Order of Man - OZAN VAROL ｜ Unlock Your Genius

00:00:00.000 Every single one of us has genius inside of us, some lying dormant for years and even decades.

00:00:05.900 And with our greatest potential trapped deep beneath the surface of our day-to-day lives,

00:00:10.100 we live, as Thoreau famously said, quiet lives of desperation. I know from personal experience

00:00:15.540 how difficult and deflating that can be. My guest today, former rocket scientist and law professor

00:00:20.580 Ozan Varol, is on the podcast today to talk about how to unlock and awaken the genius buried deep

00:00:27.120 within ourselves. We also talk about the power of going what he refers to as off menu, finding more

00:00:34.600 awe in our lives, the death of our former selves and the birth of a new man, why we all need to

00:00:40.420 exercise a bit more skeptical curiosity and how to become extraordinary men. You're a man of action.

00:00:46.940 You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks

00:00:52.240 you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not easily deterred, defeated, rugged,

00:00:59.080 resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become at the end

00:01:05.660 of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going

00:01:11.620 on today? My name is Ryan Michler. I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and

00:01:15.860 movement. Welcome here and welcome back. Glad you're tuning in. And I don't really care how long

00:01:20.820 you've been with us. If this is your first episode or your, I think we're almost to the

00:01:25.800 thousand episodes now of the podcast over eight years, I'm still as grateful and glad that you're

00:01:30.840 here because you know what? We need more men in this fight. We need men to help battle against the

00:01:37.440 current culture and society that says that men are less than or not needed or even dangerous or

00:01:43.440 destructive or toxic. We need more men to stand up, to lead their families, lead their businesses,

00:01:48.620 lead their communities, and be the kind of men that we're capable of becoming. And that's what

00:01:52.980 this podcast is dedicated to. We do that by interviewing incredible men like Ozan and other

00:01:59.220 individuals, guys like Jocko Willink and Terry Cruz and Matthew McConaughey and Ben Shapiro and Andy

00:02:04.760 Frisilla and Grant Cardone and Tim Kennedy and Tim Tebow and all of the other 400 and whatever, 50 or so

00:02:12.480 men that we've had on this podcast. And I just want to thank you for tuning in because we wouldn't get

00:02:18.620 that if there wasn't anybody who's listening. And there are a lot of you who are listening

00:02:22.300 and more importantly, applying the information that these guys are teaching and imparting upon

00:02:28.360 us. Guys, real quick, before I get into the conversation, the Iron Council, our exclusive

00:02:32.940 brotherhood is open. I just encourage you to go watch the video and learn a little bit more about

00:02:37.300 what it's about and see if it's for you. I cannot tell you how many guys I hear from who want to

00:02:42.560 connect with other like-minded men, other men that they can fight in this battle with,

00:02:48.020 walk shoulder to shoulder with and improve their lives because of accountability, but also to help

00:02:53.460 hold other men accountable. And isn't that what we do? The men in our corner, the people in our

00:02:57.620 corner, we call them to rise, to lift up, to stand up and be better than they once were. We do that for

00:03:02.920 other people. We need people to do that for us. So check it out at orderofman.com slash Iron Council.

00:03:09.120 I'll talk a little bit more about it later in the conversation, but for now, let me introduce you to

00:03:14.200 Ozan. As I said earlier, a former rocket scientist. He actually worked on NASA missions and a former

00:03:21.320 law professor. He left academia to pursue a career as a writer and a public speaker. He actually left

00:03:27.320 academia after he received tenure. So we talk a little bit about that and the concept of tenure,

00:03:32.420 which is an interesting concept. You'll hear that in the podcast. Since then, he's been teaching people

00:03:38.180 how to live a life past the status quo. He is the author of Think Like a Rocket Scientist. I actually

00:03:45.540 had him on the podcast years ago to discuss that book. And of course, his latest book, Awaken Your

00:03:50.020 Genius, which is sure to become a bestseller. He's delivered keynotes to Microsoft and Intel and GE,

00:03:57.380 Google X, and so many other powerful organizations. And he really is making a name for himself

00:04:02.180 as he shares his mission and passion to help people unlock their potential.

00:04:08.020 Ozan, what's up, brother? Great to have you back on the podcast.

00:04:11.240 Thanks so much for having me back, Ryan.

00:04:13.080 Yeah, I really enjoyed our first conversation. And when you reached out and you said you had a

00:04:16.840 new book coming out, I think it's over your left shoulder there, Awaken Your Genius.

00:04:20.380 Yeah, I got a copy right here too.

00:04:22.860 Yeah, very excited for you. Your first book was great. And I know that the audience, the guys that

00:04:29.400 were listening really resonated with your messaging and the way you share it and deliver. And

00:04:33.460 obviously, the nice thing about the message coming from you is that you are very educated.

00:04:41.980 You're very credible. You're literally a rocket scientist. You're a law professor. Come on now.

00:04:49.640 It's got some weight behind it. And I like that.

00:04:54.140 Thanks. I appreciate that. Actually, and we can talk about this if you like,

00:04:57.360 but I'm no longer a law professor. I left that. Yeah, I left academia in 2021. Shortly after I

00:05:05.780 got tenure, I just realized that academia was no longer for me. Like this career that I once loved,

00:05:11.460 I absolutely love teaching, just had come to the end of its natural life. I just wasn't learning

00:05:17.760 and growing. And I decided to leave my tenured position in academia, which my colleagues thought

00:05:25.140 that I was out of my mind because tenure means, you know, you've got, it's the ultimate safety net.

00:05:29.440 You've got a guaranteed paycheck for life, but you've made a curiosity, but my curiosity was

00:05:33.740 pulling me in a different direction. So I left academia to write books and speak to audiences full

00:05:41.080 time. What, what do you, I want to get into that, but what do you think about the concept of tenure,

00:05:47.060 just in general, the concept of it?

00:05:48.680 I can see the reasoning behind it, which is that, you know, you should be free to speak your mind

00:05:54.760 as an academic without the possibility of getting fired, hanging out for your head for what you say.

00:06:04.060 But, and this is a really important, but it's got really significant downsides, which is that like,

00:06:10.320 once people get tenure, a lot of them just let go, you know, complacency sets in like, you know,

00:06:17.780 you set this really difficult goal for yourself, you achieved it, and then people become really

00:06:21.080 complacent. And so I ended up seeing this in, in the various institutions I taught in, you know,

00:06:28.700 people will get tenure and then they stick around for decades and they're no longer good professors.

00:06:33.700 Like they, they should have quit a long time ago, but because it's so comfortable,

00:06:37.360 it's so easy. People don't leave and it's large in a large part because of tenure.

00:06:43.440 Yeah. Interesting. I, I personally, from the outside, I, I've always just taken issue with it

00:06:48.700 because of what you just said, that it's no longer about your performance and the way that you show

00:06:54.320 up. It's more about protecting your own to a degree is the way I viewed it. Again, I'm looking

00:06:59.020 at it from the outside looking in, but I had never considered that it is beneficial in that it allows

00:07:05.460 some protection of speech. It seems like in academia that the opposite is actually true.

00:07:12.280 That if you happen to stand on the wrong side of the aisle, you will get blasted and ostracized

00:07:18.360 more so than any other time. I imagine in the world of academia, because the whole concept to me is to

00:07:25.120 explore ideas. And that means to consider ideas that you don't necessarily agree with.

00:07:31.200 Yeah, exactly. Uh, I totally agree with that, especially, and this is true regardless of the

00:07:36.940 type of academic institution you're in, but especially I taught in law school, especially

00:07:41.140 for lawyers. It's so important for them to be exposed to all different perspectives because,

00:07:45.940 you know, they're going to be, even if you don't agree with it, these people are going to be on the

00:07:49.900 opposing side. You need to know what they're thinking. You need to be able to engage with them.

00:07:53.420 And that is completely lacking and things have gotten so much worse in the past few years. And

00:07:59.200 actually, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I decided to leave is that that free exchange of

00:08:03.280 ideas wasn't happening in the classroom and people with views that weren't mainstream were being

00:08:10.100 chastised. And so you're only hearing one side of the argument. So the classroom discussions were not

00:08:15.280 nearly as interesting as they used to be when I first started teaching 10 years ago. And that was one

00:08:19.880 of the reasons why I decided to leave. Well, and you are still teaching, you know, and that's the

00:08:24.920 beauty of, of the environment that we live in now is that you don't have to go through those

00:08:29.740 traditional routes and avenues that we would have had to have done 50, 60, 70, a hundred years ago.

00:08:35.060 Now you can start a business. You can author a book. You can build your own platform. You can have

00:08:41.940 your own media outlets like podcasting, and you can be just as big, if not bigger and have a wider reach

00:08:48.140 than you might be able to in a classroom environment.

00:08:52.660 Yeah, that's exactly right. There's so much value in going off menu. I think, you know,

00:08:58.680 for the reasons you mentioned for decades, people have been being required to basically to like

00:09:04.660 contort themselves, Tetris themselves into shape to fit other boxes that other people have created.

00:09:10.580 But now, yeah, we're living in a world where we can have this conversation. I'm in Portland,

00:09:14.720 you're in Utah. You've got an incredible audience. And so it's so much easier now to say, okay,

00:09:21.620 what do I actually want from life? And to go for that. And if it doesn't exist for you to actually

00:09:27.920 create it, to say like, this is possible and I can do this. And this memory popped to mind,

00:09:32.740 so I'll share it with you. I was a freshman in college. I was just starting out. And I remember

00:09:38.040 looking through the course catalog at like the available majors to figure out what I should major in.

00:09:43.160 And none of the majors appealed to me. Like I wanted a combination of astronomy, physics and

00:09:48.440 geology. And there wasn't anything that captured what I wanted to study. And I remember thinking,

00:09:53.480 oh, I wonder if I could go off menu. Like, I wonder if I could create my own major. So I

00:09:58.460 trekked to the registrar's office and I was like, hey, here's what I'm thinking. Like none of these

00:10:02.880 appeal to me. Can I create my own thing? And the answer surprisingly was yes. There was this like

00:10:08.540 little known program that allowed a select group of freshmen to create their own major. I applied and

00:10:15.340 was accepted. But that lesson really stuck with me since that time. Like there's so much value in

00:10:20.480 saying, none of these options appeal to me. This is what I want. Raising your hand and asking for it.

00:10:26.540 And if it doesn't exist, creating it.

00:10:29.600 Yeah, that's amazing. That's a great example of taking initiative. And like you said, going off menu.

00:10:34.380 I haven't heard that before. But that is valuable. I think that's a lot of what we've done here with

00:10:40.140 order of man, even, you know, it's like, I want to have these conversations. Great. So do that.

00:10:45.940 And then you can see how successful something like this has become. What was the major that you,

00:10:50.860 what did you call it? Or how would you describe the major?

00:10:53.760 Yeah, I would describe it as astrophysics, which doesn't even really capture what I did,

00:10:59.440 but that's the closest. It was like a combination of astronomy, physics. And I wanted to add in some

00:11:03.340 geology in there because I was really interested in exploration of other planets. And so being able

00:11:09.060 to have that knowledge of geology would also be helpful. And if I remember correctly, you worked

00:11:15.660 with NASA on some space exploration projects. Yeah. When I was in college, I worked for a Cornell-NASA

00:11:26.980 partnership called the Mars Exploration Rovers Project that sent two rovers to Mars back in 2003

00:11:34.160 called Spirit and Opportunity. So I worked on the operations team for those for four years.

00:11:41.260 Amazing experience. We had designed the rovers to last for 90 days. And one of the two opportunity,

00:11:48.840 and I still get goosebumps every time I say this, one of the two rovers opportunity

00:11:52.580 ended up roving the red planet for over 14 years into its 90 day lifetime. Yeah. Pretty incredible.

00:12:00.040 Do you think that we'll see anytime soon having a man on Mars and then even to some degree beginning

00:12:09.540 to colonize it? I certainly hope so. I think, you know, one of the things that's been lacking from

00:12:17.620 our lives is the emotion awe. Like there's anxiety in the news, there's stress at work.

00:12:24.640 People are really starving for awe. And if you look back at like the Apollo program and how people

00:12:30.560 felt in the 60s, especially when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and took his giant leap for mankind,

00:12:37.920 everyone was captivated by awe. And everyone's, I think, in terms of what they thought they could

00:12:44.700 achieve in life, that bar was raised a little bit because we really did the impossible.

00:12:50.380 And I think landing someone on Mars would have a similar effect. So I'm rooting for that in part

00:12:56.740 for that reason. Two, it also, you know, helps development of these ancillary technologies that

00:13:03.680 we can then use at home. And like it gets us into the habit of applying moonshot thinking,

00:13:10.760 right? So putting a person on Mars seems like impossible, but one day that impossible will

00:13:15.740 become possible. And it will happen because a number of people will choose to go off menu

00:13:20.120 to ask questions that haven't been asked before, challenge assumptions that everyone else took for

00:13:26.180 granted. Like I'll give you an example. One of the assumptions that was really deeply embedded in

00:13:31.280 rocket science was this assumption that rockets could not be reused. So rockets that delivered their

00:13:37.440 cargo into orbit would burn up in the atmosphere or plunge into the ocean, requiring an entirely new

00:13:42.420 rocket to be built. Now imagine for a moment doing that with commercial flights. Like I'm in Portland

00:13:48.820 right now. I fly to Utah where you are. People deplane, someone steps up to the plane and just like

00:13:55.400 torches it, just lights it on fire. Sounds ridiculous, but that's what we did for rockets for decades.

00:14:01.740 And actually the price of a modern rocket is about the same as a Boeing 737,

00:14:05.380 but commercial flights are so much cheaper because airplanes unlike rockets can be reused over and

00:14:11.340 over and over again. And so SpaceX is on their way to changing that though. We now have a landing pad

00:14:19.160 next to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. And it's in part because they have this really

00:14:23.680 audacious goal of landing people on Mars one day, colonizing Mars one day at a fraction of the cost

00:14:30.700 that it would normally take. And so it's forcing them to go off menu. It's forcing them to question

00:14:37.360 assumptions and it's forcing them to reimagine the status quo in ways that are now bringing,

00:14:42.680 they're on their way to bringing the cost of space flight by a factor of like 40, which is pretty

00:14:47.260 incredible. It is. You said that a modern rocket chip is about the same cost as a modern Boeing 747.

00:14:56.360 Is that a modern rocket? Yeah. I would never have imagined that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But just the

00:15:04.480 fact that you can reuse it. Yeah. Well, I think that speaks to your book too, is, is awakening your

00:15:11.560 genius. Uh, you talk about people living in this status quo, just kind of getting by overly sedated,

00:15:23.100 but yet like bombarded with nonsense and information that doesn't matter. And we've just

00:15:28.400 turned into almost like living zombies. It seems like, and I know, I know I was there in my financial

00:15:36.200 planning practice. That was me. I was very successful in my financial planning practice.

00:15:40.920 Family dynamic was pretty solid. Income was good. And yet I hated it. Yeah. I was, I was kind of

00:15:48.740 miserable. I was like, Oh, I'd get calls from clients and I'd look at the phone and I'm like,

00:15:53.100 Oh, I have to talk to this person about these things. And it wasn't that person necessarily.

00:15:57.820 It was the conversation I didn't want to have, but that's pretty much describes just about

00:16:04.000 everybody. It seems like. Yeah, exactly. And I'm curious what prompted you to leave?

00:16:10.720 Well, I was a, uh, a fiduciary. So in the financial world, if you're a fiduciary, you have a,

00:16:16.600 uh, a obligation, a responsibility to do what's in your client's best interest. And when I make

00:16:23.380 agreements, I I'm serious about those agreements. So as I agreed to be a fiduciary, not all financial

00:16:29.320 people are fiduciaries. I was because of the licensing I had, uh, when I made that agreement,

00:16:34.640 I was serious about that. And I got to a point when I saw a call and the client called me and I

00:16:41.420 knew that they wanted to change their portfolio around or whatever. And I just wasn't interested

00:16:45.840 in doing it. And I knew at that point, I'm like, I'm not being a fiduciary. Like I'm not doing what's

00:16:51.240 in my client's best interest. What would be in my client's best interest is for me to tell them to

00:16:55.400 find a different advisor. And so I had started order of man and I was excited about it and decided to

00:17:04.560 put a few more chips in that basket. And this is where we are now.

00:17:08.640 Yeah. I love that. And there's really interesting parallels between that story and the story of me

00:17:14.060 leaving academia, um, which is why I asked about it. And it was, it was similar. I had this moment

00:17:19.920 where I would get up in front of the classroom normally, and I would be so excited to teach.

00:17:23.760 Like I'm so engaged, so excited to, to teach constitutional law, which is what I taught

00:17:28.320 for nearly 10 years. And there was a moment back in, I think like 2017, it was shortly after I got

00:17:34.520 tenure. I stood up in front of the classroom again, and my whole body sank. Like my chest,

00:17:40.840 my shoulders collapsed, my chest sank. It was that feeling of like, oh, like not again. Like,

00:17:47.520 I can't believe I'm about to teach this same class in the same way that I've taught before,

00:17:51.940 not again. And I owe it to these students, uh, to have me replaced by someone who's actually

00:17:58.960 excited to be here. Um, who's actually going to feel the same excitement that I felt for the amount

00:18:04.920 of time that I taught. And it's time for me to go to do something else. And I didn't quit blindly

00:18:10.220 and like jump into this next life without trying, just like you, I had already started writing on

00:18:16.040 the side. Um, and it was only after my last book think like a rocket scientist came out and achieved

00:18:22.780 success that I felt comfortable leaving academia. So I tried these like different potential futures.

00:18:28.680 I had experimented with a few different paths and a number of them failed. And then writing and

00:18:34.260 speaking was, uh, paying off. I was enjoying it. There was an audience for it. And once that clicked,

00:18:39.780 that's when I decided to leave. What did your colleagues have to say? I know you talked a little

00:18:44.880 bit about you leaving after tenure, but I imagine that these are individuals and no, no negative judgment

00:18:50.180 when I say this, but these are individuals who like structure. These are probably individuals who,

00:18:54.420 uh, love the fact that they have a full-time job going out there and taking risks as entrepreneurs.

00:18:59.740 Isn't something I think is in their wheelhouse necessarily. And so I imagine there was a lot

00:19:04.380 of pushback from your colleagues, uh, with you going out and writing to make money. And now you're

00:19:10.680 an entrepreneur. Like, what are you doing? Yeah, no, exactly. And there was no missing words.

00:19:15.820 Like so many of them said, you are making the biggest mistake of your life. Like you are about

00:19:22.100 to become a star scholar in your field and you are going to throw away everything that you worked so

00:19:30.880 hard to build. Uh, and I heard that same message from so many different people and it made it harder

00:19:36.200 for me, but I kept coming back to this idea of like, look, this is no longer aligned with who I am.

00:19:42.080 This is not aligned with the path I want to pursue. And regardless of the external noise,

00:19:48.600 regardless of what people are telling me, I know in my heart of hearts that this is the right path.

00:19:53.060 And so I'm going to take it. And I don't, I'd rather disappoint other people around me.

00:19:57.240 And I'd rather lose friends and colleagues as I did than to disappoint myself, lose myself and lose

00:20:03.140 who I am. That's much more important to me. Even if this path fails, I can look back and say,

00:20:08.140 I did the principal thing. I did what I thought was the right thing to do, not what other people

00:20:15.160 thought I should be doing. So for every one of you, there's probably a hundred people that are

00:20:22.120 in despair, that are not happy with their life. They're going through the motions

00:20:26.800 and they know it. And yet they're letting the, the noise and the distractions and the,

00:20:34.680 the naysayers, they are letting them get the better of those people. So why, why you? And

00:20:43.180 somebody who might be listening, he's like, I know I'm in a dead end job. Like, how do I get free of

00:20:49.480 this? How do I break free of this? Yeah. And that's actually one of the reasons why I wrote

00:20:54.000 Awaken Your Genius is to talk to people just, just like that. I think there was a couple of things.

00:20:59.180 So number one, and actually most people aren't even aware that they're living in this world,

00:21:07.580 you know, stuck in a job that they don't necessarily love because they've suppressed

00:21:11.880 all of those signals. A part of themselves is aware of it, but they are so focused externally,

00:21:17.800 so focused on what other people are saying and doing that often they're not even aware

00:21:22.240 that they are stuck. So I think number one, self-reflection and self-awareness is,

00:21:27.800 is extremely important. I mean, one of my regular practices is I journal every morning

00:21:32.540 and it's this like thought dump, whatever is in my head, whatever kept me up at night,

00:21:38.680 thought patterns, both positive and negative. I just write down and then I have a regular practice

00:21:43.840 of reviewing them. So I'll go back and like, look at what I said a year ago, six months ago,

00:21:48.620 and three months ago, because you often forget. But when you do that review process,

00:21:54.060 then you begin to spot trends. You begin to say, oh my God, wow, this pattern has been there for a

00:22:01.160 year now or two years now, it becomes harder to ignore it. So it all begins with, I think,

00:22:06.740 self-awareness and self-reflection. Because most of us just go through life, not even like,

00:22:12.220 one of the most difficult questions for people to answer is, what do you want? Like, what do you

00:22:19.160 really want? It's such a simple question, but you ask that to someone, most people will be stumped.

00:22:27.600 Most people don't know what they want. Most people don't know what they want because again,

00:22:31.520 we're like growing up in the education system, particularly, we're told what we should want.

00:22:36.780 We're told what we should be thinking. We're told that these are the questions that you should be

00:22:44.040 curious about. And so we go through life, not knowing what we really think, who we really are,

00:22:50.440 what we really want. So I think it all begins there is like, and only you can figure this out

00:22:55.220 for yourself. Only you can answer that question of what do you want? What do you really want? But

00:22:59.720 it's important to sit with that for a while and see what comes up that that's got to be the starting

00:23:05.520 point. So if I ask you that question, how do you answer that question? Yeah, I would answer that

00:23:13.820 question by saying what I want is to help wake people up, to help them reimagine themselves and

00:23:26.480 reimagine the world around them. That's my purpose in life. And it's clear to me, at least right now,

00:23:33.220 right? By the way, this might change 10 years from now, right? But that is what I want right now.

00:23:37.600 And I do that through the books I write, through the speeches I give, through conversations like

00:23:42.200 this. And that is what I want. That's currently my North Star. But again, that might shift 10 years

00:23:47.700 from now. I think it actually should shift. Yeah. I think when people have visions or start

00:23:54.460 answering those questions, some fear they have is that they're pigeonholing themselves into this path

00:24:00.020 and they don't give themselves permission to deviate from it. So it's like when you were

00:24:04.900 talking about journaling, I imagine, and I'd like to hear from you, if you go back and you read 0.99

00:24:10.060 something, you're like, that's dumb. Or I was an idiot. Or that's not important to me. Why in the 1.00

00:24:17.360 world was that important to me then? Do you have experiences like that?

00:24:20.540 Oh my God. All the time. All the time. And by the way, when I journal, like 90% of what comes out is

00:24:26.140 junk. It's just stuff that's been cluttering my head. And then I go back and I, yeah, I look back

00:24:30.600 on like what I thought I wanted two years ago, three years ago. I'm like, is this the same person?

00:24:36.680 Right.

00:24:37.560 You know? And so think about that. But yet a lot of people will say, well, as you know, say,

00:24:43.520 let's say you're 40 years old. As a 27-year-old, I made the decision to go to law school.

00:24:49.160 And so I'm going to stick to that path, even though I have changed as a person,

00:24:55.820 even though that path is not what I want any longer. You have so little in common with the 0.85

00:25:02.440 27-year-old version of you. So then why should you stick to the choices that that person made?

00:25:08.660 Like, those are the choices you made back then. It's a different person. You're a completely different

00:25:12.660 person now. So you should be able to pick a different path forward. There's this Buddhist 1.00

00:25:18.500 parable that I share in Awaken Your Genius about this man who has to cross this raging river.

00:25:26.200 And so he builds a raft. He gets on the raft. He crosses the river safely to the other side.

00:25:31.540 He then picks up the raft. He walks into the forest and he's trying to walk, but the raft keeps

00:25:37.540 snagging in the trees and like impeding his forward progress. But he refuses to let go of the raft.

00:25:43.760 He says, I built this. Like, it saved my life. I'm not going to let it go. But to survive today,

00:25:51.520 he has to let go of the raft that saved his life yesterday. And I think of ourselves in the same

00:25:57.840 way too. Like the career choices we made that brought us to where we are today. The relationships

00:26:02.940 that brought us to where we are today. Patterns of behavior that got you to where you are today.

00:26:08.340 Some of these will not only stop serving you, but will actually be like the raft in that parable and

00:26:14.320 will start getting in your way. And unless you drop them, unless you examine your life and say,

00:26:21.800 okay, what rafts am I carrying around that served me well in the past, but they're now getting in

00:26:27.020 your way, you're going to get in your own way and will impede your forward progress. There is so much

00:26:33.520 value in letting go of things. I think people tend to focus on like, what can I add to my life?

00:26:39.740 What else can I do? But we don't ask the same question with subtractions. What can I let go of?

00:26:46.020 What can I remove? Because there is birth and death, like life lives on lives. And there is so much

00:26:53.520 value in saying thank you to that raft and letting it go and letting what's dying serve as fertilizer

00:27:00.920 for what's coming alive. Yeah. That was one of the most intriguing parts of the book is because

00:27:06.120 very rarely do people talk about, I think it's, if I remember right, it's titled that part is the

00:27:10.880 death, right? Yeah. And very rarely do you see these types of self-development, self-help books

00:27:16.800 talk about the death and letting things go and getting rid of that. It's always do this and do

00:27:21.380 that and use this structure and use this system, which is good, but you got to make room for that.

00:27:26.640 One of the hard things or one of the things that I struggle with, and I alluded to it earlier,

00:27:31.220 when I make a commitment, I mean that. I didn't make that commitment flippantly. I actually meant

00:27:38.740 it. And even if I didn't mean it at the time, because I made the commitment, I feel bound and

00:27:45.100 obligated to follow through with it, which has served me well in a lot of ways. But also I have a hard

00:27:50.500 time letting things go. I have a hard time letting the relationships go that no longer serve its

00:27:57.600 purpose. I have a hard time letting go of even certain activities that I know are not good for

00:28:05.000 me. I have a hard time because I don't know if it's just stubbornness or just loyalty or somewhere

00:28:11.520 in between. I don't know what it is, but that's a really hard thing for me to do. I imagine it is

00:28:15.780 for a lot of other guys as well. For sure. Yeah. And I think it's also partially because we hear

00:28:20.780 this message of like, uh, quitters never win. Winners never quit. Grits, perseverance, all of

00:28:29.060 which is important. And some people need more grit. Some people need more perseverance in their lives,

00:28:33.860 but other people need less in some areas. Like other people need less grit. Other people need to quit

00:28:40.140 things that are no longer working for them because trying to do the same thing over and over again and

00:28:45.580 not succeeding, uh, it's a sign that maybe you shouldn't be doing that thing or a commitment

00:28:51.720 you made to say becoming a lawyer 10 years ago or becoming a financial planner 10 years ago may have

00:28:57.800 been the right commitment and the right choice at the time, but it, it is no longer. Um, and the only

00:29:03.800 way to figure that out is to do that self-reflection that we talked about and also say, look, like that was

00:29:10.300 the right commitment to make at the time. So it's not like you made a mistake, right? Like that was

00:29:15.520 the right decision to make at the time, but you're a different person now and you want to go on a

00:29:21.520 different direction. And there's so much value in honoring that too. I don't, so I've done, I don't

00:29:27.860 know, 440 podcast interviews. I think at this point, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say some

00:29:34.500 people need less grit, but I don't think you're wrong. Like I actually think that's probably it's

00:29:41.240 just hard headedness at some point and it's not helping you and it's not helping other people

00:29:45.620 around you. I'm, I'm processing this as I'm saying it, cause this is, this part of the message is for

00:29:51.300 me. So I'm, I'm processing this right now. So one thing I get hung up on at times is, you know,

00:29:58.940 you hear a lot about self-reflection. You need to reflect, you need to reflect, but, and I agree

00:30:04.420 with that, but I think sometimes it gets stuck in the reflection process. And so cool. You've

00:30:11.240 reflected. Awesome. How do you take that out of your head or off paper and actually apply it in the

00:30:17.780 real world? Yeah. Great question. Um, and I think the next step, so after you've done some self-reflection,

00:30:25.200 the only way to figure out what's going to work and what's not going to work, the only way to

00:30:31.720 figure out whether you're truly going to enjoy something and not enjoy something, it's not doing

00:30:37.600 pros and cons the list. It's not thinking and thinking and thinking it's actually going and

00:30:41.980 doing the thing. Uh, so experimenting like a curious scientist might. So I'll give you an example from my

00:30:47.440 life. When I decided that academia was no longer the path for me, I took a while. Actually, it was

00:30:54.840 probably two years where I experimented with different potential futures. Right. And so, and I'll

00:31:01.200 share with you what I did. So writing and speaking wasn't the first path I picked. Initially, I was

00:31:06.560 like, oh, you know, I'm a law professor. I did really well in law school. Law students really

00:31:11.840 struggle because there's no guidance to them on like how to do well on the finals. Let me create an

00:31:16.920 online course on tailored towards law students on how to succeed on their final exams. Um, did not

00:31:24.760 love putting it together and it didn't find an audience because of failure. It just, you know,

00:31:29.200 a couple of people bought, bought the online course, but it just never took off even though

00:31:33.340 I tried really hard. So that path, that experiment failed. Um, I tried then coaching. Uh, so I was

00:31:40.840 really into productivity at the time. And so I started this coaching business on the side, helping

00:31:45.740 attorneys, uh, who tend to be extremely busy and frantic, get their lives back. So help them be more

00:31:52.700 productive. Also did not enjoy that. Um, I did actually have some clients. I feel like if I had,

00:31:59.360 if the voice inside of me said, oh, great perseverance, you need to keep walking this

00:32:03.640 path because you started it and ignoring the signals coming from within me, which was like,

00:32:09.620 this is not the right path for you. Like talking one-on-one with someone for an hour and then hearing

00:32:15.000 the same problems over and over and over again from the same person. And you can tell they're just not

00:32:20.140 going to change because they're so stuck in their world is not for you. And even though that was

00:32:26.660 relatively successful, I ended up ending that experiment because it was clear it wasn't aligned

00:32:31.920 for me. Uh, so then I tried writing, I started a blog and I had a podcast at the time and I really

00:32:39.460 enjoyed writing. And then an audience started to form. People started to share what I wrote. Uh,

00:32:45.260 and then that grew and grew and grew and eventually culminated in a dream book deal. Uh, the book

00:32:52.100 came out in 2020 and, and did really well. And that gave me freedom to say, okay, like this is

00:32:57.980 the path. This is definitely what I want because I'm alive when I write and speak to people about

00:33:03.320 these topics and there's an audience for them. That experiment succeeded. I now feel comfortable

00:33:08.600 leaving academia and going down this path instead. But I only found that out by actually going out into

00:33:14.540 the real world and, and trying and seeing what works and what doesn't. Yeah, that's powerful.

00:33:19.500 We, you and I actually have a lot of similarities because this podcast was born from another podcast.

00:33:25.160 So people will often say, Oh, you know, Ryan, you have a great podcast and it's been successful and

00:33:29.200 I want to have a successful podcast. I'm like, well, this, this isn't my first go around either.

00:33:33.300 I had another podcast before this, it was called wealth anatomy. And it was a podcast dedicated to

00:33:39.120 giving, uh, medical professionals. Cause that was mostly my clientele, um, financial advice.

00:33:44.960 So it was called wealth anatomy and I did it to build, uh, another marketing component of my business

00:33:51.160 to pick up new clients and realized very, very quickly. I love the medium of podcasting.

00:33:56.840 I didn't love the conversation. So I think I did 20 plus episodes, somewhere right in there

00:34:02.960 and I quit, you know, so to speak and said, okay, well, what did I learn? Well, I learned I like

00:34:09.480 podcasting, so I'd like to keep doing that, but I need to change the conversation. And that's it.

00:34:15.320 That is a moment where, you know, contrary to what I just said a minute ago about quitting,

00:34:19.160 that is a moment where I was wise enough to say, okay, I'm not going to bang my head against the wall.

00:34:24.760 Let's pivot and see what we can do with that. Yeah. I love that example. Uh, and I want to say

00:34:29.640 two things. Number one is you mentioned learning, which is so important, right? So for a failed

00:34:35.960 experiment, it's so important to look back because it's not a waste of time, but you're going to learn

00:34:40.560 and failure is never a waste if you learn something from it. So you're looking, we can look back on a

00:34:45.280 failed experiment and say, like the subject matter wasn't right, but I love podcasting. What a valuable

00:34:50.120 lesson to learn. And then to bring to your, your next thing. Like same for me, the putting together

00:34:55.760 the online course and the coaching program taught me invaluable lessons in copywriting and marketing,

00:35:01.360 which I didn't know anything about beforehand. And I could take that, then apply it to the marketing

00:35:06.420 of my book now and like marketing and my keynotes. Uh, so that mindset of learning and looking back and

00:35:11.540 on failures with that, uh, learning lenses is really, really important. Um, and I forgot the

00:35:19.700 second thing I was going to say, so we'll leave it at that, but yeah, but that's a really important

00:35:24.260 reflective lens. Man, let me step away from that conversation very, very quickly. We'll get back

00:35:29.600 to it in a minute. Um, I told you that I was going to tell you a little bit more about the iron

00:35:32.720 council. We are shutting it down soon. Enrollment that is not the iron council, but enrollment into the

00:35:38.260 iron council. So if you're interested in banding with other incredible men who want to, as I said

00:35:44.060 earlier, fight in this battle of life alongside you, then make sure to join as soon as possible.

00:35:49.980 Look, life is hard at times. It's challenging. And without men in your corner to help you navigate

00:35:55.220 the difficulties of life, you're frankly, you're making it harder than it needs to be. So don't make

00:36:01.780 yourself into a martyr. You don't have to sacrifice yourself on this, this altar of life,

00:36:07.680 rise up against whatever you're dealing with and against also what society claims about men

00:36:13.520 and make yourself into something more. We have the tools, the systems, the frameworks,

00:36:18.980 the network, all of the things that you need to help you do just that. And all it takes is for you

00:36:23.800 to join us, band with us and get yourself in the game with other men who are in this fight with

00:36:28.980 you. You can do that at order of man.com slash iron council. Again, that's order of man.com

00:36:34.920 slash iron council. Do that right after the show, because we are shutting down registration,

00:36:39.080 but for now we'll get back to it with those on. I I'm actually really glad that you use the term

00:36:45.180 failure. And in a couple of times, as you were sharing some of your stories, you said, I failed

00:36:48.540 at that. And, and I already know people on it like, well, you didn't fail because you learned. I'm like,

00:36:53.660 well, you learned, but you also failed. And I think that's okay. It's so strange to me that we have

00:37:00.100 this infatuation with trying to reframe what happened to fit and make ourselves feel more

00:37:05.680 comfortable about it. And so we give failure more weight than it deserves by renaming it something,

00:37:13.260 by changing it to first attempt in learning. No, you failed, which means you did not achieve your

00:37:19.200 objective. That's all it means, right? It's not final. It's not the end. It doesn't mean you're an

00:37:24.100 idiot. It doesn't mean you're less than or unworthy of success. It just means you did not achieve your 1.00

00:37:29.580 objective. Good. Now, what are you going to do? That's it. Exactly. We need to take this concept

00:37:35.300 of failure off of this scary pedestal that we put it on and just realize, yeah, failure is part of life

00:37:40.220 and take your lumps, learn from them, and then do something better next time. Yeah. And if you look

00:37:46.720 across human history, every single breakthrough is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Meaning it goes

00:37:55.000 like this. It's try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, succeed. That's it. That's been my life. It's just

00:38:04.220 a series of trials and failures. And then something will succeed. And I'll double down on that. I'll

00:38:10.700 lean into that. And then once I stop learning and growing, I go doing something else. And the cycle

00:38:17.160 repeats itself, right? Try, fail, try, fail, try, fail, succeed. I think part of the reason why,

00:38:23.140 and this is the other thing that I was going to say that came back, part of the reason why people

00:38:28.780 are afraid of failure is because of comparison to their role models and idols. So someone can look

00:38:37.520 at the podcast you built, Brian, and be really intimidated by that, right? And say like, there's

00:38:43.880 no way I can have the same audience that he has or record 400 plus episodes like he did. But they're

00:38:50.560 comparing your ends to their beginning. Like they're just starting out and not realizing that

00:38:57.260 they took you a really long time to get to where you are. And you had this other podcast before that

00:39:01.720 failed. That didn't work. And then you pivoted. And so people aren't seeing this, especially this

00:39:06.960 day and age where we're seeing curated, perfect portrayals of people's deeply imperfect lives.

00:39:12.800 People aren't seeing the earlier versions, the, you know, the earlier versions of that standup

00:39:18.840 comedy routine that would make, that will like get booze from the audience or like with Awaken Your

00:39:25.180 Genius. Like I, this went through, this is two years of work distilled into 200 pages and it's been

00:39:32.300 edited and edited and edited by several capable hands over and over again. You're seeing the final

00:39:38.300 product, not the earlier versions that would make any self-respecting writer cringe. Um, so I think

00:39:44.260 it's important for people to talk about the failures they've had in their lives and to open up just so

00:39:48.480 people can realize, look, it, it takes a really long time to get here. Uh, and you can't compare where

00:39:54.800 you're beginning with where you are now, Ryan, or where I am as a writer. Um, the, you know, if you've

00:40:01.440 ever seen a, a rocket take off in like the first 60 seconds, it looks like nothing is happening,

00:40:09.280 right? It's like, you're, there's immense thrust, but the rocket is barely moving at like the first

00:40:16.580 minute. It's like barely moving. And so if you look, if you took a snapshot of that, you might

00:40:20.220 think the rocket is going to fail. Like there's no way this thing is going to launch out of the

00:40:24.480 atmosphere, but progress becomes visible only when you zoom out and you see the rocket's trajectory.

00:40:28.660 And so I think at the beginning, things are going to feel hard and heavy because they are heavy.

00:40:35.040 Like you're just starting out now and you're going to have a lot of failures and, uh, you can't

00:40:40.180 compare yourselves to, to rockets that have already achieved escape velocity. You're just starting out.

00:40:45.820 It's just physics. It's just physics. Uh, you know, in addition to that, I would add one more thing to

00:40:51.700 that. You said you're comparing your beginning to somebody else's end. I also think you're comparing

00:40:56.120 your beginning to somebody's inaccurate representation of their current reality.

00:41:01.900 Exactly.

00:41:02.580 You know, people are, people are making for, for this podcast. I already know, uh, because people

00:41:08.280 message me and, and, and I know that their interpretation is that I have things all figured

00:41:11.940 out and that everything is seamless. And you know, I've got the, the, the golden touch, everything I

00:41:17.800 touch turns to gold. And then if you look at just a little bit deeper, like look, look at where I'm

00:41:23.500 podcasting. Like I've, like I've got this white wall, like that outlet is open. Like this is not

00:41:28.440 ideal. Right. And it's not as clean as everybody thinks it is or makes it out to be. And I think it

00:41:35.240 is important that we realize when we're looking around that we're seeing an inaccurate representation

00:41:41.840 of where people are. I think it's good to look at what other people are doing. So you can create

00:41:47.100 some possibility and hope in your mind. But if you're trying to compare your worth or the way you're

00:41:52.560 doing it to somebody else, it is just inaccurate on all fronts.

00:41:57.780 Absolutely. And I think social media has exacerbated that trend because it reduces the

00:42:03.900 distance between you and your idols. And so, as you said, Ryan, not only are you comparing your

00:42:08.760 beginning to someone's end, but you're actually comparing it to someone's inaccurate representation

00:42:12.860 of the end that you're being exposed to over and over and over again. You know, every time you

00:42:18.100 pull up Instagram, you're seeing that inaccurate representation. And so then it's creating this

00:42:23.320 message in your mind of like, oh, like they've got it all figured out. Everything they touch

00:42:27.660 turns to gold. There is no way I can have what they're having. And so one of the things I talk

00:42:33.120 about in the book is I call detox, but really being intentional about what you expose yourself

00:42:39.580 to, the frequency with which you expose yourself to it, social media being one of them. And like,

00:42:47.420 from my perspective, it's not because of, I'm not active on social media. I do have a social media

00:42:53.000 profile, but I just don't post anything. And it's not because of discipline that I figured out like,

00:42:59.460 okay, this isn't, this isn't, I'm going to stop myself from doing this. It's by being aware that

00:43:05.780 anytime I go on Twitter, it makes me neurotic or anytime I go on Facebook, it makes me feel like

00:43:13.680 I'm reliving the worst parts of middle school or like Instagram usually makes me feel less than.

00:43:20.740 And so if you do an experiment and say, okay, like pause this conversation for 10 minutes,

00:43:25.800 go check your favorite sources of distraction and then come back. How do you actually feel like

00:43:31.220 check in with yourself and how do you feel? Do you feel alive and excited and energized or are you

00:43:37.720 feeling this low level stress and anxiety that's like lurking in the background? And in many cases,

00:43:45.140 that's what happens with me. And so knowing that that's going to be the effect of me reaching for

00:43:49.720 my smartphone and scrolling for a half hour, it just becomes easier to dial down and focus your

00:43:57.220 attention on what actually matters. Look, before you said that, I was going to say the exact same

00:44:03.840 thing. I've been a lot less active specifically on, on Instagram is where I spend a lot of my social

00:44:08.540 media time, but I've been a lot less active and I didn't realize how crummy I feel by scrolling

00:44:14.820 through Instagram because I was doing it every day, all day. And because I do it less and some days I

00:44:20.080 don't, yesterday, I don't even think I got on there at all. I do it less. And so I noticed that when I do

00:44:26.060 actually get on social media very quickly, anxiety goes up, comparison goes up. I feel

00:44:33.500 like I'm not accomplishing things. Um, I feel less than all because of this little device that,

00:44:42.200 that we are conditioned to use. And I didn't even know how horrible it was. You know, it's, it's,

00:44:48.280 it's like somebody, uh, not drinking alcohol, you know, they, they drink and they drink and they drink

00:44:53.740 and they drink and they get so accustomed to it. They stop drinking and they go have another drink

00:44:56.980 and they're like, that is horrible. Right? Yeah. It's poison. And the only way that you can realize

00:45:04.040 how horrible it is, is to detox from it for a while because you become accustomed to feeling

00:45:10.480 horrible. And you think, well, this is just life. This is just how people feel. No, it's not normal.

00:45:16.020 You should not feel like that. Something is making you feel like that. And in this case,

00:45:19.700 social media is, is the culprit. Yeah, exactly. And also ask yourself, like when I reach for my

00:45:27.280 smartphone, it's usually because like, what, what am I trying to do? What need am I trying to fulfill?

00:45:33.780 And it's usually some unmet desire for excitement, adventure, novelty, like something that,

00:45:40.560 that I can be, yeah, excited about or, or energized by it. Not only does social media not

00:45:48.280 fulfill those desires, it ends up making you feel worse, but it also means that you're actually not

00:45:54.180 finding healthy sources of excitement and adventure in your life. Like if you could set, if you say,

00:46:00.200 okay, I have this unmet need for adventure and excitement. It's not being fulfilled by social

00:46:05.700 media. It's actually making me feel worse than before. How do I actually fulfill those needs? Like,

00:46:10.520 what can I do with my life to add more excitement and adventure into it? Like what hobbies can I pick up?

00:46:15.480 Where can I travel to? Or maybe it's because the career path you picked isn't no longer the right

00:46:20.340 one for you or wasn't the right one for you from the start. What else can I do with my life?

00:46:24.620 But you end up beginning to ask yourself those questions. Once you realize that you've got these

00:46:29.160 unmet needs, social media isn't filling them. So then you can now go and say, okay, I want to do

00:46:34.640 something else to, to fulfill those needs. Yeah. One of the things that is for me, I think you're right.

00:46:39.780 One of the things I've identified is it's a really nice form of escapism for me. Yeah. You know, I

00:46:45.840 might, I might be having a difficult day or, you know, things aren't working the way I'd like them

00:46:51.380 to in certain areas of my life. And so rather than just addressing those issues correctly in a healthy

00:46:56.980 environment and way, like, let me just zone out here, you know? And so you get on social media and

00:47:03.620 you're like, okay, cool. And then you come back and you realize the problems are worse than when you left

00:47:07.480 them because you never addressed them in the right way. And I've caught myself wondering, man,

00:47:12.140 if I'm trying to escape from my current reality, you know, what is so bad about my life that makes

00:47:18.500 me feel like I have to escape from, and the answer isn't to escape. The answer is to change my life.

00:47:25.080 So I don't feel like I have to escape from it. Yeah. You know, but that takes, that takes work and

00:47:30.580 effort though. I don't, I want to be lazy. For sure. And if you look, and if you do want to be

00:47:37.180 lazy, it can be as simple as, you know, like for me, sometimes it's not that I want to escape my

00:47:42.540 life. It's that like, I've been looking at my computer for the past two hours and I need an

00:47:48.240 escape. And the escape isn't like picking up a smartphone and scrolling through it is not an

00:47:53.000 escape from that. Right. I'm like, I'm looking at another screen. Yeah. Yeah. We're fortunate to

00:47:58.580 live in the woods and we have a hot tub outside. And so the thing I do now for escape is to go walk

00:48:03.520 outside, uh, for, you know, half an hour into the woods, listen to the birds, take in the trees,

00:48:09.220 take in nature, or go sit in my hot tub, you know, no, no audio book, nothing. It's just me and my

00:48:14.660 thoughts and just like breathing in the fresh air, taking in the surroundings. And that is for me an

00:48:21.060 escape. And it's a small one, but man, like I feel so much more energized or going and working out.

00:48:27.040 I feel so much more energized doing that escape than, than the escape that is really not an escape

00:48:33.820 into your smartphone. Yeah. Well, that, that segues nice into what I want to do address. You've

00:48:38.820 got, you've got five, I think five different parts of this book, maybe six, I can't remember right

00:48:43.140 offhand. And, and we've talked a lot about the death, but there was another section that really

00:48:47.860 intrigued me. And that was this concept of the inner journey. Because again, I think a lot of books

00:48:53.220 and information out there is focused on the external, which you do talk about as well.

00:48:57.520 It's like, you know, change your environment, go work out, lose weight, have that difficult

00:49:02.720 conversation, go, go try jujitsu, which is something people make fun of. Cause, cause I say it quite

00:49:07.160 often and, and there's truth to all of that, but at some point you can only change the external so much.

00:49:14.300 And then you're just running around, running away from things when there's some deeper work that needs

00:49:20.420 to be done. So will you talk about what that inner journey looks like and why it's important?

00:49:25.340 Yeah. Um, let me, let me begin that answer with a story that I tell in the book about Johnny Cash.

00:49:34.900 Uh, so in 1954, Johnny Cash walks into the audition room at some records. And at the time he's a nobody,

00:49:41.960 he's like playing gospel songs at night with two of his friends, but his main job is to sell

00:49:46.800 appliances door to door. He's broke his marriages and ruins. And so he walks into the audition room

00:49:52.760 and he picks a gospel song for his audition because that's what he knows best. And in 1954,

00:49:58.240 gospel was all the rage. So everyone else is, everyone else around them is singing gospel.

00:50:03.080 The audition doesn't go as he plans. So as he begins to sing this dreary gospel song,

00:50:08.640 the record label owner, uh, Sam Phillips pretends to be interested for about 20 seconds before

00:50:14.180 interrupting Cash. And he says, we've already heard that song a hundred times, just like that.

00:50:21.980 Just like how you sang it. The song he says is the same Jimmy Davis tune we hear on the radio all day

00:50:27.480 about your peace within and how it's real and how you're going to shout it.

00:50:31.760 He looks at Cash and he says, sing something different. Like sing something real, sing something

00:50:39.380 you felt because that's the kind of song that people want to hear. That's the kind of song

00:50:44.640 that truly saves people. He says, it's got nothing to do with believing in God. It has to do with

00:50:50.220 believing in yourself. And that rant, Joel's Cash out of his conformist, let me sing you some good

00:50:56.520 old gospel attitude. He collects himself. He starts strumming his guitar and he starts playing the

00:51:03.460 Folsom Prison Blues and that deep, distinctive voice of his. And in that moment, he stops trying

00:51:09.880 to become a gospel singer and he becomes Johnny Cash. All because he rejects the tendency to conform,

00:51:18.240 to copy and paste what all the gospel singers are doing. He goes on in this inner journey and pulls

00:51:24.320 out this genius within him that had been waiting to be awakened, which is the Folsom Prison Blues.

00:51:28.980 Um, and most of us wouldn't dare do what he did and did in that audition room, right? Because we're

00:51:34.720 like following the herd makes it safe. Would rather fail collectively singing the same gospel song that

00:51:39.840 everybody else is singing than risk failing individually. Um, so that, I think that's why

00:51:45.240 it's so important. We all have this wisdom within us, this genius within us waiting to be awakened.

00:51:51.040 And if you don't claim your own Folsom Prison Blues, nobody else can. Like that is going to be lost both

00:51:57.100 to you and to the world. And the other part of it is we notice things because of contrast, right? So

00:52:05.540 something stands out because it's different from what surrounds it. If there is no contrast,

00:52:11.680 no anomaly, no fingerprints, no idiosyncrasy, you become invisible. You become the background.

00:52:19.580 Um, it's only by figuring out what your useful idiosyncrasies are, what makes you different

00:52:26.180 in a useful way from other people that you can become extraordinary. Um, and so one of the things

00:52:33.520 that I talk about in that inner journey section is like discovering what those useful idiosyncrasies

00:52:38.900 are for you. Like what are the basic Lego blocks of your talents, interests, and preferences

00:52:45.480 that make you different in a useful way from other people. And that's really hard to do in part because

00:52:52.440 at some point in your life, you were probably shamed for having those differences. And so you'll learn

00:52:59.780 to suppress them, right? So you'll learn to blend into the background. Like what makes you, what makes,

00:53:05.360 what could make you really extraordinary now probably made you weird or different growing up. So you learn

00:53:10.920 to suppress them. You learn to conceal those basic Lego blocks. And so the inner journey is about going

00:53:16.580 back and figuring out what those Lego blocks are so that you can then build yourself, um, in a different

00:53:22.780 way, in a more aligned way from scratch. So one of my, my own basic Lego blocks has been storytelling.

00:53:33.000 You know, ever since I learned how to read and write, I remember, um, getting on my grandfather's

00:53:40.860 old typewriter and I would write stories. I had like started this magazine. I would just sit there

00:53:45.820 and like write screenplays, right. There's actually a typewriter over my shoulder here for that reason

00:53:50.440 to like, remember that, that beginning and that theme, that basic Lego block has been there all along.

00:53:57.220 It's changed ways, like the way I apply it. So as a lawyer, I was telling stories on behalf of my

00:54:02.580 clients. As a law professor, I was teaching these big required first year classes filled with students

00:54:08.200 who didn't want to be in the room. So I had to tell captivating stories to engage them. Now I tell

00:54:13.900 stories as part of my books and like speeches to, to captivate people because we're storytelling

00:54:19.240 creatures. People often remember the story. I like you'll, if you're listening to this, you'll probably

00:54:24.560 remember the Johnny Cash story. You might forget like the principle behind it, but you'll forget,

00:54:29.540 you'll remember the story, which means you'll remember as a result, the, the, the idea behind

00:54:35.020 it. And so the, the way that I create or the recipe has changed over time, but the ingredients

00:54:42.220 storytelling has, has remained the same. So then you can, once you figure out what those

00:54:47.840 Lego blocks are, you can like build different things with it and explore potential futures,

00:54:52.200 which becomes really fun.

00:54:53.200 Are there some ways that you would suggest somebody do that? Because, you know, I think

00:54:59.380 about the success that we've had. I know that, I know that I'm different. Like I know there's

00:55:06.080 something about the way that we're showing up or our messaging or, or something that I'm

00:55:12.020 doing is working. Cause I look around and I see a lot of similar things that aren't having

00:55:15.700 the same level of success that we are. So I know there's something different, but it's

00:55:20.400 hard to put your finger on. I don't, I don't, I can't tell you what it is. I can't say, well,

00:55:24.560 it's because of this. And I don't, I don't know why it is, but I know that it exists.

00:55:29.220 So how does somebody discover that and start to figure out what those, you call them Lego

00:55:32.980 blocks are for themselves?

00:55:35.400 Yeah. Uh, I talk about a number of different ways in the book, but one of them came to mind.

00:55:39.540 So I'm going to share that, uh, you ask other people, uh, you ask other people who know you.

00:55:45.480 And so if you ask me, Ryan, I mean, and we've only had two conversations, what do you think

00:55:52.740 makes me different? Uh, and I can tell you having done probably hundreds of podcast interviews

00:55:58.320 like this, what makes you different is your honesty, your candor, the way you lean in the

00:56:06.340 way you engage. Uh, like I, I, again, I've done so many interviews, but I remember my conversation

00:56:12.180 with you because of that. Um, and so, and that's my perspective and, you know, different members of

00:56:19.200 your audience might have different reasons for tuning in, but asking other people who have engaged

00:56:24.740 with you before, like, what do you think my, what do you think makes me different? What do you think,

00:56:29.380 what am I bringing in here that others aren't, uh, there'll be a mirror for you. So they'll be able

00:56:35.020 to point out what, what you might miss. And so asking your, your, your friends, your, your partner,

00:56:41.580 your significant other, whatever it might be. Uh, that question is a really powerful way of

00:56:45.860 identifying some of those Lego blocks. Yeah, I think it is interesting. You know, um,

00:56:52.640 years ago I was 18 or 19 years old and I was about to go to basic training and I was training with some

00:56:57.960 of my guys in the national guard before we went to basic training. And one of them gave us some really

00:57:02.000 poignant advice for the situation. And he said, just blend in, you don't want to fall behind.

00:57:09.740 You don't want to pull too far ahead. And that's what I did. And, you know, me and a couple of

00:57:15.080 buddies who got that advice and follow that advice were pretty successful with basic training and in

00:57:18.820 the, in the military in general. And I think that's really good advice. If you, if you want to train

00:57:26.680 people to follow orders and to follow the status quo and to look the same as everybody else,

00:57:32.000 and do it all the same way and standardize the process. I think that's really good advice. If

00:57:36.660 that's what you're after. Uh, but I realized very quickly, I don't want to blend in. Yeah. I don't,

00:57:43.020 I don't want to do it like everybody else. I want to stand out. And the reason I want to stand out

00:57:48.080 is because I want to serve people. You know, you go back to the question about what do you want?

00:57:53.240 I've been thinking about that for myself. Like, I've, I don't know that I've ever asked that

00:57:56.700 or answered that. Uh, and I think as you were saying that the thought that came to me was

00:58:01.760 I want to raise righteous and capable kids and I want to help men with their lives.

00:58:11.160 That's it. Like if I take everything else away, that's what I want to do. And there's a lot of

00:58:14.840 ways that I can go about doing that. And a lot of things I need to do for myself in order to be

00:58:18.680 capable of doing that. But I think if you start with that, then you can start thinking about how

00:58:25.580 you're going to do it differently than everybody else and, and go on a different vein. But there's

00:58:30.020 also a problem. I was going to ask you about this. There's also a challenge in that you can blaze your

00:58:35.300 own path. And I think there's value in that, but also there's the concept of not reinventing the

00:58:40.180 wheel. So how do you justify that, that dichotomy? You know, you think about it in,

00:58:45.660 with physics, it's like, okay, well, there are certain principles that we should follow,

00:58:51.600 but we don't know which ones they are and which ones we can bend the rules a little bit on.

00:58:55.680 Right. Yeah. Yeah. True. I think, you know, it all goes back to experimentation. Try it. Right. So

00:59:02.500 you can say, okay, I'm going to, so let's take your example for podcasts were around when you started

00:59:08.800 your podcast. Right. And so you're taking something that's been done before it, or like for me,

00:59:13.180 books have been around for a long time. So I'm going to write a book, but I'm going to do it in a,

00:59:18.340 the medium is there. And I'm going to pick a medium that people have been, you know, using for

00:59:24.460 thousands of years, but I'm going to do it in a different way. I'm going to do it in a slightly

00:59:30.020 different way. That's true to who I am that leans into my useful idiosyncrasies than other books out

00:59:37.040 there. So this book is actually very different than my last one. The chapters are shorter. There's so

00:59:42.980 much more storytelling in the book. There's actually some poetry in the book too, just

00:59:47.660 because I was like, Oh wow. Like I can make this point with a five line poem. That's going to be

00:59:52.640 so clear, so much more easier to understand than a 10,000 word chapter. I could have said to myself,

00:59:58.760 Oh wow. Like you're not supposed to do that. You're not a poet. You're not this and that. I'm like,

01:00:03.100 you know what? That came up. And it resonated with the, like the reviewers of the book. I was like,

01:00:09.260 yep. That's going to end up in the book, even though that's not what the author of a serious

01:00:15.280 nonfiction book is supposed to do. Uh, so you're blending word counts. Yeah, exactly. Uh, you're

01:00:22.780 blending, you're blending it. You're blending, you're taking what's worked before same medium,

01:00:27.060 but you're adding your own voice, your own genius, your own useful idiosyncrasy to it.

01:00:32.420 Yeah. It's powerful. Well, I wanted to ask you about one other concept because this one really

01:00:37.040 resonated with me and it's in the, the, um, the section of the outer journey and you talk about

01:00:41.980 detecting bullshit. Yes. And I think it's important obviously that we detect it and we know what's 0.96

01:00:48.520 real and what isn't in other people, but also in our, in ourselves, because we tend to lie to

01:00:53.440 ourselves. So I'm curious what you say about that. Yeah. Let me begin with the second part first.

01:00:58.660 Uh, so I mentioned, I, you know, I journal on a regular basis when I first started journaling,

01:01:03.960 it was so interesting. I found myself lying to myself. No one else was reading my journal,

01:01:11.400 but going back to your comment of like, for example, reframing failure as something else

01:01:16.340 other than calling it a failure, I would write these curated stories and there were stories

01:01:23.260 about what happened instead of actually telling what happened. Uh, I was fooling myself and Richard

01:01:30.060 Feynman has that quote. I love, he says, the first principle is that you must not fool yourself and

01:01:36.040 you are the easiest person to fool. Uh, it's so easy to lie to yourself and to fool yourself.

01:01:41.600 And so I think one is just, Oh, being aware of that tendency. And then just saying, look,

01:01:47.380 my, this is my private account. I'm going to be brutally honest here. Uh, because I'm doing this

01:01:53.060 for my own sake and the only way that I can learn and grow is if I'm being honest with myself,

01:01:59.080 exactly what I'm thinking, writing it down, no curated account, no one else is going to be

01:02:03.460 reading it. So who cares? Uh, so that, that part of it is, is that, and then in terms of detecting

01:02:08.300 bullshit from external sources and the, the, the tendency to not detect bullshit, to just like hit the

01:02:16.800 retweet button, just reading the headline of something has become so common that you will be 0.99

01:02:24.880 able to see what other people don't see. You'll be able to discover what other people don't discover.

01:02:31.560 If you begin to exercise some curious skepticism in your life. So I call it curious skepticism for a

01:02:38.120 reason because skepticism by itself isn't enough because it's easy to say that's bullshit. Uh, it's 0.99

01:02:45.000 easy to shoot down other people's ideas. It is much harder to exercise skepticism in a more

01:02:50.560 constructive way. And so skeptical curiosity, sort of like acting like a scientist in the world

01:02:57.040 and being open-minded to all ideas, even those that seem wrong or controversial at first

01:03:03.560 and being equally skeptical of them. Um, so what does that look like? I'll give you an example that

01:03:09.600 I also cover in Awaken Your Genius about the, one of the two Mars rovers I worked on. So Opportunity

01:03:15.560 died after over 14 years into its 90 day lifetime. And shortly after it died, a journalist tweeted that

01:03:24.640 the rover's final words were, my battery is low and it's getting dark. So he said, these are the

01:03:32.220 rover's final words and he tweeted it out. Millions of people hit the retweet button, a chorus of media

01:03:39.360 outlets, like published stories about the rover's supposed final transmission, all without pausing,

01:03:47.620 reflecting, bothering to ask, like, how does a remote controlled space robot spit out fully

01:03:53.820 formed English sentences to like tug at people's heartstrings? Uh, and you know what actually the

01:04:00.060 story's false? Uh, what actually happened was at the end of the day, the rover sent a bunch of

01:04:06.080 routine code to earth that reported among other things, the outside light reading and its power

01:04:10.720 levels. And then a journalist who didn't let facts get in the way of a good story, took that random

01:04:16.420 code, a part of that random code, paraphrased it into English and tweeted to the world that these are

01:04:21.260 the rover's final words. Um, so if you are exercising skeptical curiosity, you would read that

01:04:29.860 headline and first of all, click through to the story and ask yourself, like, how does the reporter

01:04:35.920 know what the rover said? And that will lead to additional questions like, well, how does a rover,

01:04:41.660 a Martian rover communicate with earth in the first place? Does it use fully formed English sentences?

01:04:47.200 How do we know what the rover is doing at any moment? And questions like that are guided both by

01:04:53.440 skepticism of the reporter's claim, but more importantly, by curiosity about the underlying truth.

01:04:58.920 Like you're trying to figure out how this thing actually works. And questions like that are going

01:05:03.420 to lead you to places that few other people dare go and reveal gems that few others see.

01:05:10.320 Yeah. I would have assumed that NASA had some AI technology before the rest of us did.

01:05:17.220 You know, their batteries are getting low and that it's getting dark outside.

01:05:22.380 NASA surprisingly is resistant to change in so many ways. And so the computers they're using are,

01:05:28.920 totally outdated. I think they're going to be the last adopters of AI technology.

01:05:34.800 I think that probably happens when you have bloated organizations that don't

01:05:40.540 produce a product on their own, you know? So there's some opportunity for excess, you know,

01:05:50.200 and not changing. So, well, Hey, I've, I've loved this conversation. It's been awesome.

01:05:55.600 Um, I didn't get a chance to read the entire book, but you sent it over to me and I've gone through it.

01:06:00.640 I'm excited now to dig in even more excited than I was previous to our conversation. Uh, why don't

01:06:05.300 you let the guys know where to pick up a copy of the book? I think it's available for pre-order now

01:06:10.340 it's going to be out in the next week or two, and then where to connect with you to learn more about

01:06:13.740 yourself and what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. So the book comes out on April 11th. Um, so it'll be out in

01:06:19.660 about two weeks from when this conversation is released, but if you order it now, if you go over

01:06:24.480 to geniusbook.net, you will be able to, when you pre-order it from that link, you'll be able to get

01:06:32.500 a special bonus. It's a mini video course course with 10 life-changing insights from the book that

01:06:39.520 you can watch in less than 30 minutes. And you'll be able to apply those insights in your life right

01:06:44.140 away. So you can get that by heading over to geniusbook.net. And if you'd like to keep in

01:06:50.060 touch with me, uh, as I said, I'm not active on social media. So the only way to do that is through

01:06:55.080 my email list. I have an email that goes out every Thursday to over 45,000 people. And it shares one

01:07:02.060 big idea that you can read in three minutes or less. And you can sign up for that in one of two ways.

01:07:07.920 Either you can text my first name, O-Z-A-N, Ozan, to 55444, or you can head over to my website,

01:07:17.280 which is ozanvarol.com. So that's O-Z-A-N, V as a vector, A-R-O-L.com. 1.00

01:07:24.460 Excellent. We'll sync it all up. Ozan, I appreciate our conversations and your insight. I'm going to

01:07:29.060 apply a lot of this. I'm going to go back and listen to this one. Not, not only because I like

01:07:32.620 the sound of my own voice, but because there's actually some information in here that I need to go

01:07:36.920 into a little bit deeper and apply in my own life. So I appreciate you. Thanks for joining

01:07:41.760 me again. Yeah. Thank you so much, Ryan, for having me back. Always a pleasure chatting with you.

01:07:46.960 There you go, guys. My conversation with the one and only Ozan Varol. I hope you enjoyed it.

01:07:51.260 I really, really enjoyed my first conversation with him. And when he reached out about his newest book,

01:07:55.900 I thought, man, because I enjoyed that conversation so much, I wanted to have him back on. So I hope

01:08:01.860 you'll pick up a copy of the book. As I said in the interview at the time of the recording,

01:08:05.660 I hadn't read it, but it is an incredible book. I did go through as much as I could before our

01:08:11.420 conversation. And I knew based on his previous works that it would be powerful and it is powerful.

01:08:16.660 So pick up a copy of the book, connect with him on the gram, take a snapshot right now, real quick of,

01:08:22.700 of you listening to this podcast on your phone or wherever you're listening, post it up on,

01:08:27.600 on Instagram, tag me, tag Ozan, let guys know what you're listening to. And then take a look at the

01:08:32.840 iron council. Again, if it's not for you, no worries, but it might be. And if you've been

01:08:36.920 on the fence or don't know what it is, or haven't heard about it and head to order a man.com slash

01:08:41.400 iron council to learn more, watch a quick video and see if it's a good fit for you. I think that

01:08:46.760 it will be, but I'll leave that to you. All right, guys, uh, we'll be back, uh, tomorrow for our

01:08:53.060 asking anything until then go out there, take action, become the man you are meant to be.

01:08:57.940 Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your

01:09:02.060 life 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 - March 28, 2023

OZAN VAROL ｜ Unlock Your Genius

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