Order of Man - Men and the Myth of Martyrdom ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

00:00:00.000 Every time you say things like, well, I had no choice. Stop it. Knock it a huff. Ask yourself,

00:00:05.700 is that really true? Did you really not have a choice? Or was it just uncomfortable? Or was it

00:00:11.100 just something you couldn't sit with? Because usually it isn't that you didn't have a choice.

00:00:15.660 It's usually that you made a choice, potentially a reasonable one, maybe even the right one.

00:00:21.500 But you're framing it as an obligation to avoid owning the fact that you made the choice.

00:00:28.260 somebody didn't make the choice for you. That ownership of choices is the beginning of

00:00:33.820 sovereignty. I want to start with a question today that actually took me a really long time

00:00:42.080 to ask myself honestly. And the question is this, am I sacrificing for something or am I

00:00:53.600 sacrificing as something. And there's a very big difference between the two because those two words

00:01:00.760 for something or as something, it seems like a really small distinction, but the difference

00:01:06.960 between them is the difference between what I would say is a life that's centered and revolved

00:01:12.640 around purpose versus a life that's built on performance. And I didn't, I didn't really come

00:01:22.700 to that question as, as quickly or succinctly as I would have liked, I came to it in the

00:01:29.120 way that I think a lot of guys do through a very slow, tedious, long accumulation of

00:01:39.840 being exhausted and building up resentment in my life that I just kept calling strength.

00:01:47.640 probably through a pattern that i really couldn't see very clearly until i was

00:01:55.680 so far in the chaos and the noise and the frustration

00:02:01.600 that i had already shaped the way that i showed up as a husband or as a father

00:02:08.980 as a man a business leader and when i finally traced it back to the

00:02:16.940 foundational question. I really traced it. I found myself standing in this little small house

00:02:26.620 that I grew up in Southern California. Like a kid who learned really early on that

00:02:35.900 my job was just to hold things together. And that's where this conversation starts today.

00:02:43.920 not not with some theory about it but but with a little bit of a story a backstory

00:02:50.000 and and i was the boy who i felt like i either i felt like it or i learned that i had to carry

00:02:56.940 i had to shoulder the weight of everything because i was the responsible one growing up

00:03:01.380 and when i say that i want you to actually hear what it means because on the surface it sounds

00:03:09.540 like, oh, that's a good thing. That's a compliment. That's how you should show up. And in a lot of

00:03:13.700 ways, it was. I was capable. I could be counted on. I was reliable. I showed up from the time

00:03:22.060 that I was little and even to today. But underneath all of that, something else was being conditioned

00:03:29.560 or programmed. Because when things were uncertain at home, and there were stretches where they were,

00:03:35.180 i learned that my stability that the way that i showed up was part of what kept the system

00:03:42.560 running not not conscious i didn't do this consciously you know no nobody sat me down

00:03:47.900 my mom didn't sit me down or or my dad who was you know in and out of the picture said to me

00:03:53.640 you know ryan it's your job to hold this together no nobody said that to me but i but i did feel it

00:03:58.540 it's it's the way that a kid feels things before

00:04:04.140 he has the words to articulate it

00:04:09.100 and then i adapted again even subconsciously i got serious earlier than maybe i should have

00:04:17.660 or could have i learned to read rooms really well to manage the emotions of other people

00:04:24.820 like i i picked up on subtle cues and clues about how people were feeling

00:04:31.100 i tried to make myself really useful before anybody even asked and i and i learned to

00:04:38.680 i learned to need less in my life or at least perform needing less i probably needed things

00:04:46.460 when i was a boy that i didn't communicate because needing things felt like adding to

00:04:52.580 the problem it felt like adding weight to a situation that was already heavier rather than

00:04:59.120 just carrying it myself and and this is a lot of what happens or at least some of the theories in

00:05:05.920 carl young's work and what happened next to me was what what he calls a form of persona formation

00:05:16.000 it's the the persona is this is this performative person that we become to to navigate the world

00:05:27.640 it's the face that we put on to present to other people it's the role that we play and mine was

00:05:34.500 the capable one i'm going to be the capable one the steady one the one who could figure it out

00:05:39.880 the one who could handle it and here's the thing about that persona it's it starts as a strategy

00:05:45.840 it's i think it's genuine i actually believe it's an intelligent response to an environment

00:05:53.740 you build that persona because it works and that's what young says we build that because

00:05:59.160 it works and the problem is when you start to mistake that persona or that mask for the actual

00:06:08.240 face because I didn't just act like the responsible one. I really became the responsible

00:06:15.080 one. It stopped being this role, this part that I played. And it started being the answer

00:06:21.700 that I gave when I asked myself, like, who am I? Like, who, who is it that I am really?

00:06:28.320 Who am I at my core? And once your identity is fused to

00:06:35.140 what i would call a function the way that you show up once your identity is only yourself

00:06:46.420 when you're carrying weight you're gonna seek out weight even when you none is required you're

00:06:52.620 gonna make it harder on yourself you're gonna manufacture burden you're gonna find ways to

00:06:58.180 actually suffer because the suffering your life is how you prove to yourself and to other people

00:07:05.720 that you're worthy that you're valuable and that right there guys is the trap

00:07:11.780 and i walked right into it because i didn't know any better and you might not have known any better

00:07:17.520 and and i didn't have i didn't have the words to express this i didn't have the the cognition to

00:07:25.620 understand it but when i started reading and studying and pouring into the work and all of

00:07:31.420 this sort of thing over the past well almost 12 years now i found that some of the the most

00:07:38.380 incredible minds in human history had been ruminating and pontificating and circling around

00:07:44.860 this exact problem for centuries there's a philosopher uh jean paul sartre and he says

00:07:53.400 it's called bad faith. And in his framework, bad faith is what happens when a human being

00:08:02.400 denies their own freedom, their own liberty, even their own sovereignty by pretending they

00:08:09.760 have no choice. They, they reduce themselves into a role, into a function, into some sort

00:08:17.680 of fixed thing and that reduction is is just is just the way it is have you said that that's just

00:08:26.060 the natural order it's just the way it is it's it's that waiter who is

00:08:33.240 so much a waiter that he has no self outside of that role it's the it's the father that is

00:08:43.700 so much a provider that he can't tell you what he wants to be outside of a father. I mean,

00:08:53.040 I have friends who have kids who are leaving the home and they're about to be empty nesters.

00:09:00.040 And, you know, my oldest son is graduating and I've wrapped up so much of my identity and being

00:09:06.140 a father that even though I have four children and my, it's only my oldest who is leaving this

00:09:11.140 year that that's that's hard to wrestle with because i don't know who i am beyond providing

00:09:17.660 as a father it's that man who's responsible so responsible even that he doesn't know how to

00:09:26.120 exist without some baggage or weight or rock to carry and sartair's point wasn't that roles are

00:09:34.340 bad necessarily. It was that they become bad faith the moment you use them to escape the freedom

00:09:42.380 of actually choosing who you can be. Because the moment you say, well, I don't have any choice.

00:09:49.480 This is just the way it is. This is what I have to do. This is what my load to carry,

00:09:55.000 my load to bear. When the truth is that you have nothing but choices you can actually choose

00:10:01.580 and you're just afraid to own them and that's what i call the martyr

00:10:05.660 and and for the martyr bad faith or that you don't have a choice it's the water almost that

00:10:15.660 you swim in it's the air that you breathe i have to do this someone has to do this there's no other

00:10:21.600 way every statement that a martyr makes removes your agency every every conversation every belief

00:10:32.840 every thought pattern every sentence places weight on our choices on on somebody else's shoulders

00:10:41.760 every sacrifice that you might be called to make or feel like you need to make is framed this way

00:10:49.180 it's it's almost like an accusation look what you made me carry look what whether it's your

00:10:55.780 your wife or your boss or your kids or the economy or the president or even god look what you made me

00:11:02.340 carry but that but his framing of bad faith isn't the only lens because there's a lot of

00:11:08.940 conversations about this with the stoics as well marcus aurelius epictetus they were deeply deeply

00:11:17.400 concerned with a very similar problem and that's the confusion between what is virtuous

00:11:24.500 please hear me when i say this what is virtuous and what is simply difficult

00:11:30.480 but what's interesting and i had to study this i didn't know this but epictetus

00:11:37.920 he was born a slave and obviously as a slave in those times you knew something about suffering

00:11:43.020 but he made a distinction that cuts right to the very core of this he said in essence that there's

00:11:49.860 no virtue in endurance for its own sake hear that man if you're struggling as this as this

00:11:58.160 foe martyr there's no virtue in endurance for its own sake what matters is not how much you bear

00:12:07.060 but why you actually bear it that's what took me so long to figure out and also whether or not

00:12:14.580 bearing it is in alignment with what is actually moral and good and righteous that took me a long

00:12:22.660 time to figure out in other words let me say it this way suffering for the sake of suffering is

00:12:28.660 not virtuous but that's what martyrs do that's what we as men do often because we think it's

00:12:34.480 virtuous to be in pain. It isn't unless as Epictetus said that it's an alignment with what

00:12:41.340 is actually moral and good. And then a Mark Marcus Aurelius said, he said a little bit differently.

00:12:47.360 He said, waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one, not a man who is

00:12:56.080 performative, like some actor on stage performing goodness, not a man who just suffers publicly.

00:13:03.140 so others will see him and praise him and worship him because he's, you know, suffering.

00:13:11.440 But a man who just quietly and very simply acts in accordance with what is right and what is good.

00:13:17.620 And it requires no audience at all.

00:13:20.860 The martyr, he fails this test.

00:13:24.000 And I know it because I failed that test over and over again.

00:13:28.140 Because at times in my life, I've always needed an audience.

00:13:30.760 that the suffering only counts if somebody sees it and the the the worst part about this is that

00:13:38.720 it's so subconscious that you can't even see it and then and then there's carl young who you know

00:13:46.020 i keep coming back to but he understood this wound that we had underneath the the persona

00:13:53.080 the bad faith better than i think just about anyone and he said that the the persona that

00:13:59.500 that role, the identity that we build for the world always has a shadow. This is the framework,

00:14:06.900 the basis of shadow work, that the things that we buried when we built this persona for ourselves,

00:14:12.900 it's the desires that we had and we suppress them. It's the needs that we had for ourselves

00:14:18.620 that we learned to ignore and deny. For the man who became the responsible one, especially early

00:14:29.080 on in life, that shadow is everything that he never got to be. It's the boy who wanted to be

00:14:35.060 taken care of. It's, it's you who wanted to be seen as something other than useful. It's you

00:14:41.720 who wanted to need things without that need being a burden on somebody else. And his warning,

00:14:49.340 young's warning was was that we don't integrate the shadow we project

00:14:55.940 and what we don't own and adopt and embrace in ourselves or at least acknowledge we just

00:15:04.260 project that and see that on other people or we act out in ways that we don't understand and can't

00:15:09.340 explain that's why the martyr is often resentful but it's not really about the people around him

00:15:16.240 It's that little child, that kid that you learned to be the martyr, you never got to put any of the weight down.

00:15:28.260 You never got to just be.

00:15:31.340 And if you did, you had to earn it.

00:15:34.100 And so let's break this down.

00:15:37.460 Like this is very philosophical, but I've been studying a lot about this lately because I've got to figure out what's going on, even in my own life.

00:15:44.300 And I think this will help you.

00:15:45.300 I hope it does.

00:15:46.240 So, so what does it actually look like when you're practicing it? Because philosophy, I mean, there's a lot of philosophers out there, even now in modern times that aren't useful because they're just ruminating about things and not actually putting it into practice. So here are the patterns. And I want you to see if any of these apply to you.

00:16:05.960 So number one, there's what I would call an unspoken ledger that the martyr I'm talking

00:16:13.380 about, again, I'm pointing to myself here just as much as you.

00:16:16.600 And I want you to see if this applies to you, that martyr, he keeps score.

00:16:21.240 It's not on paper.

00:16:22.260 It's not like a spreadsheet or an Excel document or a Google sheet or something like that.

00:16:27.240 It's not out loud, but internally inside, even subconsciously, there's a very, a very

00:16:34.760 meticulous methodical accounting of everything that you have given everything that you've done

00:16:41.320 everything that you've endured everything that you've sacrificed all the costs that you paid

00:16:46.700 and then eventually the ledger that you've created it surfaces maybe it's in a bad tone

00:16:53.900 very minimally maybe it's resentment towards your wife or your kids or your business partner or

00:17:00.600 somebody else in society. This is the epitome of a nice guy. Maybe it's an argument that's

00:17:06.040 technically about something small and minor, but it's really about all of the years that

00:17:12.300 you've been putting forth work and denying yourself. It's like, I do everything around

00:17:18.940 here. Nobody sees how much I'm sacrificing. Nobody knows what this costs me. Nobody knows

00:17:25.920 what i've done nobody understands that's not a complaint that's you reading off the spreadsheet

00:17:33.780 that you made in your mind

00:17:35.340 you you created that in your mind and you're not complaining you're just reading it and you're

00:17:43.440 saying hey we're in the red here and it creates frustration and contention and resentment and

00:17:49.400 animosity and sometimes worse the next thing i want to talk with you about is refusing help

00:17:55.120 the martyr I'm talking about will not accept help without feeling like a threat there's this funny

00:18:01.660 scene in the office I wish I could tell you which season but Andy and Dwight are trying to outdo

00:18:09.360 each other with compliments and and favors I think Andy if I remember correctly brings donuts in

00:18:15.860 and then Dwight brings I don't know lunch in and then Andy opens the door for him and Dwight

00:18:21.860 compliments him and then andy calls one of his clients and follows up it's like they're just

00:18:27.060 trying to outdo each other because the martyr cannot accept help without feeling like it's

00:18:33.500 some sort of threat or i'm gonna owe that person because if somebody else has to carry my weight

00:18:40.040 even if it's for a day even if it's for a minute the question surfaces like who am i like if that

00:18:46.200 person's suffering I need to save them I need to rescue them who am I it's it's not the weight of

00:18:53.240 that it's not just a burden it's the it's the proof of my value right like if that person's

00:18:58.220 suffering I'm less valuable if that person's okay then I am valuable so we decline offers for help

00:19:10.320 what do we do as men i'm fine i'm good life's good i've probably sent three messages alone

00:19:19.640 like that i'm good i'm fine everything's great everything's wonderful

00:19:22.640 and so we we as as men who feel into this role we we take on more because the alternative of

00:19:34.420 of it like rest and relief receiving help it feels like a threat to our identity

00:19:41.660 and then there's resentment and it's it's not just resentment but it's resentment that's

00:19:48.900 has the costume on of dedication and this one's hard because it's pretty subtle

00:19:54.600 the martyr often looks from the outside he's sitting on the fringes like the most committed

00:20:01.860 man in the room we work the hardest we stay the latest we show up when others don't and underneath

00:20:09.860 there's this slow festering infection because we aren't if we're being honest we get and we got to

00:20:18.600 be honest here we aren't giving freely we're giving with an expectation that somebody else

00:20:22.940 will see it right somebody else will see it and acknowledge it they'll acknowledge it they'll

00:20:27.620 return it they'll pay it forward and then when the acknowledgement doesn't come or maybe it just

00:20:33.120 doesn't even come in the right form of what we expected or it's not enough then the resentment

00:20:38.540 compounds so you might take your wife on a date this weekend and maybe maybe she's not feeling in

00:20:50.880 the mood maybe she doesn't like the restaurant or maybe she just had a bad week and she's not

00:20:55.240 showing up the way you wanted her to you don't put it on her of like well maybe she's having a

00:21:01.160 bad week or maybe she's frustrated maybe she's not feeling well maybe she's on her period and

00:21:06.460 instead you're like well what does this say about me it's an indictment against you and that's where

00:21:10.160 that ledger i was talking about comes in where you think well she doesn't love me she doesn't

00:21:15.800 appreciate me she doesn't see what i do she doesn't see how hard i work that's not service

00:21:23.060 what we do in those moments is we're actually just performing service

00:21:28.440 and and we're waiting for some sort of i don't know like a standing ovation that that never

00:21:35.420 comes and then another thing we do this one's this one's wild is we remove our own agency

00:21:43.960 through language we shift responsibility that's what most people would say but really what you're

00:21:51.340 doing is you're just taking away your your agency through mental gymnastics through rhetorical

00:21:58.720 jousting or or rationalization maybe that's the way to say it rhetorical rationalization

00:22:06.380 like i had no choice what was i supposed to i had to do it

00:22:10.380 every sentence like that is what sartair said is bad faith in action

00:22:16.760 a free man doesn't pretend that he's actually free and liberated placing the weight of your

00:22:22.880 own decisions on the people around you isn't isn't noble if you're going to place it on them

00:22:31.700 and then resent them for it so i want you to be really honest about what this pattern actually

00:22:39.500 costs you because like i said i've felt a lot of this myself it costs our relationships

00:22:46.500 because nobody is nobody loves a martyr cleanly the people around a martyr like they feel that

00:22:55.840 ledger i was talking about even if they don't understand quite what was going on because you

00:23:00.140 say little things and you make little digs and they feel the resentment underneath that quote

00:23:06.220 unquote, dedication. They feel that there's conditions or terms under the sacrifice. It's

00:23:15.500 not altruistic. It's measured. It's calculated. Your partner doesn't want a man who just suffers

00:23:22.900 for her. She wants a guy who's going to choose her. And this is why a lot, you'll hear this a 0.99

00:23:30.160 lot from women. Well, they'll say, well, I didn't feel chosen. And I know it's hard for men to

00:23:35.480 understand because of the myth of male martyrdom, which is what I'm talking about today, where we

00:23:39.300 think, what are you talking about? Of course I chose you. I go to work every day for you.

00:23:43.160 I sacrifice for you. I do these things for you. I was going to do this, but I did this for you.

00:23:49.820 And really a lot of the times is we're just doing it for ourselves and she will acknowledge it.

00:23:55.200 She'll feel it. And that doesn't feel chosen. It feels like a duty, right? Like an obligation

00:24:01.960 or or even worse like just some

00:24:06.360 like playing sports and keeping score

00:24:10.720 but that the the choice of not needing to be with her but wanting to be with her and not feeling

00:24:18.280 like it's some sort of obligation or duty that's i think what intimacy is built on

00:24:24.120 if you're a martyr but it's just built around expectations it's it's it's built around

00:24:33.560 what you can do for me in return it poisons the relationship it costs you your mission

00:24:40.240 martyrdom mimics or cloaks or clone maybe clones is the best way to say it clones

00:24:47.240 the purpose that you have in life it looks the same right long hours hard work staying at the

00:24:56.120 office late making payments and extra costs and sacrificing what you want but purpose if it's

00:25:06.220 done correctly asks what am i what am i trying to build what legacy am i trying to create where

00:25:13.040 martyrdom is the question, is anyone watching me? Is anyone praising me or acknowledging me or

00:25:21.000 giving me accolades or notoriety or acknowledgement?

00:25:28.880 And I think that a guy without an answer to that first question of what am I building,

00:25:35.060 I think he'll always default to the second one, which is, is anybody watching me?

00:25:43.040 And if your life is built around being praised and witnessed and acknowledged,

00:25:50.100 that's not a mission.

00:25:51.400 That's just performance.

00:25:52.420 You're just performing.

00:25:54.720 It really costs your children.

00:25:56.780 If you have kids, especially sons, they're watching you.

00:26:00.220 And they're learning that it's not just about what you do.

00:26:03.960 They're learning why you do the things that you do.

00:26:07.080 Not just what you do, but why.

00:26:08.500 and whether or not you have your agency over their lives whether that the sacrifice is

00:26:16.400 something that you're choosing or you or something that you just feel obligated to do out of some

00:26:22.000 sort of false sense of duty you're you're writing their story i would say the first chapter of their

00:26:32.560 story you're writing the first chapter of their story so if that's true then you need to make

00:26:37.620 sure that the draft you're writing is actually the one that you want and ultimately if you don't

00:26:43.440 it's going to cost you yourself it's been that way for me and the the man underneath all of this is

00:26:53.120 the responsible it's the guy with desires and curiosity and things that he actually wants he

00:26:59.880 he starts to kind of disappear and he puts himself on the back burner and he lets other

00:27:05.480 things take precedent and it doesn't happen suddenly or overnight it happens slowly could

00:27:12.380 take you decades actually until one day you realized like i have in my life where i've lost

00:27:19.740 contact with my real self like the man i actually wanted to be and then i blamed it on other people

00:27:27.940 my wife and my kids and the economy and the president and god and whoever else i could

00:27:31.980 latch my story on too. And I don't want you to get to a position where you don't know how to

00:27:37.760 find your way back. And that's the cost I think about most men. It's not the resentment. It's

00:27:43.960 not the relationships. It's, it's not the disappearance of the man that maybe you were

00:27:49.600 before, it's, it's the disappearance of that guy. It's, it's the guy that you were before learning

00:28:02.880 that caring things was just like the price of belonging to something that I, I'm not part of

00:28:09.340 my family. If I don't just shoulder this weight all the time, or that I'm not part of this team

00:28:15.140 or this organization if I don't stay late.

00:28:17.640 So I don't wanna just leave you with this diagnosis

00:28:20.200 and I hope it doesn't sound like complaining,

00:28:22.200 but there's some real issues

00:28:23.560 that we need to think deeply about.

00:28:26.140 So here's what I've learned.

00:28:28.880 And frankly, what I'm still learning

00:28:30.560 about the way through is that first

00:28:32.340 is you have to name the performance.

00:28:35.200 Like not to somebody else, but to yourself.

00:28:38.160 Like you don't wanna put this on somebody else.

00:28:39.920 When you give, when you sacrifice,

00:28:42.160 when you push through, ask honestly,

00:28:44.100 am i giving this freely of myself or am i keeping that ledger i was talking about

00:28:48.780 and that's the stoic move to go back to what marcus aurelius said yes he kept a private journal

00:28:56.320 not for publication although it has been publicized at this point and not for posterity

00:29:02.680 but for himself it was a journal for himself a daily practice of self-examination of self-exploration

00:29:11.200 of lessons learned not to perform virtue but to actually be virtuous not to argue about what it

00:29:18.960 means to be a good man but to actually be one you can't change what you know won't name you have to

00:29:24.720 start there and the second thing is that you have to reclaim your sovereignty we've been talking

00:29:29.060 about this for 12 years every time you say things like well i had no choice stop it knock it off

00:29:35.540 ask yourself is that really true did you really not have a choice or was it just uncomfortable

00:29:41.700 or was it just something you couldn't sit with because usually it isn't that you didn't have a

00:29:46.420 choice it's usually that you made a choice potentially a reasonable one maybe even the

00:29:52.420 right one but you're framing it as an obligation to avoid owning the fact that you made the choice

00:30:00.540 somebody didn't make the choice for you. That ownership of choices is the beginning of

00:30:07.420 sovereignty. Sartre, his insight wasn't meant to be crippling about bad faith. It was meant to be

00:30:16.040 actually liberating. And that's the impetus of sovereignty, liberty over yourself. You are

00:30:23.200 always choosing, which means that you can choose differently today just because you want to.

00:30:30.540 next is i want you to get acquainted with this is kind of the idea of shadow work get acquainted with

00:30:37.560 the boy who's still carrying all of that weight this one's probably the hardest

00:30:42.820 somewhere underneath the man you become who's very capable very bold very courageous

00:30:48.300 has a skill set making money is is a little boy who learned that being needed was the price of

00:30:55.660 being loved. Who learned that if I rest, it's irresponsible. That if, if I need things that

00:31:04.220 I'm a burden to somebody else and he's not gone. Like that little boy is not gone. He's just been

00:31:09.840 running the show behind the scenes from the shadows. That's the shadow work. You don't

00:31:15.180 have to go to therapy to do all this work guys. There's, there's, and look, there's no shame if

00:31:19.780 you do, but you just have to be willing to ask yourself, what did I have to give up to become

00:31:27.800 the man that I am? And, and is it maybe time to reclaim some of that for yourself?

00:31:37.460 Because you don't have to be a martyr. You're not obligated. You're not required to be a martyr

00:31:42.080 fourth, choose the sacrifices that you make consciously. There's nothing wrong with a

00:31:48.340 sacrifice. I'm not telling you that just because I don't want you to be a martyr, that I don't want

00:31:53.080 you to sacrifice for the people and the things that are important to you. Because I think the

00:31:58.040 man who sacrifices nothing is selfish. Like he loves nothing but himself. The question is really,

00:32:05.880 is your sacrifice conscious or is it compulsive?

00:32:11.640 being deliberate about the sacrifices that you're making is am i choosing this because

00:32:20.780 it serves something that that matters to me where i know the cost i accept the cost i'm willing to

00:32:27.360 pay the cost or is it or is it compulsive which is like i have to there's no other choice what

00:32:33.440 else would i do nobody else is going to do it it has to be me i want you to move from compulsive

00:32:39.620 behavior to conscious behavior that's not that's not selfishness that's integrity

00:32:44.560 next is is build an identity that doesn't require suffering to to sustain the identity it's the long

00:32:54.660 game like who who who are you when things are good when everything's firing on all

00:33:01.200 cylinders correctly you know when you're rested when there's when there's margin in life when

00:33:06.840 There's nothing on fire, no fires for you to put out.

00:33:10.980 And if you don't have an answer to that, if you, if you only know yourself in hard times,

00:33:15.460 then maybe that's the work for you.

00:33:17.060 That's the hard work for you.

00:33:18.320 It's not productivity like it is for me and so many men, but identity, building a confidence

00:33:26.940 in yourself that's rooted in, in the values that you have, the vision you have for yourself

00:33:32.580 and not just simply and quietly suffering in sacrifice.

00:33:39.940 Because, look, after I say all this,

00:33:43.400 a man still can carry hard things.

00:33:45.020 You should.

00:33:47.140 But you carry them because you want to,

00:33:50.920 not because you don't know who you are without it.

00:33:56.920 And I'll leave you with a quote.

00:33:58.360 This is a quote from Epictetus.

00:34:00.680 he says seek not the things which happen should happen as you wish but wish the things which

00:34:10.680 happen to be as they are and you will have a tranquil flow of life i used to read that as

00:34:19.720 passive like it's just like you're just resigning like just whatever happens happens but i don't

00:34:24.840 anymore i read it as a call to stop performing to stop being a martyr to stop organizing my life

00:34:31.180 around how it might look to other people to stop measuring how worthy i am based on how much i

00:34:38.720 suffer and and this is this is really this is harder than it sounds like be the man that you

00:34:47.020 actually are in the circumstances you actually are with the choices that are actually yours

00:34:54.400 and i'm not saying settle for less than you're capable of i'm saying acknowledge who you are

00:35:00.060 and make conscious choices about who you want to be

00:35:04.980 it's the boy who carried the family really early in his life i get him i was him

00:35:14.140 and i'm grateful for what that built in me it's like the worth that work ethic the reliability

00:35:20.460 the understanding that somebody has to step up but i'm also learning to put that weight down

00:35:26.420 when appropriate when it doesn't need to be carried and to receive abundance without guilt

00:35:33.300 about it to make choices about the sacrifices i want to make and to rest when i don't need to

00:35:42.520 make those sacrifices not because i don't care or not because i'm a less of a man not because

00:35:48.220 them a beta or a cuck or a simp or these terms people use to categorize guys who take care of

00:35:53.880 themselves but because i've really started to understand that a man who knows who he is doesn't

00:36:00.420 need to suffer to prove it now you might suffer but as long as it's virtuous suffering righteous

00:36:07.260 meaningful purpose-driven suffering so i hope this conversation sat with you and if you heard

00:36:13.680 yourself in some of it, I relate with you, but I would encourage you to sit down with that for a

00:36:18.640 minute, for the day, for the weekend, not to fix it right away necessarily, just to put the

00:36:23.660 face with the name. And that's where I think the real work starts. So if this resonated with you,

00:36:30.480 if you have other tips and insights and strategies for not making yourself the martyr that you might

00:36:37.360 think you need to be, then drop it in the comments on YouTube, youtube.com slash order of man,

00:36:42.200 make sure you subscribe on youtube make sure you share this with other men who might need to hear

00:36:47.620 it when you see a martyr who's just killing himself for the sake of killing himself send

00:36:53.660 him this video and and help him see that sure there's righteous sacrifice there's righteous

00:37:01.560 suffering but not all of it is and hopefully this gave you some insight into how to differentiate

00:37:08.120 between the two all right guys make sure you subscribe leave a rating and review connect with

00:37:13.260 us on the socials at ryan mickler we will be back next week until then go out there take action

00:37:19.140 become a man you are meant to be thank you for listening to the order of man podcast you're

00:37:26.040 ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be we invite you

00:37:30.440 to join the order at order of man.com

00:37:38.120 You

Order of Man - May 22, 2026

Men and the Myth of Martyrdom ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

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