuts on Saturday. I'm like, I want a donut.

00:46:24.600 He's like, Nope, we're not doing it. We're not doing it.

00:46:27.040 What, one thing you, he might really love because this will allow him to real time,

00:46:34.340 uh, the decisions that he's making, how they directly are impacting his, his physiology is

00:46:39.740 go get a DEXA scan. D E X A. I took my son to go do one. And it's essentially like an MRI of your

00:46:46.120 whole body. It takes seven minutes and it will tell you how much skeletal mass that you have in

00:46:50.800 your left leg versus your right, how much muscle you have in your right arm versus your left,

00:46:54.400 how much adipose tissue, how much weight you carry around. It's like a visceral fat.

00:46:59.320 It's really, really cool. So month over month, his body's going to be changing a ton. And so when

00:47:04.020 he's making these decisions and doing these programs, and if you do it every 90 days, man,

00:47:08.680 to me, I believe that's the thing that, that inspires you and I the most as little boys and

00:47:13.580 as men right now is momentum. When you can start to see a little fruit from the investment that you're

00:47:19.280 putting in, that's, that's what makes like physical fitness so exciting. And it's one of

00:47:23.880 the reasons that I feel like spiritual fitness is so difficult because you can't like, you can't

00:47:28.820 see your muscle, you know, like, how do you quantify it? Yeah. That's, that's why I believe

00:47:33.400 that's like a frustration. It's been a frustration for me for a long time. And because when I work

00:47:37.680 hard at business, I have a metric that I can show for it. If I work hard in my body, I have a metric

00:47:43.040 that I can show for it. If I work hard at my marriage, I'm just going to keep it real. I get

00:47:47.560 more action, you know, and that is the result. A lot of men are after, you know what I mean?

00:47:52.380 Like if we're keeping it real, there's nothing wrong with that money. Exactly. That is the desire

00:47:57.180 of my heart. I, I was built this way. And I, I feel like there is a way that we can design a life to

00:48:04.560 create the desires of our heart for everybody that's in our family. So when you're talking about

00:48:09.600 balance and kind of like swinging back, back to that, I, I believe the greatest thing for me

00:48:15.040 in my life, when I talk about how do you balance it is I believe communication is the number one

00:48:21.020 thing that has allowed me to actually figure out the game that I'm playing because there was a,

00:48:28.560 I grew up thinking that I needed to, to provide these certain types of things or be this certain

00:48:35.340 type of person for my wife. And I never actually really had a conversation with her about like,

00:48:41.080 what's really going to make her happy. Yes. I know she wants a house. She's a mom, you know,

00:48:45.300 five kids will probably have more, but point is like, she needs a house. She needs a car. She needs

00:48:50.440 money to spend, but what is actually going to make her happy? Because I know that I had supplied all

00:48:55.060 those things to her and more than likely she's pretty similar to me. Meaning like, it's not things

00:49:00.620 that are going to make her happy. Like what are the desires for it? What does she feel like the

00:49:04.480 purpose for her life is? And having those types of conversation, I believe will save men a lot of

00:49:11.940 through the hoops of what they think they need to do, earn or become to make their significant other

00:49:18.200 happy. Does that make sense? It does. You know, one of the moments, I just want to share a little

00:49:23.440 insight into your story, something that I observed of you and your wife. So the last time we got

00:49:28.800 together, like I said, was in park city and you know, we were doing our thing. We were doing the

00:49:33.100 cold water immersion and we were having fun and having conversations and eating some great food

00:49:37.060 for vegan food. I'm like, dang, this is pretty good. Cause I like meat. I like meat, but that was

00:49:42.400 pretty good. But there was a moment where I saw you and your wife on that couch in the foyer, that front

00:49:48.820 couch in the, in the foyer by the entryway right there. And I saw you two completely dialed in and

00:49:54.700 totally engaged when everything else was going on. There's people coming in and out foods being

00:50:00.680 cooked, people trying to ask questions and be engaged. And I saw how present you and her were.

00:50:07.580 And that was very telling for me as a very powerful moment. And I think it ties into exactly what you're

00:50:12.560 saying here is make her the focal point, not all the time. Cause you have other things to do. And so

00:50:17.720 does she, but finding time to make her the focal point is very, very important.

00:50:24.760 Yeah. I think that's really for you and I, man, how much different is our business? Like week over

00:50:35.560 in my family, I feel like if we, if we live life by God's design, meaning like, let's do it seven days

00:50:42.400 at a time, you know, on the seventh day we rest. And so on that seventh day, when we're resting,

00:50:46.860 that's when her and I actually connected, we'll reconnect on vision. And if she can understand,

00:50:51.900 like, and I feel like this is what frustrates maybe a lot of guys is they feel like, man,

00:50:56.600 I don't have that much time to freaking communicate everything. Well, you don't have to communicate

00:51:01.240 everything. You don't have to tell your wife the why for everything that you're doing. If you can

00:51:06.540 enroll her into the grand vision. So if your wife knows where you want to go with your business and your

00:51:12.120 life, she, you won't need to call her and ask permission for these different things that you'll

00:51:17.740 need to do in order to get to understand the grand vision. And so when it comes down to communication,

00:51:24.280 when we get together week to week, we talk about vision and it changes week to week because man,

00:51:31.300 Demick in 2020 forced to pivot week over week, man. I have a supplement company called Veritas Labs

00:51:37.480 that was supplement less for two months. So like I got wrapped over the head just like everybody

00:51:43.840 else because I couldn't get, I couldn't get my, my manufacturing in. So a point is, is like week

00:51:49.460 over week, if you guys just connect on where you want to go, man, it makes everything else so much

00:51:56.480 easier. Yeah, definitely. And, and your life just bet her life better, your life better. I want to go

00:52:03.320 back to something that you had said, cause you were talking about metrics and I know that for

00:52:07.500 example, you're using the whoop bands and, and I know how important that is to you because you're

00:52:12.240 tracking your recovery and, and your, your workouts and your track, your sleep, all of that stuff

00:52:17.640 through it. Do you think it's the, the metrics that you're measuring that help your ADD? I mean,

00:52:26.020 you talked a lot about that. Right. And, and so like what, what, what allows that ADD to like

00:52:32.580 focus into a tangible result? Cause I look at somebody who has like focus issues. I don't know

00:52:41.040 if that's the right way to say it, but then I see you turn into this elite level athlete, a high

00:52:46.600 performing, uh, entrepreneur. How do you turn it from? I can't focus as well to, but I can kick ass

00:52:56.160 in the areas that I'm engaged with. I hope I'm making sense with that.

00:53:04.180 Yeah. I, I, you're, you're asking me how am I able to have a, I guess a learning disability and then

00:53:10.560 maybe play a position for 10 years that require ridiculous focus.

00:53:14.820 That's what I'm saying. Exactly. Yeah. Uh, well, I mean, that's yeah. So I, I, I believe it really

00:53:21.500 at the end of the day, man, it comes down to practice, but it also comes down to passion.

00:53:26.040 You gotta be doing things that you love. Um, and that's not just for people with ADHD. That's for

00:53:32.260 not hard to work hard at something that you're passionate about, you know, like lifting weights.

00:53:38.780 Like, yes, initially I lifted weights because I was super skinny and I didn't want to be that

00:53:44.180 anymore. So it was born from an insecurity, but then just much like your son is when you start to

00:53:49.720 get a little, I, I fell in love with the process of like picking a goal and then going to achieve it.

00:53:56.520 And I believe that's one of the reasons why, man, God has blessed me with, with favor and the different

00:54:02.860 things that I is. I've gotten really good at setting a goal and then going to get it. So if we

00:54:09.040 really look at like the goal achievement vehicle, like your vehicle is your mindset, you know,

00:54:14.120 your discipline, you can't, it's awesome to have like the frame of a Bentley, but if, but if you

00:54:20.140 don't have a great engine in it, that Bentley is not going to go anywhere. And that the engine

00:54:25.000 represents your discipline. The discipline is going to take you everywhere you want to go. But if you

00:54:30.700 don't have the right mindset, that's your discipline won't take you anywhere. And then I think the third

00:54:35.720 component of like the vehicle that's going to take you to where you want to go is the fuel that you

00:54:40.000 put inside of your car, AKA your faith, your belief system, like what you believe is possible

00:54:45.600 because you must have a deep level of faith. If you want to go out and do things that everybody else

00:54:52.660 around you thinks that you can't, because that in order for you to kind of like get out of your,

00:54:57.580 in order for me to get out of Terre Haute, Indiana, that mentality, I had to have a faith system

00:55:03.600 that would get me enough miles outside of my hometown. But you also had to have the discipline

00:55:08.720 to continue to go those miles when they're freaking hard, but your mindset's the thing that's going to

00:55:13.800 keep the rubber on the road. Um, so I think for me, it's, it's about taking that, that mindset and

00:55:20.400 putting that into the different components of your life, you know, into your physical, into your

00:55:25.180 mental, into your emotional, into your spiritual, into your financial, because I mean, you can nail those

00:55:31.520 four, but if your money's not right, money matters, man. And anybody that tells you that it doesn't

00:55:36.000 is lying to you. Right. Right. Yeah, for sure. Well, and, and not only that, you know, you're

00:55:42.300 talking about getting out of your, your hometown. There's friction there too. It's like Steven

00:55:47.200 Pressfield. Are you familiar with Steven Pressfield? He, he wrote, uh, yeah, he, he's an amazing author

00:55:53.840 wrote, wrote, wrote the gates of fire about the, uh, the Spartans. Uh, he wrote the, uh, uh, the war

00:56:01.700 of art. And he talks about this concept called the resistance and the resistance shows up in many

00:56:08.420 different forms. You talk about getting out of your hometown. You know, there's people who are

00:56:11.580 probably trying to pull you back because they don't want you to thrive and excel and make them look

00:56:15.280 bad. There's little, little hiccups and little barriers and hurdles along the way that could deter you

00:56:21.640 and make you turn around. So this resistance shows up in all of these different ways. And we have to

00:56:26.680 be able to find systems, strategies, motivation, faith, like you talked about to continue to drive

00:56:32.520 on in the path of the resistance that will inevitably show up. It's just going to show up in a lot of

00:56:38.000 different forms. But that, that here's the sick part is, is the ones that, that grow comfortable with

00:56:47.420 that resistance. Those are the ones that win, because if you grow comfortable with that resistance

00:56:52.780 in order to grow comfortable with that resistance, you have to grow stronger in order to grow stronger.

00:56:56.820 You have to stand under that resistance. Um, I guess we got, maybe, do we have enough time for me to

00:57:01.940 share one little analogy? Of course. Yeah. Go for it. Okay. All right. So, so I was actually,

00:57:09.040 I have a breathing coach, Wim Hof breathing coach that I go see once a week and he's, you know,

00:57:12.740 week over week, I'm, I'm improving in that ability. And he was explaining to me how to improve my

00:57:18.120 cardiovascular system by putting tension on an AKA like resistance. Like you said, I can grow my

00:57:24.160 capabilities with that resistance. And the way that he was explaining it to me, I've never heard

00:57:28.000 it explained like this because I think all of us listening to this right now, man, we want to,

00:57:34.140 we want to grow bright. We want to build legacy. AKA, we want to grow as high. If we're a tree,

00:57:39.340 we want to grow as big and thick of a base as we can. And we want to grow as high as we can.

00:57:44.320 And, and I always thought if you want a tree to grow as high and as big as you can put everything

00:57:48.320 it needs at the base where, where the roots are at. Um, so, so it doesn't have to work hard to get

00:57:53.380 them. But when we're talking about resistance, I learned this from him about two weeks ago.

00:57:57.560 Um, and he said, if you actually want your tree to go thick and tall, you actually need to pay more

00:58:03.620 attention to the root system than you do the base of the tree. And what he meant by saying that is,

00:58:08.740 if you want your roots to grow wider and deeper, you need to water where the roots are. You need to

00:58:17.860 make those roots grow there to go there. And so like, if we really think about that for life,

00:58:24.860 if we have like five, uh, five areas of our life that we really want to focus on,

00:58:29.200 does it make sense to just give it to ourselves or make ourselves

00:58:32.720 resistance, you know, for me, faith to do with my son that you might notice on Instagram is man

00:58:40.440 Academy. And so we wake up every day and we have daily doses of discomfort and discipline,

00:58:49.260 not pain, daily doses of discomfort and discipline that will grow us in those areas. I wake up in the

00:58:54.820 morning. I don't want to do a devotional every day. I don't want to pray every day. I don't want

00:58:58.500 to lift weights every day. I don't want to do my mobility and my flexibility. I don't want to read

00:59:02.720 10 pages of a personal development or a mindset book, but those are the ways that's what me and

00:59:07.720 my son are committed to doing five days a week. And over the last 60 weeks, this is our 60th week.

00:59:15.280 Over the last 60 weeks, we have done over 30,000 hours of intentional strategic work in those five

00:59:24.640 areas. And so just imagine where men could be if they were more intentional and more strategic.

00:59:31.120 And that kind of leads me back to the question you asked me about balance is, I mean, you can't

00:59:35.480 balance where you don't have structure and you can't, you can't have success where there is no

00:59:39.760 order. That's why I loved the name of your show. I mean, that I am so aligned with your mindset in

00:59:46.180 that if you want to grow in these five areas of life, man, you have to create resistance, AKA water

00:59:52.600 where you want to go. Don't water where you're at because you'll stay right there. So if you want

00:59:57.880 to be successful, get around five successful people and you'll be the sixth. If you want to

01:00:02.920 be an incredible, incredibly present, get around five dads that are like that and you're going to

01:00:08.400 be the sixth. If you want to be successful and well-rounded and have a great body, find five guys

01:00:13.380 that are like that and you're going to be the sixth. Well said, brother. You know, it's funny as you

01:00:19.020 were talking about these root systems. My wife, her grandfather grew these amazing tomatoes.

01:00:24.300 And this is just anecdotal. I don't know if it's true or not, but he grew these amazing tomatoes.

01:00:29.480 And I remember one year, my wife asked him, how did you, and he's since passed and left us, but

01:00:34.120 how did you grow these? How do you grow these amazing tomatoes? And he says, one trick I do every

01:00:39.860 year without fail is he goes over to the tomato plant and he grabs his spade shovel and he cuts off

01:00:46.360 a quarter of the root system. Like he literally just digs that shovel, stomps on it, cuts off a

01:00:53.280 quarter of the root system. And his theory, you guys, some of you are probably like botanists and

01:00:57.660 can tell me I'm wrong on this, but that's why I say it's anecdotal. But his theory was, is because

01:01:02.600 he put the plant under that type of stress, it's what caused the plant to develop a deeper and stronger

01:01:10.500 root system to compensate for the loss of the 25%. And then it bore this amazing fruit that he was

01:01:18.520 well-known in the community for on these tomatoes. I think whether it's anecdotal or whether it's true,

01:01:23.520 I think it goes hand in hand with what you're saying. It's the stress of the root system.

01:01:26.840 So that root system can really grow and develop and produce the fruit you're after.

01:01:34.480 Yeah, that's it, man. You nailed it.

01:01:36.360 Right on, brother. Well, hey, man, I appreciate you. Let us know where we need to go.

01:01:41.940 Go ahead. Go ahead. I think we have a time delay here, but go ahead and share what you wanted to

01:01:46.020 share.

01:01:48.780 No, we were talking about tension and resistance. And I know we're a little behind on time,

01:01:52.640 but I just wanted to share how important this tension is, because I think we can all agree

01:01:58.200 that we want to create beautiful music with our life. Like we have 86,400 seconds each day. And for you,

01:02:05.400 dude, think about it. You got six summers left with your, with your son, six summers. So when he

01:02:10.720 asked you to go play catch, man, dude, dude, you absolutely want to create that music with him

01:02:15.820 because guess what? When he's gone, you're not going to have, you're not going to have that guy

01:02:19.240 to do the duet with anymore. You know what I mean? You're going to shift gears to your, to your other

01:02:23.000 son. And point, point in saying that is if we want to create that music with our family, we want to

01:02:28.520 create that music with our time, with our legacy, with, with our marriage. It's about tension,

01:02:33.140 talking about resistance. Well, let's just replace that word with tension. A piano has 88 keys on it.

01:02:39.380 And the average pound per, per, per square inch, like the tension of each one of those keys is 160

01:02:46.420 pounds. So if you multiply those, I believe it's like 14,040 pounds of, of tension, but when it's

01:02:55.020 correctly dialed, that's when beautiful music like Beethoven and the Moonlight Sonata can be created,

01:03:05.660 but it can't unless there's tension in all of the areas where you got, I had 35 years of my life

01:03:12.700 where I had tension and three or four of the areas required in order to feel really good about man that

01:03:19.580 you are. But in the last two years, I've added, you know, two other components and I've been

01:03:25.200 disciplined every square I want to be, but I'm just kind of sharing with you all where my process is

01:03:31.440 and where I feel fulfilled and where I am at my best is when I have tension in those five areas of

01:03:37.840 my life, I am able to come on a podcast like this with somebody that I admire a lot and speak my truth

01:03:43.500 confidently, not because I believe I'm better than anybody else, but I believe I have a game plan that

01:03:47.980 is producing fruit in my life. I love it, brother. That's so powerful. So powerful. That's why I

01:03:54.820 wanted to have this conversation, man. I knew you'd bring it. Yeah. Thank you, man. I appreciate you.

01:04:00.320 You have me on, man. And we're going to have to be on my show. Well, let's record it next week, man.

01:04:04.000 Love you, bro. Let's do it. You're an amazing person. Likewise. Love you too. Um, how do you guys

01:04:08.280 connect with you? If they want to know more about your story, what you're doing, what you're up to,

01:04:11.220 where do you send them? Yeah. Weatherford five.com. Um, that's where you can get supplements,

01:04:16.680 training programs, um, on Instagram, weatherford five, turn on your post notifications. You'll

01:04:22.280 never see any of my posts on Facebook or on, uh, on Snapchat. Yeah, man, if you really want to get

01:04:30.100 to know my life the best, the best way to do it is just go watch my Instagram story because

01:04:34.380 I don't spend a lot of time editing my life, but that's honestly, that's how I like it. And that's,

01:04:39.880 that belief is connect with men out there is not to show you how perfect my life is,

01:04:44.160 but to show you the process that I'm in. Right on, man. We'll sync up all the guys as

01:04:48.760 always. Great to have this conversation. We'll do it again next week and, uh, we'll get you out

01:04:53.780 here to Maine at some point, but I was going to say, I told you earlier, I was a little disappointed

01:04:57.500 you were on the East coast, but you were far enough in a way that I gave you a little bit of

01:05:01.440 a pass on that, but we'll get you out here next time. Yeah, man, I'm committed to it. You have my

01:05:06.100 word that I will come visit you on the farm, man. I have no doubt, man. We'll talk soon,

01:05:10.080 brother. All right, guys. Gentlemen, there you go. My conversation with the one and only Steve

01:05:15.880 Weatherford. It is my hope as it is every week that you enjoyed that conversation, that you're

01:05:21.060 taking something away, whether it was, you know, just one thing Steve said or the whole message in

01:05:26.860 general and that you apply it. When I started order of man almost six years ago now, uh, it was my goal

01:05:33.280 to bridge the gap between what we know and what we're actually doing. So connect with Steve on,

01:05:40.700 on Instagram, I think is what he said. He's most active on, uh, connect with me on Instagram,

01:05:45.320 Twitter, YouTube, wherever you are. Uh, and let us both know what you thought about the show.

01:05:49.940 Shoot Steve a message if you would and say, Hey man, I heard you on the podcast, really enjoyed it.

01:05:53.960 Cause I want him to know that that's where you guys are coming from and that, uh, that you're

01:05:58.040 hearing him here on this podcast. Uh, and then also if you would, a very easy way to share, uh,

01:06:03.440 is just to screenshot, uh, your phone as you're listening to this podcast, and then just go into

01:06:09.160 Instagram, share it, tag Steve, tag myself at Ryan Mickler and, uh, make a story or a face, uh,

01:06:15.980 Instagram post out of it. And that's a great way to share. And that goes back to what I was saying

01:06:19.080 earlier is, you know, just doing your part in advancing and forwarding the mission of reclaiming

01:06:24.440 and restoring masculinity. Okay, guys, we're going to be back tomorrow for our ask me anything.

01:06:28.800 And then of course, on Friday for Friday field notes, we've got a lot of content coming to you.

01:06:33.640 Uh, I want to put it out there. I'm enjoying this. I've been on this road for almost six years now,

01:06:37.280 and I couldn't do it without you guys. Just the fact that you're here and tuning in and listening

01:06:41.580 and sharing your success stories is the fuel that I need to continue to drive on, uh, in what is

01:06:47.400 at times a seemingly daunting task, but a very fulfilling and rewarding one. Okay, guys,

01:06:52.920 we'll be back tomorrow. Until then, go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.

01:06:57.840 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

01:07:02.280 and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - October 13, 2020

Living Life on Your Terms ｜ STEVE WEATHERFORD

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