Order of Man - August 27, 2021


Make Better Decisions ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

Topics
joint warfare making better decisions observe make decisions decision-making cycle
Hosted by
Ryan Michler
Mentioned
Jocko Fuels James Clear Steven Pressfield Robert Kiyosaki Abraham Lincoln Charles Duhigg Sal DiStefano Pete Roberts J.P. Donnell Andy Stumpf John Boyd Origin
Tips for Starting Jiu-Jitsu, the Link Between Assertiveness and Confidence, and Turning Flaws into Advantages ｜ ASK ME ANYTHING MICHAEL CHANDLER ｜ Family Man and Fighter

Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

193.32

Word count

4,543

Sentence count

373

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

In this episode, Ryan talks about the importance of making better decisions in life, and how the circumstances that you find yourself in are the result of the choices you made from the time you were born to the age you are right now.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
00:00:06.000 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
00:00:10.440 You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong.
00:00:15.440 This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.
00:00:19.680 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
00:00:24.580 Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler, and I am the host and the founder of the Older Man Podcast and Movement.
00:00:31.960 Welcome here and welcome back. I've been a little absent this week.
00:00:35.640 I've been at Origins Immersion Camp, which is their week-long jiu-jitsu camp with Mr. Pete Roberts and Dedeco and Jocko and Andy Stumpf is here and J.P. Donnell.
00:00:48.300 Such an incredible crew of men that I've been here with.
00:00:52.260 And the reason I even bring this up is because Origin is our show sponsors.
00:00:56.100 They're friends of mine here in Maine.
00:00:58.240 They make, of course, jiu-jitsu gis and rash guards, but they also have their nutritional lineup partnered up with Jocko Willing called Jocko Fuels.
00:01:08.320 I'm using that a lot this week, especially the joint warfare, as we're doing a lot of jiu-jitsu, three sessions a day for the last week now.
00:01:15.900 And my elbows and knees and joints or fingers are feeling it.
00:01:21.460 So if you are feeling the same way, because if you're training regimen, then check out their joint warfare.
00:01:27.280 It's good for the joints, helps rebuild the cartilage and get all the nutrients and all of that that your body and joints need to recover effectively and quickly.
00:01:35.280 So check it out at origin, Maine is in the state, Maine origin, Maine.com and use the code order, O-R-D-E-R at checkout.
00:01:45.460 Outside of that, not a whole lot of announcements.
00:01:47.940 Of course, we've got our events coming up.
00:01:49.940 I've got a bunch of emails from you guys about what events we have going on.
00:01:53.480 Make sure you subscribe to our email newsletter.
00:01:56.280 That way you know when events are coming up.
00:01:59.080 These events this year are sold out, but we'll be doing some more, of course, during the beginning of the year and into summer and fall of next year.
00:02:07.020 So I don't want you to miss out on that if you want to join us.
00:02:10.860 Now, guys, if you're new, this is a podcast designed to give you the tools, resources, conversations and information you need to thrive.
00:02:17.920 And today, this is your Friday field notes.
00:02:21.220 So I'm going to share some thoughts that I've had over the past week or so, and hopefully those will give you some insight into how you can improve your capabilities as a father and a husband and a business owner and a community leader and everything else.
00:02:34.240 But today I wanted to talk with you about making better decisions because isn't our life for the most part, just a series of making choices.
00:02:44.840 And the circumstances that you find yourself in right now are the result of the choices that you've made.
00:02:51.940 Now, there are exceptions to this, guys, of course, and you know, I'm not talking about the exceptions.
00:02:56.740 There's medical conditions that you might run up against that have nothing to do with the decisions you've made.
00:03:02.500 Somebody else might run into your car and he might have some financial hardship because of that.
00:03:08.540 Well, that wasn't a choice that you made necessarily.
00:03:10.880 So, look, we're not talking about those exceptions to the rule.
00:03:13.960 But we're talking about generally, if you look at the circumstances of your relationship, your physical fitness, your career aspirations, your bank account, every facet of your life, it's really the culmination of all of the choices that you've made from the time that you were born to the age you are right now.
00:03:31.240 And that culmination of choices over that time has put you exactly where you are.
00:03:36.360 So, if you're in a place where you're proud of and you're happy with and you're feeling fulfilled, then congratulations.
00:03:41.900 You made great choices.
00:03:43.000 Not all of them, of course, but the overwhelming majority of them probably were.
00:03:46.780 And that's why you're finding yourself in these circumstances.
00:03:48.680 If you're not happy with where you are, you're getting your relationship, your bank account, your business, your body, any facet of life, then we got to do something about it.
00:03:56.800 We got to shift courses.
00:03:58.420 And this is actually a very empowering thought that the results you're experiencing are just the manifestation of your choices.
00:04:05.560 That's a very powerful thought.
00:04:07.000 It puts the power where it belongs, in your hands.
00:04:11.680 Because a lot of people, what they'll do is they'll look at their circumstances and they'll say, well, you know, the reason I'm here is because my wife or my boss or my colleagues or my coworkers or my parents or the economy or the president or this or that.
00:04:24.060 And they'll come up with so many different reasons as to why they don't have what they want, but none of it rests in their hands and on their shoulders.
00:04:31.460 It all rests with somebody else.
00:04:32.620 And if that's the case, well, then all that we can do and all we have the power to do is idly sit by and wait for the environment to change.
00:04:42.960 Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not willing to be that passive with my life.
00:04:47.780 I'm going to be more assertive with my life.
00:04:49.460 And that requires you to take some ownership, some responsibility.
00:04:53.820 In fact, infinite and total responsibility for your own decisions and the consequences that follow.
00:05:00.180 So we're going to be using the framework today of the OODA loop.
00:05:04.060 Some of you guys are familiar with this.
00:05:05.840 A retired Air Force colonel by the name of John Boyd identified this when it came to, if I understand correctly, and you will correct me if I'm wrong, please do.
00:05:14.960 When it came to flying fighter jets and the acronym OODA is first, observe, observe your surroundings.
00:05:24.500 Secondly, orient, orient yourself to your surroundings.
00:05:28.240 Third, decide, make a decision based on those factors.
00:05:31.680 And then fourth is to act.
00:05:33.540 So again, it's observe, orient, decide, act.
00:05:36.040 That's the OODA loop.
00:05:37.380 A lot of you guys are familiar with it.
00:05:38.720 I thought we would break down each one of those a little bit and talk about how you can, again, make better decisions in your life that are going to play to your favor and the favor of the people that you have responsibility for.
00:05:49.100 So let's take the first one, observe.
00:05:52.140 There's a lot of self-explanatory thinking in that.
00:05:57.460 Obviously, you know, you're going to observe, you're going to see what's going on around you.
00:06:00.680 But what I would, what I would suggest that maybe is not so obvious is that when it comes to observation, you really need to consider what it is you want.
00:06:08.420 What exactly do you want?
00:06:09.700 Because if I were doing an exercise with 10, 20, a hundred, a thousand guys, and I said, what do you want?
00:06:16.280 Most of them, what they would say is, well, I just want to be happy.
00:06:19.260 I want a great relationship.
00:06:20.460 I want to be healthy.
00:06:22.100 And those are all fine things to want, but it's not very specific.
00:06:27.260 And if you can't get specific, then really the decisions that you're making, you don't have any litmus test or any benchmark from which to measure those decisions against.
00:06:36.140 Right.
00:06:37.640 If I say, well, I just want to be healthy.
00:06:39.440 Okay.
00:06:39.840 Does that mean I want to run a marathon or does that mean I want to run, do ultra marathons or that I want to become a power lifter or a bodybuilder, or that means a certain body fat percentage.
00:06:52.600 What exactly does that mean?
00:06:54.080 Because if I just say healthy, that's a very subjective term and it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of people.
00:07:01.960 And it may not be specific enough.
00:07:03.560 In fact, it is not specific enough for me to come up with a correct form, uh, formulate a plan and a plan of action to, to move me forward to where I want to go.
00:07:12.500 So when we're talking about observation, you need to spend a lot of time thinking about exactly what it is that you want.
00:07:19.520 And maybe even ought to consider what you have right now that you don't like, you know, a lot of guys, again, will say, well, I'm not happy with my life.
00:07:27.340 Got it.
00:07:27.880 Check.
00:07:28.280 But what about your life?
00:07:29.960 Like what specifically about your life are you not happy with?
00:07:34.680 Is it your marriage?
00:07:35.960 Okay.
00:07:36.840 At least we have somewhere to focus on.
00:07:38.620 And specifically, what about your marriage?
00:07:41.540 Is it lack of intimacy?
00:07:43.220 Lack of connection?
00:07:45.160 Lack of attraction on either one of your parts?
00:07:47.840 Uh, is the communication breaking down?
00:07:50.400 Are you guys bored?
00:07:51.740 What exactly is it?
00:07:53.340 You have to observe that.
00:07:54.380 And you have to be willing to spend some time doing that.
00:07:56.500 Uh, I think in Robert Kiyosaki's book, rich dad, poor dad, uh, he talks about the, the, the, the rat wheel, right?
00:08:05.000 The, the, the rat race, I think is what he calls it. 0.77
00:08:07.440 But imagine the hamster going around and around and around and around on the wheel.
00:08:11.000 The hamster is going a hundred miles an hour, but it's not really getting anywhere because there's no, there's no goal.
00:08:17.640 There's no final destination.
00:08:18.780 There's no vision.
00:08:19.420 There's no, this is where I want to be.
00:08:21.300 And so it just goes around and around and around and around and it works hard.
00:08:25.340 And a lot of you guys are working hard, but you're getting nothing in return or you're producing the exact opposite of what you're say you're after.
00:08:32.620 So at some point you actually have to step off the wheel.
00:08:35.840 And that's, that's a scary thing, especially for those of you who pride yourself on being busy and productive and always moving to be able to get off the wheel occasionally and just take a look and really visualize and think about what it is you want out of your life, uh, could, could be at odds with your measuring your sense of self-worth on being busy and always productive.
00:08:59.780 Okay. Well, I'm telling you, if you can step off, even just momentarily and really observe where you're at and where you want to be and where you are right now so that you can begin to move into these next steps and formulate a plan, I promise you.
00:09:12.360 And if you do this on a daily basis, you're going to be significantly more effective with less time than if you would have just been running around on the hamster wheel forever.
00:09:22.260 I think it was attributed to Abraham Lincoln, who said, if you gave me six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first four sharpening my ax.
00:09:31.380 Well, are you doing that? Or are you just go, go, go, go, go, always go, always moving and not really getting anywhere.
00:09:38.020 So number one, observe number two, orient. All right. So now, you know where you are currently, and you're going to have an objective analysis on that.
00:09:47.020 You can't hide. You can't shirk. You can't let your ego get in the way. When it comes to observing where you are, you have to be very truthful about the situation because you need to realize that there's going to be threats and there's going to be things in your way.
00:09:58.780 Okay. Now you're going to orient yourself. So you've observed where you are. You have some ideas and visions and thoughts about where you want to go. Now you have to orient yourself.
00:10:07.900 So here's where I am today. Here's where I want to be. And you can start thinking about the steps that it's going to take to get there.
00:10:16.900 So let's take a physical fitness. For example, let's say that you've observed that you are 30% body fat. You're, you're, you're overweight and you would like to get down to 20% body fat.
00:10:32.520 That's, that's your current observation. Okay. Well now you need to orient yourself in that direction. So here's what I would suggest.
00:10:40.040 What do individuals who are healthy in that way, who are, who are reducing their body fat? What is it that they're doing? What is it? What's the path that they're on?
00:10:49.560 Well, they're eating better. Okay. What specifically, what diets are they using? What methods for eating? Are they doing intermittent fasting? What kind of food are they taking? What kind of supplements are they on?
00:10:59.720 What's their exercise regimen look like? Is it running only or exclusively? Is it strength training? Is it resistance training? Like our guest, Sal DiStefano came on a couple of weeks ago to talk about what are these individuals doing?
00:11:12.540 What you need to do at this point is realize, okay, well, here I am 30% body fat. There's where I want to go. I'm looking over there in that direction and it's 20% body fat. And now you start to orient yourself on these different ways to get there.
00:11:25.820 And there are different ways to get there, right? If I want to get to the top of a hill that I'm looking out outside of my window, I can go straight at it, but I might run into a lake.
00:11:34.040 I can go around, but it might take me a little longer. I can go around the other way and there may not be a very clear, easy path that way.
00:11:39.240 So there's a lot of different ways to get to where you want to go. But what we need to do when it comes to orientation is start thinking about what are the different ways.
00:11:47.200 So this is almost the research phase where you're thinking about what can be done. You're, you're talking with other people who are, this is very key right here.
00:11:57.500 Other people who are already where you want to go, cause they're going to help align that for you. I just had a conversation with a friend of mine who's wanting to start a podcast and kudos to him.
00:12:06.740 He asked me to sit down with him and answer some questions about how to launch his own podcast and how to get his own book going. And I'm not the, the beacon of authority on this thing, but you know, I do know some things because I've been doing it for six years.
00:12:19.260 So he's in the orientation process where he's trying to get familiar with different ways to do it. Pitfalls to avoid ways to go ways, not to go, et cetera, et cetera. But here's what a lot of guys will do.
00:12:32.820 And this really depends on your personality. There's really two personalities. You either spend your time overwhelmingly in the first two observing and orienting, or you spend a lot of time in the deciding and acting.
00:12:44.020 So there's two types of guys. There's the observe orient guys, and there's the decide act guys. Now I personally, and the latter, I'm the decide act kind of guy. I don't observe and orient as well as maybe I should.
00:12:57.380 So I get a lot done, but sometimes I leave a wake of collateral damage in my path because I'm not spending time observing and orienting. I'm just always deciding, always acting. That's reckless at times.
00:13:07.400 And then there's that other camp and it's always observe, always orient, then go back to observe, then back to orient, then back to observe. And that's worthless.
00:13:17.400 So if you're in camp a observe orient, it's worthless. You're like just spinning your wheels on the hamster wheel. If you're, if you're spending your time exclusively in the decide act side of things, then that's reckless because you're not really evaluating whether or not that's serving you or your goals or the people you care about. 1.00
00:13:33.320 So ask yourself, which camp do I fall into? If you fall into the observe orient, just because of your nature, then you need to cross the threshold.
00:13:45.420 Okay. The threshold is this next point, which is make a decision in that OODA loop, observe orient. Number three, decide guys, you need to decide. Well, Ryan, I don't, I don't know what's going to be best.
00:14:01.540 Of course you don't because you've never done it before. Your information is limited. You're scared. There's risk involved. There's a lot of reasons why you wouldn't cross that threshold into the latter part of this, which is to decide.
00:14:15.000 But ultimately you just have to make a decision. Well, how do I know which one is right? You actually don't, but you take everything that you want, every, every place and area that you are currently where you want to go.
00:14:28.660 And you look at all the paths and based on the information in front of you, then you won't have it all by the way, but based on the information in front of you, you make a decision.
00:14:39.960 Period. End of story, end of discussion. It's not really the end of the story. There's more to it, but you understand what I'm saying.
00:14:47.600 You make a decision guys. Don't just spin around on the wheel forever. So that at the end of your life, you look back and you're worn out, but you've got nothing accomplished.
00:15:02.140 Make decisions based on the information that you have. It's not going to be perfect. Know that it's not your final decision either.
00:15:10.800 Remember when we started this, I said, life is a series of decisions, not a single decision that you made 20 years ago. No, a series of decisions that you've made over the course of your life.
00:15:22.040 And you're going to get some things right. And you're going to get some things wrong, but you're never going to get anything right.
00:15:27.020 If you aren't willing to make a decision about which gym do I train at? What diet do I engage in? What conversation should I be having with my wife?
00:15:38.420 What business should I start? When should I ask for that promotion? When should I ask that woman on a date? Who should I ask? Where should I go to college? 0.99
00:15:45.900 The infinite number of decisions that you could be making, but you aren't going to move the needle. If you don't actually move towards deciding.
00:15:51.620 All right. Now, once you've made a decision in your mind, you have to follow through and carry this out.
00:16:00.780 Don't let the fear get in the way. Don't let the naysayers get in the way.
00:16:05.120 Don't let what Steven Pressfield calls in his book, the war of art, the resistance get in the way.
00:16:12.780 If you don't know what I'm talking about, go read that book. We've had him on the podcast a couple of times.
00:16:16.080 Now it's called the war of art and he dubs it the resistance. It's fear. It's doubt. It's uncertainty.
00:16:23.560 It's things that just come up and get in the way. Like you make a decision, for example, uh, to start training and then you have a physical ailment.
00:16:31.600 That's the resistance. Or one I hear all the time in the financial arena is that you're trying to pay off all your credit cards and all your debt.
00:16:38.060 And you finally get that one credit card paid off and the transmission on the car goes out. That's the resistance.
00:16:44.520 It manifests itself in all different kinds of ways, but you need to get past it. You need to drive through it.
00:16:50.020 You need to make it that decision and you need to fourth act on that decision. You have to do it. Go, please go.
00:16:57.980 Now this isn't the end. It's not a task list of things that you need to do. It's not observe, orient, decide, act, period.
00:17:09.140 It's actually a cycle. So it's observe, orient, decide, act, observe, orient, decide, act, observe, and on and on and on and on and on.
00:17:19.780 So the, the, the, the final step in this is not to act. In fact, there is no final step because remember when I said that you might make a decision, but it might be the wrong one.
00:17:31.160 Well, you're never going to know unless you put it into practice. And then to go back to the first part of this phase and cycle that we talked about, which is to observe.
00:17:38.780 So now you're going to look at your performance. Here's the decision I made. We'll go back to that fitness analogy.
00:17:45.320 I'm at 30% body fat. I want to be at 20%. So I observed where I, where I am now. I observed where I want to be. Here's all the different diets.
00:17:55.380 Here's all the different exercises. Here's all the different types of training I could be doing. And so you orient yourself to which way you could best go about doing this.
00:18:03.200 You make a decision and you decide I'm going to do intermittent fasting and the keto diet. And I'm just using examples. So you don't need to beat me up on whether or not that's a good diet.
00:18:12.900 We're just throwing this out here as an example. And you make that decision. And now you act and you do it for 30 or 60 or 90 days.
00:18:20.400 And at the end of 90 days, you look back and you observe again and you say, okay, well, I was at 30% body fat. I wanted to be at 20.
00:18:30.300 I made the decision to internet intermittent fasting with a keto diet and resistance training. And that was 90 days ago. And today I'm at 26% body fat.
00:18:38.880 Well, congratulations. You're on the right path. That observation is leading you to believe that the decisions that you've been making over the past 90 days are working.
00:18:51.520 And now you have new decisions to make. Do I double down? Okay. Maybe I want to move this thing along a little faster. Okay. Well, what do you need to do?
00:18:57.140 Or maybe you're not at 26% body fat. You're still at 30. Then you need to observe. What did I do? Well, well, I, you know, I went to the gym every day. Okay.
00:19:08.720 What didn't you do so well? Well, I ate like shit for the last 90 days. Okay. Well, that's your issue. 0.99
00:19:14.120 And it doesn't mean you're a loser. It doesn't mean you need to just overly beat yourself up and put yourself down and throw yourself into a pit of despair. It just means that you need to make different decisions for the next 90 days.
00:19:28.920 And so restart, afford yourself a little grace. We all have patterns and beliefs and cultures and backgrounds and experiences that lead us to making the decisions that we do.
00:19:39.300 And those decisions are hard to break. We've, we've hardwired our brain to formulate connections between stimulus and response. And some of those connections are serving us very, very well.
00:19:57.160 Jocko's at this immersion camp. He gets up at whatever, 430 every, every morning, right? He's hardwired his brain to know that that's what time you get up and he does it every day.
00:20:07.400 And that serves him well. And then there's other decisions that we make. For example, when we're stressed out, maybe you go to having a drink or, or having a smoke break.
00:20:21.140 And so you've hardwired your brain to when you're stressed to move towards those outlets of sedation.
00:20:28.260 And that's not serving you well. And you know that, but that's hard to break. You can look into Charles Duhigg's book, the power of habit, or James Clear's work with his book specifically called atomic habits.
00:20:42.660 And James has been on the podcast. So you can go back and look at that one as well. We had a great discussion about habits and how to formulate them and how to break certain habits.
00:20:49.840 But guys, it's this simple. It's not easy. It's really not easy, but it is the simple. So afford yourself some grace and then move through this cycle over and over and over and over again, and make it part of the way that you operate your life.
00:21:04.980 I do this every morning. I do this after every engagement, encounter, experience, conversation, podcast, et cetera. And I want to know where I stand. So I try to be as objective as possible.
00:21:16.040 And I want to know and ensure that the decisions I'm making are correct decisions and positive decisions and moving me and the people I care about in the right directions.
00:21:24.720 So the OODA loop again is observe, orient, decide, act two types of men. There's the thinking type of men, and there's the doing type of men. And those are opposite ends of the spectrum. And all of us fall on, on different points in that spectrum.
00:21:43.740 If you fall further on the thinking side of things, you need to move yourself closer to the doing side of things. If you move further towards the doing side of things, like I do personally, you need to move yourself closer to the thinking side of things.
00:21:58.020 Again, act, excuse me. Thinking, thinking without action is worthless. Action without thinking is reckless. You've got to do both. Observe, orient, decide, act. This is how you make better decisions. This is how you produce better results in your life. This is how you create fulfillment and meaning and significance and opportunity.
00:22:20.860 There's no other way than the series of decisions that you've made over the course of your life. You want a better life? Make better decisions. All right, guys, we'll be back next week for another guest interview or ask me anything Friday field notes. Make sure you subscribe. If you would just do me a quick favor, leave a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts. It goes a long way in promoting the show, bumping it up the charts. I think last week we were at number 25, 26 in the business category, which is really
00:22:50.860 really good, but we need to be in the top five and you can help with that. This is for all of us. So please, if you would just go leave that rating review, make sure you subscribe for our emails so that you don't miss when we do our events that'll be coming out and we'll be dropping those for next year. Very, very soon. And connect with me on the socials all at Ryan Mickler. All right, guys, until then, go out there, take action, make better decisions and become the man you are meant to be.
00:23:19.840 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.