Raising Kings: 10 Strategies for Shaping Boys Into Men | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
194.17899
Summary
In this episode of the podcast, Ryan Michler discusses the importance of manhood and how we can all work together to raise our boys to be better men. We need more men in this fight, and we need them in this generation.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart
00:00:05.000
your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.
00:00:10.440
You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who
00:00:17.240
you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
00:00:22.800
you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan
00:00:27.620
Michler, and I am the host and the founder of this podcast and the movement, The Order
00:00:31.180
of Man. I want to welcome you. I've been saying it for years now. We need more men in this
00:00:35.920
fight, and so I'm honored that you'd be tuning in, whether you're listening for the first
00:00:39.060
time or you've been listening for nearly four years now. This is the place. This is the
00:00:43.840
place where you can turn to get any resources and guidance and direction and insight, and
00:00:50.100
specifically with the podcast, the conversations that you feel like you need to be a better
00:00:55.240
father, better husband, better business owner, community leader, whatever facet of life you're
00:00:59.920
showing up as a man, this is the resource for you. And today specifically, I'm not going
00:01:03.840
to be talking about manhood as much as I'm going to be talking about the ability to turn
00:01:09.500
our boys, our young men and our sons into men. I've titled this Raising Kings because it is
00:01:15.540
apparent to me that boys are falling behind on just about every metric. And I had made a post
00:01:21.240
earlier in the week on Instagram or Facebook about somebody that had asked if I was afraid of
00:01:27.760
raising sons in an environment that we see in society, which seems to continually be dismissing
00:01:34.220
masculinity and manliness. And I believe raising our boys effectively. And if I was afraid and I said,
00:01:41.080
you know, I'm not afraid at all. I mean, in the society and in the, in the climate and culture
00:01:45.600
that we have right now. And the way that I think generally society seems to be migrating to the
00:01:51.000
way that they're raising boys is, is my, my sons are going to rule the world. And I said that kind
00:01:57.320
of jokingly, but I can't help believe that there's a lot of validity to that, that there's a lot of
00:02:01.520
truth to that because I feel like I'm, I'm raising them effectively. I feel like I'm teaching
00:02:06.280
them to harness those raw masculine virtues and characteristics that are coursing through their
00:02:12.340
veins. And I think we do our, our boys a huge disservice when we don't teach them how to utilize
00:02:18.740
all that is good and all the potential that they have within them as young men and, and use that for
00:02:24.840
productive outcomes for them, making more money and being able to serve in the community and just
00:02:30.540
living a fulfilling, rewarding life. And I, that's my job. And that's your job. If you are a father to
00:02:37.420
sons, then that is our obligation. Now I'm going to throw this disclaimer out here
00:02:41.480
because I know a lot of people are going to ask about this. I'm going to do a raising Queens
00:02:45.680
version in the next couple of weeks as well. So specifically today, I'm talking about how to
00:02:50.400
raise our boys, how to usher them into manhood, how to shape them into the fine men that we would
00:02:56.160
eventually go on to follow as, as they are hopefully leading us effectively. And I know there's going to
00:03:02.060
be a lot of crossover too. This isn't exclusive to boys, but it is a focus. It is an emphasis on boys.
00:03:07.080
And then again, I'll be doing the raising Queens version here in the next couple of weeks.
00:03:11.720
And also before I get into too much of this, I do want to let you know that we have an experience
00:03:18.180
that's coming up April 11th through the 14th, 2019. And that is designed to help you and your son
00:03:25.220
between the ages of eight to 15 to foster deeper connections and deeper bonds between yourself.
00:03:31.640
And then ultimately give each of you the tools that you will both need in order for him to step
00:03:37.260
from boy into man. So there's a physical, mental, emotional challenges. We go through a code of
00:03:43.980
conduct. We do some, some wilderness survival. We do some personal defense. I mean, there's so many
00:03:51.020
cool activities that we do over the course of three and a half days. All you have to do is get to Las
00:03:56.100
Vegas on April 11th and we take care of the rest. We shuttle you and your son up to our lodge that
00:04:02.940
we've got locked down and we have an unforgettable three days. So if you're interested, make sure you
00:04:08.560
check it out. We only have, I think seven, maybe eight spots left. Just head to order of man.com
00:04:14.040
slash legacy order of man.com slash legacy. You can watch a video, a film from our last event and get a
00:04:22.060
taste of what we're going to do during this event. Although we may have changed some, a few things up
00:04:26.500
to make it even that much more compelling and rewarding for you guys. So again, that's order of
00:04:31.200
man.com slash legacy. So with that said, let me get into this again. We're talking about raising
00:04:37.340
Kings 10 strategies for shaping your boys into men. And I will say a lot of what I talk about and a lot
00:04:44.460
of what I believe, because I am not the definitive authority on the subject. Although this is, this is my
00:04:49.760
world. This is my work. I get a lot of my information from Dr. Leonard Sachs. He wrote
00:04:55.240
two books in particular that I want to share with you is one is a why gender matters. And the other
00:05:00.520
one is called boys adrift. And then the other individual I want to present to you is Dr. Warren
00:05:06.240
Farrell. And he wrote a book titled the boy crisis, and you can go and research those books, read those
00:05:12.680
books. We've had both of these guys on the podcast, great information. So go back, get some of that
00:05:17.580
information. And one of the things that I have noticed in their research and their work is that
00:05:22.220
boys are really falling behind on a lot of, well, really alarming metrics. I mean, if you look at
00:05:28.840
everything from academics to college entry to careers and income to depression and suicide to drug use and
00:05:39.940
criminal activity, it is very, very apparent that boys are continuing to slip further and further and
00:05:47.340
further down as we continue to develop and we continue to grow. And I think a lot of this has
00:05:52.540
to do with the fact that we've gone away from the traditional idea of masculinity, or at least we're
00:05:56.840
moving that route and we're stripping, or maybe I'd say robbing our boys of the opportunities that
00:06:04.040
they need in order to take all of the, the power and the aggression and the competitiveness and
00:06:10.060
potentially even violence and physicality to be able to take that that's coursing through their
00:06:16.160
veins and then harness it, harness it so that they can lead effectively in their families and their
00:06:21.440
businesses and their communities. And they can go on to careers that are meaningful and they can
00:06:26.440
defend themselves and their loved ones against emergency situations, natural disasters, violent
00:06:33.040
encounters. These are the types of things that we're going to eventually call upon our boys to
00:06:38.660
complete, to be able to, to lead us and to take care of us. And unless we're adequately preparing them
00:06:44.300
to do so, uh, I think there will be a day of reckoning, a day of reckoning when they are faced
00:06:50.000
with a task or, or a demand that they can't meet because we've stripped them or robbed them of the
00:06:55.900
opportunity to do that. And that's what this conversation is about today. It's about giving
00:06:59.980
you 10 strategies that you can incorporate as you're raising young men. And this could be a biological
00:07:05.260
son. It could be an adopted or a stepson or a foster child. Maybe it's a nephew or a neighborhood
00:07:12.660
boy or somebody that you're coaching on one of your teams, any situation in which you have some
00:07:18.200
sort of responsibility for lifting young men up. All right. So let's get into this again, 10 steps.
00:07:24.760
And these aren't in any order. Uh, I just wrote these things down as I thought of them. And of
00:07:28.860
course the list isn't exhaustive either. So if you have additional thoughts and ideas, uh, please let
00:07:34.060
me know. I'd love to hear what you have to share. You can do that on Instagram or Twitter, both at
00:07:38.660
Ryan Mickler, very active on those two sources at Ryan Mickler. My last name is spelled M I C H L E R.
00:07:46.200
All right, let's get into this. Number one, uh, foster competition. I mean, look guys, it's, you know,
00:07:52.400
you know, as well as I do that competition is being stripped away. We don't want any little kids to feel
00:07:57.640
bad for losing. And so what do we do? We don't keep score. We don't keep score at all. And we give
00:08:02.080
away participation trophies. And we tell all the kids, whether they performed or didn't perform that
00:08:07.660
they're equal, that they're just as good. And frankly, that's not true. Now that doesn't speak
00:08:13.100
to their worth just because you happen to lose a baseball game or a football game. Doesn't mean
00:08:18.120
that a young man is worth less than another one. But if you're competing, if you're actively trying
00:08:24.800
to get better at something, whether it's competitive sports or a spelling contest or schoolyard games or
00:08:32.440
whatever, then I think it's probably pretty apparent. You would think that we ought to keep
00:08:37.520
score that we ought to track it and that we ought to give our boys the opportunities to
00:08:43.680
learn from that immediate and that instantaneous feedback of the scoreboard. And that's what
00:08:50.160
competition is all about. So you have a lot of people, when I talk about this, they'll say,
00:08:53.440
well, kids really need to learn the game and they really need the help on, on developing these
00:08:57.680
skills. Yes. That is the point of keeping score. The point isn't just the score. The point is to
00:09:04.300
use the score to see, okay, here's where we did well. Here's where we didn't do well. And then of
00:09:09.540
course, fill in the blanks. Now, some guys will say, well, yeah, it takes good coaches to do that.
00:09:14.500
I know that that's exactly what I'm saying. So we, as men need to foster that competition,
00:09:21.700
we need to encourage competition. When, when boys are on their bikes and they're riding around,
00:09:27.760
have them race each other, have them compete against each other. See who can do the most
00:09:31.480
jumping jacks, keep score in, in your sporting outings, whether it's baseball or football or
00:09:36.600
swimming or whatever, keep score. It's really interesting to me because I think inevitably,
00:09:42.520
and just, just inherently young boys, they want to keep score. When I was coaching my,
00:09:49.680
my boys, when they were little, they don't keep score at very young ages. And what was always
00:09:54.360
interesting is, is that after the game was over, even in the leagues that we didn't keep score,
00:09:58.560
the boys would always come up to me and say, who won, who won. I didn't teach them that nobody else
00:10:05.480
taught them that that wasn't societally constructed. They want to know who won. They want to know if
00:10:12.260
they're enough. And if they're not enough, then we, as men have an obligation to teach them why
00:10:17.880
it's not to strip away the potential bad feeling. It's to use the bad feeling losing as feedback to
00:10:24.080
continue to grow and develop. So guys, number one, foster competition. Number two, allow our boys to
00:10:31.040
self-regulate. I think there are so many parents, so many teachers, so many quote unquote authority
00:10:37.420
figures that will not allow boys to self-regulate. And we have this thing about bullying, right? Oh,
00:10:43.660
everything's bullying. If one little kid says the wrong thing to somebody else, then it's bullying.
00:10:48.140
And that person needs to get told on or go to the principal's office or get in trouble or get the
00:10:53.520
parents involved. Look, not everything is bullying. Some of this is just healthy peer pressure. And I
00:10:58.960
realize there's a line, all right? I'm not saying that we shouldn't address some serious issues, but
00:11:03.880
if a little kid is getting pestered or picked on or poked or whatever it may be, like we've really got to
00:11:09.580
ask ourselves, is this bullying or are these boys just self-regulating? Because I know when I was
00:11:15.380
young and I was growing up, there was all kinds of schoolyard antics and little bickerings and back and
00:11:20.620
forth. And I remember getting into a couple of fights. And once those things are done and established on
00:11:25.940
the play yard, it was done. Everybody knew and everybody understood. And I remember one time in
00:11:31.880
particular, I must've been in, I don't know, fifth grade or something. And me and a friend got into a fight
00:11:38.260
and we threw a couple of punches and we were rolling around on the ground. And I think he had
00:11:42.400
a bloody lip and I may have had a bloody nose or whatever. And we got sent to the principal's
00:11:46.560
office and he scolded us. And then he sent us back out on the schoolyard, which is kind of
00:11:50.480
interesting to think about. He didn't send us home. And I remember we were inseparable from that moment
00:11:55.040
on because we established ourselves and we worked out our differences without a whole lot of other
00:12:01.560
outside influence. And I'm not saying that we just let our kids be, you know, Lord of the flies or
00:12:07.380
something. I'm not talking about that, but there are instances where we don't need to swoop in and
00:12:11.840
rescue. We don't need to play Papa or mama bear. We just need to let the boys do what they're going
00:12:17.300
to do within reason and allow them to work out the pecking order, allow them to work out the societal
00:12:23.000
rules that they have that maybe are unwritten or unspoken and just let them figure it out amongst
00:12:29.360
themselves. The, this is how they develop and grow and, and learn how to interact with other
00:12:36.000
individuals. Let them self-regulate. Number three, give them authority. Give them authority. What I
00:12:42.640
mean is give them responsibility. There's all kinds of little things that we can do to give them some
00:12:47.240
sort of responsibility or leadership, whether that's taking care of their room or making dinner
00:12:52.560
one evening or deciding what you want to do over the weekend or, uh, taking care of a pet or whatever.
00:13:00.460
So many different opportunities in life to give our children authority. And I think boys in particular
00:13:06.100
are constantly trying to figure out, especially as they get older, where they fall in the pecking order,
00:13:12.100
where they fall in line societally. And if we can teach them to take on some authority,
00:13:16.780
we can give them some independence and we can allow them to succeed and even allow them to
00:13:22.320
fail in that authority position. We're equipping them. We're giving them the tools. We're letting
00:13:27.000
them have experience with leading, which is ultimately what we want them to do. So if we're
00:13:31.840
spending all of our time keeping our kids down or quote unquote, keeping them in check and eventually
00:13:38.080
crushing their spirit, I mean, how, how assertive are these boys going to be? How, how many opportunities
00:13:44.360
do they actually have real world experience in leading? They don't. And so when they leave the nest and
00:13:50.900
they go out into the college and they go out into their careers and jobs, and they're given authority,
00:13:54.740
they crumble because they've never been exposed to it. And they're so reliant upon other people or
00:14:01.560
somebody else telling them what to do and when to do it and why to do it and how to do it, that they
00:14:06.720
can't operate on their own. So in your household and in your community, look for as many opportunities
00:14:12.600
within reason and based on their maturity level for them to have some authority, for them to have
00:14:18.720
some leadership opportunities and allow them to develop that, allow them to explore that.
00:14:24.320
Number four, encourage roughhousing. Now, a lot of us saw this Gillette video, I don't know,
00:14:31.060
maybe a month or so ago. And one of the things that really struck out to me is this, these dads were at
00:14:36.260
this barbecue and two boys were roughhousing. They're rolling around on the ground and fighting.
00:14:41.340
And the dad who, I mean, let's be honest, the dad isn't like the ideal picture of what a man should
00:14:49.140
be and how he should show up. But the dad swoops in, right? He swoops in to rescue the kids and to
00:14:54.200
save the kids from themselves and says, don't be bad little boys and don't fight. That's not how we
00:14:58.460
solve problems. And it really wasn't obvious to me that they were doing anything wrong, but
00:15:02.760
there is so much energy. You guys know that there is so much energy in little boys. And
00:15:07.980
sometimes roughhousing is exactly what they need to do. They need to fight. They need to roll around.
00:15:13.060
They need to be physical and they need to burn that energy up and they need to develop strength
00:15:16.720
and they need to understand where the lines are and where they are. And they're testing. That's
00:15:20.880
what they're doing. They're testing. And so you tell a little boy to stop rolling around or stop
00:15:25.400
rustling on the ground and you're, you're robbing him. You're robbing him of the opportunity to test
00:15:32.020
himself, to test somebody else, to figure out where he is. And I think this comes back to the
00:15:36.920
competition component as well is to get that feedback of how he needs to improve. There's so
00:15:42.360
much positive benefit that comes from roughhousing. So in my house, we encourage roughhousing. We tell
00:15:49.380
our boys to, to, to duke it out, if you will, to, to fight it out, to roll around. I wrestle with my
00:15:55.100
boys and also my little girl, because there's a bond that's, that's forged there in the wrestling. And
00:16:00.360
there's a lot to be learned from it. Now, from the outside, somebody might look in and say,
00:16:04.320
Oh, well, they shouldn't be physical. This is not the best way to solve problems. Yeah. Maybe,
00:16:09.040
maybe sometimes it isn't, but sometimes it's the exact right thing to do. So encourage roughhousing
00:16:13.980
in the right moments and the right opportunities. I think I'm on number five. Yes. Number five,
00:16:21.280
teach them to protect, provide, and preside. Now, if you've been following us for any amount of time,
00:16:26.580
you know, that's what we're all about here with order of man is our, our tagline, our motto,
00:16:31.360
but frankly, our way of life is to be that of a protector, a provider, and a presider.
00:16:36.240
And if our young men and our boys don't understand that that is ultimately our responsibility and job,
00:16:42.460
and we never talk with them about that, they're going to have a hard time realizing what it is.
00:16:46.540
They should be doing. It's the same reason that a lot of people have so much financial struggle.
00:16:50.880
It's because their parents never told them about money, never taught them about money,
00:16:54.220
and they didn't learn it in the school system. And so they get out into the quote unquote real world
00:16:58.300
where they have bills and they have expenses and they have financial obligations and they don't
00:17:02.420
know how to handle it because nobody ever talked to them about it. Nobody ever told them that they're
00:17:07.440
going to need to protect themselves and others, that the world can be a very dangerous place.
00:17:12.200
They live in this world of, of naiveness, believing that everything's just happy and jolly and people
00:17:17.980
are inherently good. And while I believe some of that, I also believe there's, there's a lot of
00:17:22.640
violence and there's a lot of danger out there as well. So let's be real about that.
00:17:26.460
Let's teach them what it means to provide financially and mentally, emotionally, spiritually
00:17:31.000
for their families. Let's lead by example and talk with our boys about how to do that. And then also
00:17:36.860
to preside. And I just said that leadership, right? To lead with vision and clarity and focus and
00:17:42.980
communication and grit and determination. And then also giving our boys what I said in point number three,
00:17:48.720
some authority so that they can lead and they can learn how to lead effectively and communicate
00:17:53.380
a vision and then help people get to that, that place that others could not have imagined going on
00:17:59.080
their own. So again, teach them to protect, provide, and preside. Next. And I think this is number six
00:18:05.440
is holding them accountable, right? We've got to hold people accountable to what they say,
00:18:12.140
what they do. There has to be consequences to their actions. And gosh, we as a society are so
00:18:18.540
afraid of making anybody feel bad. Oh, heaven forbid a little boy gets his feelings hurt or,
00:18:24.640
or gets in trouble for doing something he shouldn't be doing. Oh, we can't hurt this tender
00:18:29.280
little child. And while we're trying to, to protect this child, what we're doing is we're just bubble
00:18:35.100
wrapping them and, and, and falsely keeping them safe from these threats. And then what it's almost
00:18:42.140
like a, like a wounded animal, right? You have this, this animal, this, this bird, let's say,
00:18:47.040
they're an Eagle and it breaks its wing and somebody finds it out on the ground underneath
00:18:50.280
the tree. And what does that person do? Brings, brings the Eagle inside and, and feeds it out
00:18:55.260
of a little bottle and nurses it back to health, which all sounds really great until it's time to
00:18:59.900
release that Eagle back out into the wild. And then what happens? The thing dies because it came. So
00:19:04.720
became so accustomed to being fed and, and doted on and, and, and having everything without any
00:19:12.560
struggle guys, it's the struggle, you know, this, and maybe I'm preaching to the choir,
00:19:16.380
but it's the struggle. It's the challenge. It's the adversity and the fire that makes us who we are
00:19:22.160
that forges us, that makes us stronger. And that allows us to address these things as they come up.
00:19:27.480
So it's important to hold our, our boys accountable in controlled environments, right? We don't want them
00:19:33.200
to like completely hurt themselves or disable themselves or injure themselves. But if we can hold
00:19:38.020
them accountable and allow them to experience the full weight of their decisions in controlled
00:19:42.460
environments, that adequately prepares them for the day when, when it's not under control,
00:19:47.320
when they are out on their own. And we ask them to, to spread their wings and fly, if you will.
00:19:51.220
So number six, hold them accountable. Number seven, challenge them, challenge them. If they're,
00:19:59.500
if they say something that you don't know, if they understand what they mean, challenge it.
00:20:03.800
What do you mean by that? Explain that. How do you know that question them? See what they know.
00:20:08.020
See what they don't know, but challenge them, push them maybe a little harder than,
00:20:11.840
than they have in the past. This is how we, we prepare them. This is how we harden them. This
00:20:17.280
is how we toughen them up. So when they're saying things that maybe they don't understand,
00:20:22.220
or you don't know if they understand, challenge it. Hey, let me see what you know about that.
00:20:26.820
What do you know about sex? For example, what do you know about money? What do you know about
00:20:33.100
God? What do you believe about God? Like challenge their thought processes.
00:20:38.000
How did you come up to that conclusion? Oh, somebody told you this at school. Well,
00:20:42.060
what do you think? Why do you think that? Is that person right? Is that person wrong?
00:20:45.980
Allow them to be independent thinkers, to think critically about the things that they hear and
00:20:51.040
the things they understand. I know my oldest boy, for example, he's, he's so tenderhearted and,
00:20:56.720
and frankly, a little naiveness comes with that. And so his school teacher will tell some,
00:21:02.140
tell him something, or, or one of his friends will tell him something and he'll just take it,
00:21:05.960
you know, just take it on surface level and just believe it. And I'm constantly challenging him.
00:21:10.160
Well, why do you think he said that? Do you really think that's how it happens? And the more that I
00:21:15.120
have this, this dialogue and this communication with him, the more I'm equipping him to actually
00:21:19.520
question, don't we want that? Don't we want boys who question authority? Not, not to, to buck the
00:21:26.980
system, but to ask if this is really in their best interest and the best interest of the people that
00:21:32.880
they will eventually go on to lead. It's their families and their neighbors and, and their coworkers
00:21:38.440
and the people that they're ultimately going to serve. But you can't do that. If you have a
00:21:42.560
spineless coward who believes everything he says, because he never learned how to be challenged.
00:21:47.120
He never had his thoughts or his ideas challenged. He never had to flush out any of this stuff out.
00:21:52.260
So this takes some time though, because now I'm asking you to have real conversations with your,
00:21:57.280
with your boys, not just how was your day? Oh, it was good. What video game did you play today?
00:22:01.920
No, like really dive deep. What did you learn? Do you believe that's true? Why do you believe
00:22:06.460
that's true? What do you want to learn? These are the types of questions that I think are going to
00:22:11.080
challenge them mentally, but then also to get them to be independent and critical thinkers,
00:22:16.680
which is what I want for my boys. Let's see. We're on number eight, I believe. Yes. Eight is
00:22:23.540
congratulate your boys when they stand up for themselves and others. We had this in,
00:22:29.280
in school a couple of years ago, my oldest got into a little, a little rift, I guess you'd say
00:22:36.360
with somebody else, because he was standing up for another, another kid in school and he got in
00:22:41.300
trouble over it. He got in trouble for fighting or arguing. I don't even remember exactly what he's
00:22:45.000
doing, but he got sent to the principal's office and he was so worried. He was so upset about being
00:22:49.260
sent to the principal's office. And I, when he got home, I said, you know, you don't, you don't need
00:22:53.740
to be upset about that. He's like, I just don't want my teacher, my principal to be mad at me.
00:22:56.920
And I said, you know, they might be, but ultimately do you feel like you did the right thing? And he knew
00:23:01.760
he did because we congratulate, we honor when our boys stand up for themselves. And look, I don't,
00:23:08.900
I don't want my boys to fight. All right. That's, that's not what I'm saying, but in some cases,
00:23:13.740
it's necessary. In some cases, it's necessary to fight or at a minimum, use your words to stand up
00:23:20.300
for yourself. So when my boys stand up to a bully for themselves or for other people, I reward that.
00:23:28.000
I honor that. I respect that. And I let them know how proud I am of doing what they are supposed to be
00:23:34.720
doing as men. I don't want a bunch of cowards. I don't want a bunch of weaklings. I don't want a
00:23:39.640
bunch of submissive, passive little boys who are more worried about getting in trouble with the
00:23:44.880
principal or the teacher than I am, or than they are with, with standing up against, against an enemy,
00:23:52.240
against a foe. So reward when they do the things that you want them to do, this is behavioral
00:23:57.540
psychology, reward, good behavior and, and punish bad behavior. Good behavior is a boy who stands up
00:24:04.480
for himself, takes care of himself. And he does what needs to be done, even though he may have
00:24:08.820
been fearful about doing it. We reward that. Number nine, present opportunities for suffering.
00:24:17.060
Present opportunities for suffering. We do not suffer at all. I mean, you think about if you get
00:24:24.200
cold, you turn the heat on. I can turn my car. I can click a little button and turn my car and have
00:24:28.680
the heater going from inside the house. I don't even need to get into a cold vehicle, which sounds silly.
00:24:33.360
I know, but we do that. If you want food, you go to the grocery store. You don't have to fight for
00:24:37.760
it. You don't have to go hunt. You can have even have it delivered to you. If you want a new book or
00:24:42.540
a new gadget or, or, or, or gizmo, you just order it on Amazon and you have it within 24 hours. I mean,
00:24:49.000
it's crazy and it's, it's a beautiful thing. Look, I'm not complaining about it, but what I am saying
00:24:53.780
is that through the technologies and the advancements of modern time, which are wonderful,
00:24:59.440
we've stripped away any opportunity that we've had for physical, mental, and emotional suffering.
00:25:06.000
And so it's no longer a question of when it will present itself. It's a question of if we're going
00:25:11.500
to voluntarily step into it. And I love doing stuff like this, whether it's taking my boys to go do a
00:25:17.000
workout or going camping when it's cold, so many playing sports when maybe they don't feel like it
00:25:23.440
are going to practice so many opportunities for physical and mental suffering in controlled
00:25:30.260
environments. Again, this is not about putting them in danger or, or harm's way, but it's about
00:25:35.020
presenting suffering opportunities so that they can learn to develop the physical and mental and
00:25:41.520
emotional fortitude to, to suffer through times that are inevitably going to happen. I mean,
00:25:48.340
there's just so many just weenies, wimps who crumble at the slightest sign of adversity because
00:25:55.580
they never had to deal with anything tough. So present opportunities for suffering for your young
00:26:01.040
men. And then the last one, number 10 is show them how to harness their emotions. Show them how to harness
00:26:07.700
their emotions. This is such a sensitive one. And it's just, it's amazing to me how many people have
00:26:18.200
this idea that somehow masculinity is about teaching boys not to cry. It's not about not crying. It's
00:26:26.540
about knowing when to cry and when it's not appropriate. And guess what? Newsflash, it's not
00:26:33.460
always appropriate to cry, especially for boys, especially for men who have things they need to
00:26:39.120
accomplish. And if they're crying or babbling about how difficult or how hard something is, when they're in
00:26:44.600
the middle of a situation, they're not going to be effective. They're not going to be productive.
00:26:49.700
They're not going to lead people effectively in that situation. And so for me, my, I look at my job
00:26:55.060
as a father to my boys is to teach them that, Hey, sometimes you're going to be happy. And sometimes
00:27:00.400
you're going to be sad. And sometimes you're going to, you're going to be jealous. And sometimes you're
00:27:04.720
going to be angry. And sometimes you're going to be joyous. You're going to have a whole range and
00:27:10.020
spectrum of emotions, those things, even what we would consider the negative emotions,
00:27:14.780
they're not there to hinder us. They're actually there to serve us. The American Psychological
00:27:21.400
Association actually says in their recent study about men and masculinity, that the traditional
00:27:28.960
masculine virtue of quote unquote stoicism is somehow harmful or damaging to men. First of all,
00:27:36.000
if that's what they believe, they don't understand what stoicism is. And secondly,
00:27:41.560
even if they understand what it means, I don't think they'd have that same perspective.
00:27:46.220
Stoicism isn't about subduing or suppressing your emotions. It's about focusing on what you can
00:27:53.260
control. It's about utilizing the way that you feel to focus on the things that you can control,
00:27:59.200
as opposed to the things that are outside of your control. And I've used this analogy before. A lot of
00:28:03.900
you guys are familiar with this. Emotions are like the dashboard and the gauges on your vehicle,
00:28:09.940
the odometer and the speedometer and all the fuel gauge, oil temperature and pressure.
00:28:15.460
Those are there to just give you little indicators that things are working correctly the way they
00:28:20.500
should be in the engine or that they're not working correctly. And if they're not working
00:28:24.720
correctly, a little warning light comes on, AKA the emotion and tells you something's off,
00:28:29.880
something's wrong. So you look at it, you read it, you analyze it, and you figure out what needs to
00:28:35.400
be done. You address it accordingly, and then you drive on. So we're not talking about suppressing
00:28:41.140
emotions, but on the flip side, we're not talking about them just to babble around however they'd want
00:28:46.140
to just based on how they feel. It's about utilizing it, understanding the emotion, and then harnessing it
00:28:52.080
to do what needs to be done, to get the job done. So that's it guys. 10. I know you have more. This
00:28:59.240
wasn't an exhaustive list. Let me just go through these things again. Again, it's, I titled this
00:29:03.600
Raising Kings 10 Strategies for Shaping Boys Into Men. Number one, foster competition. Number two,
00:29:11.820
allow them to self-regulate. Number three, give them authority. Four, encourage roughhousing.
00:29:18.400
Five, teach them to protect, provide, and preside. Number six, hold them accountable. Number seven,
00:29:25.600
challenge them. Number eight, congratulate them when they stand up for themselves and others.
00:29:31.640
Number nine, present opportunities for suffering. And the last one, number 10, show them how to harness
00:29:37.640
their emotions. So guys, I will do another podcast in the coming weeks on Raising Queens,
00:29:43.520
because I know a lot of you guys are going to ask how this would apply to daughters. Again,
00:29:48.240
I'm not the expert, but I've got some, I've got some ideas. I've got some insights that I'll share
00:29:51.720
with you. So go out there, guys. Let's, let's raise these boys. It's our obligation as men who
00:29:56.920
have gone before to turn around and help these boys out. And gosh, we know the government's not
00:30:03.100
going to do it. We know the school system's not going to do it. We know that the healthcare system
00:30:07.180
is beginning to turn its back on boys. So it's up to us as it has always been for the men who have
00:30:12.900
gone before to do the work, to carry the load, to shoulder the weight. If you will, I know you're
00:30:18.160
up for it. You wouldn't be listening to this podcast if that weren't the case, but let's go
00:30:21.700
out there and raise Kings. Now, as I, as I part with you today, again, remember we've got our legacy
00:30:27.260
experience, April 11th through the 14th, 2019 is designed for you and your boy between the ages of
00:30:35.920
eight to 15 to foster some deeper bonds, forge some connections, and then ultimately give both
00:30:42.180
you and your son or sons, uh, the tools that they need to thrive in a society, uh, that again,
00:30:48.660
seems to be dismissing masculinity. We're helping to reintroduce that and to harness that, uh, so that
00:30:56.320
they can have the lives that they're capable of having. You can check that out at order of man.com
00:31:00.320
slash legacy. Again, order of man.com slash legacy. All right, guys, I'll let you get going. Uh, until
00:31:06.500
next week, go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening
00:31:12.220
to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you
00:31:17.260
were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.