Order of Man - Rivers & Swamps ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

00:00:00.000 A swamp of information doesn't just fail to help anything downstream, it actively breeds things

00:00:06.900 that hurt what's near it. And a man, again, with no banks, doesn't just fail to grow,

00:00:12.240 he starts breeding things too. Resentment in your life because you have all the information,

00:00:18.420 but it never gets addressed because you never acted on it. Maybe it's second guessing that

00:00:24.680 never revolves or resolves, I should say, into a decision.

00:00:30.000 Guys, I want you to imagine two bodies of water.

00:00:34.300 I started thinking about this really interesting analogy for how we live our lives

00:00:38.480 and whether or not the information and the inputs that come into our lives

00:00:43.160 are actually utilized and directed towards something meaningful,

00:00:46.120 or do they just sit stagnant, wasting space, attracting mosquitoes?

00:00:52.340 I want you to think about a river, and then I want you to also think about a swamp.

00:00:57.100 Stick with me for a minute on this one, and I think I'll make sense.

00:00:59.500 I hope I do. With those two different bodies of water, it's the same source, right? It's the same

00:01:06.440 rain, same runoff that's feeding them. And one, the river carves through a valley for a hundred

00:01:14.160 miles. It turns a mill. It waters a field. It gives a town even potentially something to build

00:01:23.280 its entire population around but the other a swamp spreads out flat it just stops moving it

00:01:31.900 starts breeding mosquitoes it's just wasted again same water same starting point but the only

00:01:40.560 difference and this is what's very important for us to know between a river and a swamp is that a

00:01:46.740 river has banks if you take those banks off if you spread those banks out or carve them out or

00:01:53.100 push them away off of a river, you don't get more water. You get less of a river, right? That

00:02:01.120 current will disappear. The depth of the river will disappear. And then what's left is the same

00:02:09.180 fresh water, except for now it's shallow and slow and it's not going anywhere. Nothing downstream

00:02:18.520 gets fed anymore, because there is no downstream without banks. There's just this spot where

00:02:24.580 all this water happens to be sitting today doing nothing. And I bring this up. And this is what's

00:02:31.300 important. So this is what I was hoping you'd stick with me on. But I bring this up because

00:02:35.400 I think most men are sitting in a swamp and telling themselves that they have a water problem,

00:02:43.140 right? Or in the analogy, an information problem. Guys, you don't have that information problem.

00:02:49.120 It's not the water or the source. I mean, look at how much you take in on a given week, books and

00:02:55.580 podcasts and sermons, even this one, right? Conversations with men who've got maybe a few

00:03:02.780 more miles on them than you do. It's not a shortage of information. If that were the case,

00:03:09.900 we wouldn't see how overwhelmed and frankly a little sedated most of us are okay most of you

00:03:18.440 I don't know if most of you but a lot of us and I've been this way too Andy Frisilla might call

00:03:24.320 it an information or a learning zombie okay most of you are just drowning in good inputs I mean you

00:03:31.400 could quote everything you can read sermons and quote scriptures that you heard eight months ago

00:03:39.200 that still rattle around in your brain and you know what it's doing nothing same with books

00:03:44.920 everybody's like oh i'm gonna read 100 books this year and then you ask well how many of the books

00:03:50.740 did something for you you actually implement something in your life and usually it's a

00:03:56.320 different story okay that's that's the tell it's it's good information it's good water it's sitting

00:04:02.600 still it's stagnant not doing anything okay you're not short on that input what you're short on

00:04:08.640 potentially, and I've been this way before, is the banks. It's the boundaries. It's what gives

00:04:14.560 direction to the water, to the information. And the banks are the whole reason it has that

00:04:22.360 direction. They're not holding the water back out of spite. They're not the enemy of the water,

00:04:29.280 right? Sometimes people will say, well, when I put in boundaries in place or I'm disciplined that

00:04:33.560 somehow it hinders me. No, it's the reason the water becomes useful instead of just being there.

00:04:40.960 Okay, direction is what banks give you. And direction is what turns that water into

00:04:47.080 quite honestly, a powerful force instead of just a puddle or something. And again, when most guys

00:04:54.720 hear the word boundaries, they tend to think of it as a therapy word. It's like something you say

00:05:01.200 when you're protecting your feelings from your wife or your mother-in-law.

00:05:05.840 And that's not what I'm talking about.

00:05:08.140 If you implement boundaries done right, it isn't a wall to keep things out.

00:05:14.300 It's the barriers to build.

00:05:16.600 So the good things that you already have don't just spread out and die when they land.

00:05:24.420 Banks are not restrictions.

00:05:27.740 Banks are what make the water go somewhere on purpose.

00:05:30.420 and think about what a swamp actually is like mechanically what it is it's not water that's

00:05:36.920 absent it's water with nowhere to go it spreads because nothing is there telling it where the edge

00:05:44.600 of this water is and the wider it spreads the shallower it gets and the shallower it gets

00:05:50.880 the warmer it gets the warmer it gets the fastest fast faster things start rotting in it

00:05:57.460 okay a swamp isn't dangerous because it lacks water just like you're not dangerous because you

00:06:03.660 lack information you don't it's because you lack direction and stagnant things if you leave alone

00:06:12.140 long enough always start to rot away and and breed something bacteria mosquitoes the most horrible

00:06:20.000 things on this earth that's a man with no banks okay again he's not short on knowledge or conviction

00:06:26.460 or good intention. We all have all of that, right? You have knowledge. You listen to this podcast

00:06:32.440 every week. You have conviction. You have strong beliefs in what you stand for. You have good

00:06:36.700 intention. You want to be a good and decent human being. But if you spread that out over a hundred

00:06:42.100 acres, a thousand acres, just an inch deep, just warming up, just starting to smell and rot,

00:06:48.100 that that's a problem so guys listen to something that should change how you lead your family

00:06:56.760 and then it just sits there for a week and it just evaporates i mean again how many books have

00:07:02.340 we read where you've just forgotten more information than you ever read you you read

00:07:09.840 something that should change how you handle your money not just for the sake of reading

00:07:14.340 and then by the following tuesday you're back into the same habits you're making the same

00:07:19.960 dumb financial decisions because the the end the insight had nowhere to run it had no direction to

00:07:26.340 it i hear this all the time guys will say well ryan how do you how do you retain the information

00:07:30.880 that you read in books well number one i don't read as many as i used to because reading isn't

00:07:36.560 the goal in and of itself it's the the knowledge that i'm gaining and more importantly the wisdom

00:07:44.140 to apply it appropriately. If you're just sitting on that information, it's just pulled up

00:07:51.020 next to all the other insights, next to all the other podcasts, next to all the other books on

00:07:55.680 your nightstand, next to the Bible that's not cracked open. It's just a collection. It's a

00:08:00.720 library that's just collecting dust. You know who I'm talking about. It might even be you some days.

00:08:08.820 I know I have. And the problem was never that I hadn't heard something that was true. The problem was I hadn't built anything for the truth to run through it. And here's the part that I think should bother you maybe, probably more than it does.

00:08:28.240 a swamp of information doesn't just fail to help anything downstream. It actively breeds things

00:08:37.020 that hurt what's near it, disease, mosquitoes. And that's not a metaphor I'm reaching for.

00:08:44.440 That's just what stagnant water does over time. And a man, again, with no banks doesn't just

00:08:50.180 fail to grow. He starts breeding things too. Resentment in your life because you have all

00:08:56.720 the information but it never gets addressed because you you never acted on it maybe it's

00:09:03.820 second guessing that that never revolves or resolves i should say into a decision it's this

00:09:10.600 like low grade under the surface irritability that might show up when you're at the dinner

00:09:17.980 table trying to be there for your wife and kids the the reason or the problem isn't at the dinner

00:09:25.340 table it's the reason is upstream it's that water that's been sitting too long a river again doesn't

00:09:32.600 have that problem it's not because it's smarter or more motivated or more disciplined in some weird

00:09:38.440 sense we often say that the reason that guy is successful is because he's better connected or

00:09:43.640 the reason he's successful is because he got lucky or this guy was successful because he had more

00:09:48.680 money or this guy and then fill in the blank with your your justification of choice it's not that he

00:09:57.320 was smarter or more connected it's that he put it into practice he put it into work he turned

00:10:07.240 information knowledge into wisdom so if you're a man who's honestly evaluating yourself right now

00:10:18.400 and you're finding a swamp in your life instead of a river,

00:10:23.320 the fix was never to consume less necessarily.

00:10:28.840 Cutting off the rain doesn't turn a swamp into a river.

00:10:32.520 You could stop every podcast, you could close every single book,

00:10:35.820 and you just have a little bit of a smaller swamp.

00:10:39.480 The fix is building the edges in your life

00:10:42.300 that give you what you already have somewhere to go.

00:10:44.660 And I have three ways that you can start doing that this week.

00:10:49.360 Okay, so number one is, I don't know if you want to call it a 24-hour rule or a 48-hour rule,

00:10:56.160 but I have a 48-hour rule on anything that moves me.

00:11:00.940 When something that I hear actually lands, whether it's on a podcast or in a book or on a billboard, whatever,

00:11:10.100 if you know it's true and you know it applies to you then you have 48 hours to convert it into one

00:11:18.420 specific action or you just let it go not hey i need to think about this more i'm talking about

00:11:25.840 one visible action inside of a two-day window and that's that's a bank it stops that insight

00:11:34.040 from spreading out and evaporating and not being used and it forces that information to start

00:11:39.620 carving a channel into your life. Okay, so that's number one, 48-hour rule. Number two,

00:11:49.660 I want you to pick one person in your life who gets to ask you if you did it, if you actually

00:11:56.320 did that 48-hour rule. Not like a general accountability group that you check in when

00:12:02.080 it's convenient, but I'm saying one man by name who has standing permission to ask you next week

00:12:08.460 whether you actually did the thing that you said this thing was going to change.

00:12:15.420 Right? A river doesn't sit there and argue with its banks. If a man has that permission to hold

00:12:21.640 you to the edge, you'll stay in it a lot more and a lot more often than maybe you would if you just

00:12:27.520 went on your own word. And if you don't have that kind of man in your life who do that, build it.

00:12:34.200 I've talked about this at length.

00:12:35.680 Go to the gym, go to the chamber, go to Rotary,

00:12:39.240 go to business functions, join networking groups,

00:12:43.060 join accountability groups, join a brotherhood

00:12:45.180 like the Iron Council.

00:12:46.480 But you can find men who will do this

00:12:48.520 and you're gonna create the bank

00:12:49.800 to actually apply the information.

00:12:51.840 It's what we do every day in the Iron Council.

00:12:54.400 Okay, the last thing, and I'll leave you with this.

00:12:58.540 I want you to cap your inputs

00:13:00.440 before you raise your outputs so if you're taking in more than you're building or teaching or fixing

00:13:10.300 or leading in a given week you you don't need a new podcast okay we have this horrible thing

00:13:18.800 that i think has been exacerbated by technology and the internet and just the ease of modernity

00:13:26.600 where we have just become these consuming monsters, consume, consume, consume, consume.

00:13:34.180 And I've often said, you guys have heard me say this, that a boy becomes a man when he learns to

00:13:41.920 produce more than he consumes. So I'm not telling you to not consume. I'm telling you to outpace

00:13:47.740 your consumption with production. Okay, you need to go close the tab down and build something.

00:13:54.880 That's why we often hear like go touch grass

00:13:57.500 or a phrase that I hear that resonates with me

00:14:01.420 is being too online.

00:14:04.260 You're getting caught in these screens and devices

00:14:06.960 and you're not actually doing anything with it.

00:14:09.860 So stop consumption for a little bit.

00:14:14.020 You are gonna be overwhelmed.

00:14:17.980 And eventually if you consume too much,

00:14:20.280 the water is gonna overflow over the banks.

00:14:22.700 we had that happen here in southern utah just in the the past um past week or so massive flooding

00:14:31.580 in southern utah where i live and there was just too much water right so the banks couldn't hold

00:14:37.680 the water came over the edge and ruined roads and fields and people's homes so that's a risk

00:14:46.540 if you're just consume consume consume consume and the banks can't hold it okay none of this

00:14:52.460 is complicated and none of what you're doing in life requires more information than i think you

00:14:58.280 already have and that's the that's the trick and the trap is that we think oh the next book will

00:15:06.260 teach me the next podcast i listen to the next event that i go to the next the next the next the

00:15:13.940 next well you've been to all of them and life isn't changing so what's the problem okay so

00:15:21.220 please stop waiting on a better book or a sharper podcast or a smarter man to tell you the next

00:15:28.860 thing that you already know you should be doing okay build those edges for the water that's

00:15:35.180 already sitting there again we don't need more rain it just creates a problem and that's where

00:15:42.920 the resentment and the frustration and everything else comes in so focus on those things guys

00:15:49.380 i want you like a river to feed everything downstream of the water when you read the book

00:15:56.540 i want it to be productive i want you to learn about money and now you're making smarter financial

00:16:02.620 decisions and you're paying off debt or bedros coolian a friend of mine often says that he he

00:16:09.960 believes every man has a moral duty and responsibility to build as much wealth as he

00:16:15.340 possibly can. And that's a little counterintuitive for a lot of people. But I think it's true,

00:16:21.340 because if we have more wealth and abundance, then isn't what's downstream of us going to be

00:16:27.100 fed more properly? Because we're actually going to be able to water the people and the projects

00:16:33.100 and the businesses that we want to help and build. Your wife's going to be served by it, your kids,

00:16:38.600 the men who are watching how you carry yourself, whether they say it or not,

00:16:41.680 build those banks guys let the water move and uh i hope that makes sense i hope i didn't ramble

00:16:47.740 too much it was kind of an interesting concept and analogy that i got thinking about especially

00:16:53.040 with the flooding that was happening here in southern utah moving water is good it's powerful

00:16:57.360 it uh creates energy it it um it helps feed people um it keeps us hydrated it helps us build

00:17:06.700 we just need somewhere for it to go and so do you you need somewhere for that that information to go

00:17:12.020 to so guys if something uh landed with you on this podcast if it resonated with you don't let

00:17:17.560 it sit that's the whole lesson today um take it into the iron council um put it that put it in

00:17:23.320 front of men who will hold you to it have that accountability like i talked about and build that

00:17:27.640 bank before that water goes flat again if you guys are interested in knowing more about these

00:17:32.420 concepts and some of the things that i'm sharing you could do one of two things you can check out

00:17:36.060 the iron council at order of man.com slash iron council, uh, or second, you can go to order of

00:17:42.960 man.com slash war room. Every single month, uh, we will be hosting a war room where we actually

00:17:49.680 share meaningful insight into lessons like this, but we do it all together. It's completely free.

00:17:57.760 Uh, we've had, I think the last one, 150 something people registered for that. So

00:18:02.520 very excited about the opportunities and actually taking my advice and putting this information

00:18:09.300 and knowledge into direction. So guys, we'll be back next week for our interview. Until then,

00:18:15.320 go out there, take action, build the banks, and become the man you are meant to be.

00:18:20.500 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your

00:18:24.820 life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

00:18:32.520 Thank you.

Order of Man - August 21, 2026

Rivers & Swamps ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

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