Men Without Direction Create Chaos ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES
Episode Stats
Words per minute
158.94896
Harmful content
Misogyny
1
sentences flagged
Toxicity
6
sentences flagged
Hate speech
2
sentences flagged
Summary
What do Iran, Israel, Ukraine, and every major conflict happening right now all have in common? What do they all have to do with each other? What are they all a result of a lack of leadership?
Transcript
00:00:00.000
We are lost guys. You're lost. You're listening to this podcast because you're lost to some degree
00:00:05.520
or the other. We are living in a time where men have more freedom than they've ever had to explore
00:00:12.080
more than they ever have. And yet we have less direction than we ever have. Young men today
00:00:18.860
are much more likely to live at home longer than any generation in modern history. Male
00:00:25.880
participation in the workforce has increasingly declined. All right, guys, let me ask you a
00:00:33.080
question. What do Iran, Israel, Ukraine, and every major conflict happening right now all have in
00:00:42.360
common? I'm going to tell you, it's not politics. It's not religion. It's not even the resources
00:00:49.420
that people think we're after it's this that undisciplined misdirected and very often very
00:00:56.740
insecure men that are put in positions of power making decisions they aren't equipped to make
00:01:04.180
and before you tune this out and think oh that that's world leaders and we're going to talk about
00:01:10.440
politics and global conflicts so i don't want to deal with it you're wrong because i'm not just
00:01:17.040
talking about what's happening on the international stage. I'm talking about the same level of chaos
00:01:22.380
that we see happening inside of homes, inside of marriages, inside of businesses and friendships
00:01:32.260
and circles all across the country, just on a bit of a smaller scale. Because right now we're
00:01:39.220
watching global tensions escalate in so many different ways. Even just here at home, the level
00:01:47.820
of animosity and vitriol towards other human beings is unparalleled. I really do believe it's
00:01:53.320
unparalleled. There's conflicts in the Middle East. Those are intensifying. We're sending
00:01:58.440
troops to stage near Iran. Listen to this statistic. This is wild. I was doing some
00:02:06.180
research for this and came across this stat that military spending worldwide has surpassed 2.2
00:02:12.820
trillion dollars annually and that this one is even worse the u.s alone so us alone accounts for
00:02:22.420
nearly 40 percent of global military expenditure now i'm saying this as a veteran i'm saying this
00:02:30.580
as somebody who was in a combat zone in Ramadi, Iraq in 2005 through 2006. And I can tell you that
00:02:38.480
it is horrific what we are doing. And yet with all of the intelligence and all of the technology
00:02:44.500
and all the resources that we've ever had, we're still solving problems or at least attempting to
00:02:51.520
solve problems the same way we did thousands of years ago. And it's never worked. It's never
00:02:58.560
worked it's never come to resolution sure one side wins but it's never come to resolution
00:03:03.880
it's poorly led men reacting emotionally who are escalating conflict and people will say well you
00:03:13.520
know you're a you're a maga guy you're a trump guy i'm a pragmatic guy i'm a guy who doesn't
00:03:19.600
want to get america into foreign conflicts that have nothing to do with us i'm a let's protect
00:03:25.480
our people let's care about our people let's shut down the borders not totally isolationist but not
00:03:32.640
get involved in everybody's business either but i want to personalize this i don't want to talk
00:03:39.480
about the global stage i want to talk about you personally as a man as a father a husband a leader
00:03:46.940
of a business that you might own or a manager uh maybe you're in politics maybe you're just serving
00:03:53.460
in some ecclesiastical calling and here's the mistake that most guys make they look at the
00:04:00.080
global conflict that we see whether it's with Iran or Israel or Ukraine or any other conflict
00:04:05.960
that we might see and we often think well that's outside of my control and you're right you're
00:04:12.640
right it is outside of your control but what you miss is that you don't need that battlefield to
00:04:17.360
create the destruction that we're talking about and oftentimes it's easy to say the president this
00:04:22.040
the economy that, this world leader this, that world leader that. But you do this to yourself
00:04:28.520
the same way I do this to myself. And I've had very recent experiences where I've sabotaged and
00:04:34.280
undermined myself. Guys, you can destroy your marriage with poor leadership.
00:04:41.920
You can destroy the relationship that you have with your kids with inconsistency.
00:04:47.220
you can demolish and completely wreck your business with your ego you can crush yourself
0.87
00:04:56.760
with a lack of direction and most of us frankly don't even realize that we're doing it
00:05:04.800
chaos is a leadership problem so if there's chaos in your marriage or chaos in your business or
00:05:13.540
chaos in something that you can control it's a leadership issue if there's chaos globally it's
00:05:18.780
a leadership issue it always is chaos doesn't just happen we as men bring order to environments and
00:05:27.720
if there's no order in the environment it's not because it just happened it's because we created
00:05:32.620
the breeding ground for wildness for confusion for frustration for animosity for violence
00:05:41.660
chaos is what fills the void when leadership is absent when men are absent
00:05:47.780
and leadership doesn't just start with having authority it starts with having direction
00:05:54.360
and most men today they don't have any right think about your day you get up when you're told to get
00:06:03.920
up or when your wife expects you to get up you go into a job you may or may not know what you're
00:06:09.840
doing. Somebody else tells you what to do. You jump on your phone. My phone's over there. I don't
00:06:15.360
have it right with me right now, but you jump on your phone. You're like, how do I get to this
00:06:19.140
place? You don't even know how to get places. A phone tells you how to get there. I do this too.
00:06:24.140
I'm not pointing fingers. I do this too. And then everything about our lives is dictated by what
00:06:29.060
somebody else or some other business. And eventually what AI tells us we ought to be doing.
00:06:33.700
we have no independent direction it's the cultural narrative that men are are lost and we are we are
00:06:42.520
lost guys you're lost you're listening to this podcast because you're lost to some degree or
00:06:48.860
the other we are living in a time where men have more freedom than they've ever had to explore
00:06:55.660
more than they ever have and yet we have less direction than we ever have young men today are
00:07:03.760
much more likely to live at home longer than any generation in modern history
00:07:09.900
male participation in the workforce has increasingly declined over the past 50 years
00:07:17.420
rates of depression and anxiety and even suicide among men continue to climb why is that why is it
00:07:27.860
that men continue to suffer it's because we've removed the expectation we've moved the goal
00:07:36.460
post, but we never replaced it with a standard. When there's a standard, we thrive, right? Think
00:07:47.720
about sports. A lot of you listening have played sports in high school, maybe even college, maybe
00:07:53.200
even professionally. And there's rules, right? So if you're playing baseball, you get a set amount
00:08:01.920
of pitches in a certain strike zone. You got to run to first base, then to second base. And if
00:08:06.820
you get tagged out, you're out. If you turn left and you get tagged out on first base, you're out.
00:08:12.220
If you turn right, you're safe. There's rules to this. And when we have rules to our life, we thrive.
00:08:20.480
Those are the standards. But modernity has replaced it with do whatever you want. Just
00:08:26.260
make sure you feel good. Make it safe and comfortable and happy and stroke your ego and
00:08:30.840
feel good about yourself and the body positive movement and all that kind of bullshit
0.71
00:08:35.080
be whatever you want do whatever you want just make sure you're happy
00:08:40.700
okay well if that actually worked and let's just say we've implemented that in the states over the
00:08:46.820
past 40 to 50 years why is everybody more miserable than they were before why are we so horribly
00:08:52.540
miserable because nobody today is saying here's what's required of you
00:09:00.040
here's what i need of you here's the standard here's the way you're gonna show up and all of
00:09:07.100
a sudden we move from standard from legacy from tradition even into just be happy that doesn't
0.81
00:09:19.500
fucking work guys you can't just be happy because somebody told you to be happy and not only that
0.90
00:09:28.060
they're only telling you to be happy so that you don't be angry. But here's the hard truth of it.
0.99
00:09:33.960
When a man has little or even no direction, he doesn't become peaceful. You're not peaceful.
00:09:41.240
I know, I know a dozen, maybe even two dozen men right now who I can tell you who have retired
00:09:46.080
and of the men who have recently retired, the crew that already has a mission in place,
00:09:54.240
one guy that i think of and i'm just going to say his name because i i think he'd be okay with this
00:09:58.640
it's a good friend of mine his name is frank foreman he's a firefighter he's an emt he did
00:10:04.380
a lot for disaster management in california and he retired after decades of service to the state
00:10:10.140
of california he's in montana building a ranch every time i talk with this guy whether it's in
00:10:17.340
one of our calls or just as a as a personal call he's fixing fences he's castrating cows he's
00:10:24.820
branding cows he's i think one day he was uh looking for bear that were trying to attack some
00:10:31.140
of his livestock like this is a guy he's always doing something he's milking goats he's always
00:10:36.560
doing something and this is a guy who's happy he's happy he's happier than i've ever seen him
00:10:42.060
in his life because he has direction and purpose. And I have other guys who are retired who are
00:10:47.960
just frustrated and sad and miserable in a lot of ways because there is no direction.
00:10:56.740
Not doing anything doesn't bring a man peace. He becomes very dangerous in a negative sense
00:11:02.900
of the word. I've used that in a positive way, but I'm talking about the negative sense of the word.
00:11:06.840
and there's three types of directionless men so i'm going to break this down and uh tell you what
00:11:16.860
this looks like and i want you to categorize yourself maybe you aren't any of these maybe
00:11:21.000
you're all of these but number one is the passive man this is the guy who avoids responsibility
00:11:25.380
he tells himself i just want to be happy i just want peace but what he really means is i don't
00:11:33.300
want the pressure, right? I don't want the weight of responsibility. So what does a guy like that
00:11:39.920
do? He checks out. He doesn't lead his family. He avoids. He runs away from hard conversations. He
00:11:47.940
lets life happen to him. And what happens to a guy like that? Everything around him starts to
00:11:53.000
deteriorate because what he calls being peaceful is actually being neglectful he's avoidant
00:12:03.360
he's scared he's fearful he doesn't want to confront the reality of responsibility and so
00:12:11.200
he just neglects it all and he says oh i'm at peace i'm happy you're not happy we know better
00:12:15.820
i can't i can't find a single man on the face of this earth who just says i just want to be
00:12:22.220
happy the whole time and blissful and just like no problems at all i've never met a man like that
00:12:26.820
who lived for very long so that's number one the peaceful men uh or or well i say peaceful but maybe
00:12:35.240
passive is a better way to describe it number two is the drifting man okay now this guy's busy
00:12:39.700
right he's busting his tail he's running around he's always got something to do but he's like a
00:12:45.300
hamster you know when you were a kid and you had a little hamster or a gerbil or a mouse and you
00:12:50.460
put the little wheel in the cage and you watched it and you laughed at the mouse because it like
00:12:53.960
was spinning on the thing and it looks so eager and excited, but it literally got nowhere. That's
00:12:58.380
you. You're the drifting man. You're the mouse. And everybody's sitting there laughing at you
00:13:03.860
because you're so busy, but you're not doing anything. So we consume content, right? My
00:13:08.000
phone's over there. I keep reaching for it, but we consume content. We're like doom scroll on
00:13:13.460
social media. Uh, we start a bunch of shit that we never actually finish. We chase dopamine,
0.99
00:13:19.880
whether it's through pornography usage or women or gambling or living vicariously through sports
00:13:28.860
teams. We just want that dopamine hit. Maybe it's drugs. Maybe it's alcohol. It was alcohol for me
00:13:34.760
for a long time, but there's no purpose. And he may not be destructive on the surface, but give
00:13:41.580
it some time. Give it some time. I speak from experience. You know, it took me a couple of years
00:13:48.360
to take my self-sabotage and turn it into something that actually became destructive
00:13:55.900
for me and my family and potentially my business as well. A man without direction will eventually
00:14:03.960
sabotage himself because he's bored. That's it. You're bored. And so you'll go start shit
00:14:10.960
because you need something to do, but it's rarely healthy. All right. So number three is the
0.99
00:14:18.820
aggressive, but undisciplined man. This, this is a dangerous one. They're all dangerous, but this
00:14:24.980
one's rough because this is the guy who has energy. He has ambition. He has drive. He has
00:14:30.500
the desire to succeed, but he has no structure. There's no code. There's no discipline. There's
00:14:35.780
no brotherhood. There's no accountability. So what does this guy do? Well, he picks fights
00:14:40.160
that he doesn't need to pick he gets home and because he's so bored with his life he'll start
00:14:44.560
just picking fights with his wife over nothing literally nothing you know maybe the dishes
00:14:51.300
weren't done and he blows up for no reason because the dishes weren't done but her her kids are happy
00:14:58.100
but the dishes aren't done so well let me just get mad about that this is a guy i and i tended
00:15:05.160
to be this guy if i'm being honest and i don't i don't like it's not flattering to admit that but
00:15:10.780
this is me energy for days but i'd pick fights that i didn't need to pick and i destroyed
00:15:19.580
relationships and i hurt people and i made a mockery of of their contribution to my life
00:15:27.640
and i burned bridges and i made everything a battle and a competition and i escalated
00:15:35.100
every little scenario and every and I was so serious I never could laugh does that sound
00:15:40.680
familiar I mean this this is exactly what we see on the world stage whether it's Donald Trump or
00:15:48.020
Putin or whoever is still alive in Iran or Kim Jong-un or like I mean this is what we see
00:15:57.500
it's power without discipline and it leads to destruction
00:16:00.380
but how do we go from global to personal because we've been talking a bit about
00:16:07.000
the global stage the world stage but it applies to you as well
00:16:10.780
so when you look at global conflict i don't want you to see just countries that are battling with
00:16:16.860
each other i want you to see men trump being one of them men who can't regulate their emotions
00:16:24.500
Trump can do that. These so-called world leaders are senators, are politicians. They don't regulate
00:16:32.800
their emotions. They thrive on them. And they thrive on you buying into their emotional
00:16:36.960
performance. They can't delay gratification. They can't think long-term. They can't even
00:16:43.700
lead themselves, let alone lead others. And now they're trying to lead you and nations of people,
00:16:49.380
millions and millions of people but guys here's the principle i want you to understand that
00:16:55.040
direction in your life prevents the chaos i'm talking about not just on the world stage but
00:16:59.580
in your own home direction is what creates order every time you don't eliminate chaos by
00:17:08.560
burying your head in the sand and pretending that whatever's happening doesn't exist you
00:17:12.620
eliminate chaos by becoming the kind of man who is capable of dealing with it.
00:17:19.640
So here's an actionable framework. So how do you create direction in your life? Let me tell you
00:17:23.480
exactly how. I want you to have something tactical. That's part of the Friday field
00:17:28.260
notes that we put. So number one, define your mission. If I asked you right now,
00:17:33.600
what is your mission as a man? Could you answer that clearly?
00:17:38.360
not vaguely not like i want to be a good guy i don't have some good no not philosophically
00:17:45.060
but clearly what is your mission my mission specifically within this organization
00:17:52.900
is to give men the tools conversations and resources that they need to thrive
00:17:57.940
independently as men that's my mission no ambiguity no confusion no wishy-washiness
00:18:06.180
Nope. Whatever tool, resource, and conversation I can give you, that's what I'm going to bring to
00:18:10.380
you so that you can individually lead your life. If it's with my kids, it's to render myself
00:18:19.280
obsolete. Three words, render myself obsolete. It's very similar to what I want to do professionally.
00:18:27.700
Give them all the tools, resources, and conversations they need in order to thrive
00:18:31.600
as self-sustaining human beings and to render myself obsolete. Now, when I say that people
00:18:36.780
are like, well, you're always going to be important as a dad. Sure. I get it, but I'm
00:18:40.800
not into fluffy fairy tale watered down nonsense. I know, I hope I'm always going to be important,
00:18:49.100
but my job is to put myself out of work as a father. This is not ambiguous. It's not vague.
00:18:55.240
It's not philosophical in nature. It's very clear. It's very tactical.
00:19:01.600
If you don't define your mission, then you're going to default to distraction and frankly,
00:19:07.260
other people's mission. Number two, set non-negotiable standards, not goals, but standards.
00:19:15.480
Not, hey, I want to lose 40 pounds, but I'm going to go work out every day. See the difference?
00:19:20.120
I want to lose 40 pounds as a goal. I want to work out every day, or I will work out every day
00:19:24.580
as a standard. I train my body. That's a standard. How do you show up as a husband?
00:19:30.140
I engage and communicate physically mentally and emotionally with my wife I lead her how do you
00:19:37.240
lead your kids I ask good questions of my children I'm engaged and committed to their growth
00:19:43.480
physically mentally and emotionally how do you take care of your body we already talked about
00:19:47.160
that I work out every day how do you handle adversity when something goes wrong and it will
00:19:53.840
go wrong self-imposed or existential something will go wrong how do you handle it do you crumble
00:19:59.720
or do you step up and rise to the equation? Standards remove any sort of negotiation that
00:20:04.640
you might have with yourself. And men without standards create a lot of instability because
00:20:10.840
there's no track for them to run on. Just go wherever to and fro, like the current, like the
00:20:16.860
waves, wherever the waves in the ocean, tell them to go. Number three, you need to build discipline
00:20:22.640
around your emotion. You don't get to feel your way through leadership. Now you might feel a way
00:20:29.000
but the answer is rarely emotional because you lead despite how you feel if you're ruled by
00:20:38.620
emotion you will i promise you create chaos in every room that you walk into so when you're
00:20:44.340
feeling frustrated you don't need to let that frustration pour over to your people you need to
00:20:50.500
use the frustration to come up with a plan i talked with a young man just the other day he's on my
00:20:55.540
two oldest boys lacrosse team and he was moping off the field and his head was down and then he
00:21:01.660
said a swear word and I said hey come over here and he came over and I said hey you're a leader
00:21:06.400
on this team people are watching you your teammates are watching you and when you mope off the field
00:21:14.820
because you had a bad play or you missed something or you botched an assignment and you start swearing
00:21:20.580
and then you mope off the field what does that say about how they are to show up he's like no
00:21:26.660
people aren't what i'm like no people are watching you you're a leader act like it and i was very
00:21:32.040
impressed by this young man because during the break between first and second quarter he went
00:21:36.740
to his team and he said hey guys i'm sorry the way i showed up i'm sorry for the words i used
00:21:40.900
and i'm sorry sorry for performing the way that i did and he had a stellar second quarter because
00:21:46.460
he took ownership of it. You can feel what you're going to feel. I feel right now, actually today,
00:21:52.420
I'm feeling frustrated and I'm feeling deflated. I'm feeling a little bit sad if I'm being honest
00:21:57.540
because of some personal situations that I'm going through that I'm not going to get into
00:22:04.040
with you, but I'm feeling sad about it today. And I'm still recording a podcast and I'm still
00:22:11.620
making phone calls and I'm still honoring the commitments that I made because my sadness does
00:22:19.580
not dictate the way that I show up. I'm going to keep showing up. Number four, I want you to start
00:22:27.380
thinking long-term. Most destruction in your life comes from short-term thinking, short-term pleasure,
00:22:34.060
immediate gratification, maybe getting some sort of validation. That's a big one for me.
00:22:39.120
maybe it's just comfort and ease and just like I just want to feel good but leadership guys
00:22:44.880
requires long-term vision long-term thinking and that's what's missing in the world right now
00:22:50.400
everybody's out to get theirs in the short term but they don't think about how this is going to
00:22:54.680
affect them over years decades generations and I think that might be what's missing in your life
00:23:05.300
too. You're like, I just want to feel, I'm tired tonight. I don't care if you're tired tonight.
00:23:10.320
You got work to do. Well, I had a hard day. So what? So what? You had a hard day? You don't
00:23:18.640
even know what hard is. Neither do I. I don't care about how hard my day was. I still got to
00:23:24.220
show up for my kids. I still got to honor my commitments. I still have to do this podcast.
00:23:30.780
i don't care and you shouldn't care either about your hard day that's new wave thinking
00:23:42.160
a hard day i deserve some time off no you don't what you deserve is stepping into what you ought
00:23:49.160
to be doing because that's what's going to make you feel better about yourself not that you're
00:23:52.140
going to go sit my ties on the beach or sit in the hot tub all night you're going to feel worse
00:23:56.340
about yourself. So here's the question for you, and I'll wrap it up with this.
00:24:01.860
Where are you creating chaos in your life? Not intentionally. I don't think we do this
00:24:06.320
intentionally. I don't even think we do it maliciously. But where in your life are you
00:24:12.060
creating chaos through avoidance, through deceit, through inconsistency, through a lack of clarity
00:24:23.120
and direction, through emotional decision-making,
00:24:32.640
but you're not doing that in every aspect of your life
00:24:35.600
because every man is creating structure and chaos.
00:24:53.120
the world doesn't need more opinions it doesn't need more directionist leaders it doesn't need
00:25:04.880
more short-term thinking it doesn't need more noise it doesn't need chasing comfort it needs
00:25:12.800
men with direction it needs you the world needs you i hope you know that your wife needs you man
00:25:20.020
she really does your kids need you they need you to be there for them
00:25:26.980
they need men who know who they are they need men who know what they're building know what
0.99
00:25:34.840
they're standing for and those men who are acting accordingly because when men lead themselves well
00:25:40.820
what do they do they lead their families well when families are strong communities are strong
00:25:46.700
When communities are strong, nations don't fall apart and crumble.
00:25:58.160
And if you have chaos in your life, it's because you have no direction in your life.
00:26:06.340
Are you creating order or are you adding to the noise?
00:26:14.080
are you creating order or are you adding to the noise if you want to learn more check us out at
00:26:19.640
order of man.com or join us inside of our exclusive brotherhood the iron council at
00:26:24.200
order of man.com iron council and band with us and we'll create order together because if there's
00:26:30.920
two men or 200 men or 2 000 men we can make a huge difference in this world that's what i'm after
00:26:39.200
i think that's what you're after too you wouldn't be listening if that weren't the case
00:26:43.280
All right, guys, we'll be back next week for our interview.
00:26:46.480
Until then, go out there, take action, create order, not chaos,
00:26:53.400
Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.
00:26:56.380
You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be?
00:27:00.360
We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.