Small Wins, Big Results | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
187.4183
Summary
In this episode of Friday Field Notes, Ryan discusses the concept of "small wins, big results" and how to apply it to your life and business. He talks about the benefits of taking small steps in your business and personal development, and how you can apply the same mindset in your life.
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.
00:00:10.500
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 Michler.
00:00:27.940
I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. This is your Friday
00:00:33.000
field notes. For better or worse, you get to hear from me and some of the thoughts that have been
00:00:36.740
bouncing around in my brain throughout the week. And one thing I wanted to talk with you about today,
00:00:41.620
and this is going to be maybe a little bit shorter episode than you might be used to on Friday,
00:00:46.180
is this concept of small wins, big results. We're going to talk about what that means. We're going
00:00:52.580
to talk about how to apply that into your life. And we're also going to talk about the mindset
00:00:56.220
that you need to develop in order to secure long-lasting wins within the walls of your home,
00:01:03.960
within your business, your body, and every other facet of life. If you are new and just joining us,
00:01:08.680
this is a podcast designed to help you become a better man. So, we have conversations. We've got
00:01:13.600
resources available. I'm going to share some more of those. We've got events. We've got our exclusive
00:01:18.000
brotherhood, the Iron Council. We've got a lot going on. So, make sure you're subscribed.
00:01:23.720
Make sure you're leaving the ratings and reviews because this is how we grow the movement. This is
00:01:28.800
how we get it out to the masses, the grassroots movements, movement, excuse me. And I want to
00:01:33.520
make sure more men are hearing what it is we have to share and then implementing the tools that we're
00:01:38.920
making available to you. So, let's talk about this. Small wins, big results. Look, here's what I see a lot
00:01:45.240
of guys do. They constantly swing for the fence. They think that winning is defined by the home run,
00:01:53.320
by the grand slam, by the things that are sexy. And so, they're taking these huge, huge leaps that,
00:02:00.680
frankly, they're not qualified to take. I remember when I was playing baseball in high school,
00:02:05.760
you know, our coaches would always talk about the guys who swing for the fences, right? What happens
00:02:10.500
when you swing for the fence? Well, your mechanics break down. That's what happens. When you're
00:02:15.840
constantly trying to take those rips and swing for the fences, the entire mechanic of your swing
00:02:21.140
breaks down and you end up doing more harm than good. And the same thing is true in life. If you've
00:02:29.480
been sitting on the couch for the past 10 or 20 years and all of a sudden you think that in the next
00:02:34.380
two weeks, you're going to go run a marathon, guess what you're doing? You're breaking down
00:02:39.400
all of the form, all of the mechanics. And you know what? You're going to fall short because you're
00:02:44.800
not going to get your ass off the couch by sitting on it for 10 years and then go run that marathon
00:02:48.920
and get it done. It's just not going to happen. And so, not only do you fail in whatever you said
00:02:55.100
your objective was, you also feel guilty. You also feel ashamed. And you put yourself in a lot of times
00:03:03.060
in a worse position mentally than you were before because that's what's sexy, right? That's what sells.
00:03:08.820
That's what you think. That's what you see on social media. Go run the marathon. Go run the Spartan
00:03:13.540
race. Go do this. Go do that. And you're not qualified to do it. Now, look, I'm all for creating
00:03:19.280
goals and desires and ambitions that are a little bit outside of your comfort zone. That's the point.
00:03:24.760
If they were within your comfort zone, then I don't think it'd be worthy of your pursuit necessarily.
00:03:28.840
So, yes, sure. Stretch yourself, but let's not be unrealistic. And I know this sounds a little
00:03:36.200
strange potentially coming from somebody who you could consider in the self-development space,
00:03:42.000
but I was talking with my friend, Andy Frisilla via direct message on Instagram a couple of days ago.
00:03:47.940
And I'm so tired of guys buying into this self-help bull crap that they can do whatever they set out
00:03:59.380
to do immediately and not earn the result, not even work towards the effort. Just go balls to the wall
00:04:06.500
without thinking about how it might or might not work. It's destructive, it's dangerous, and it doesn't
00:04:13.280
work for you. So, what does work? Well, small wins. And that's the mindset shift that you need
00:04:19.060
to have, guys, is you're not going to swing for the fences. What you're going to do, to go back to
00:04:23.720
my baseball analogy, is you're going to work on the mechanics, you're going to swing the bat correctly,
00:04:29.300
and you're going to try to get on base every time you get up to bat. Now, the ironic thing about this
00:04:35.060
is that if you do this correctly, you will end up with more home runs than if you swing for the
00:04:41.520
fence every time. If you break that swing down and you swing correctly and the mechanics are there,
00:04:48.120
you're going to hit line drives, you're going to hit a ball on a rope, and not coincidentally,
00:04:52.340
you're going to hit more baseballs out of the park. That's how it works. So, instead of thinking
00:05:00.720
in your mind that the only thing that counts or the real win is when you hit that sexy home run
00:05:08.760
or you land that huge contract or you finish the Spartan race or the marathon,
00:05:15.360
that's not the win, guys. I mean, it's great. You should be celebrating those things,
00:05:20.760
but I'll tell you how you need to start redefining this. You need to consider that the small wins
00:05:26.660
done on a daily and consistent basis is winning. So, if I wanted to get stronger, for example,
00:05:33.520
and I want to pull a 500-pound deadlift, the win shouldn't be defined by the outcome. The win
00:05:39.140
should be defined by the process, not the results. Guys, the results will take care of themselves
00:05:44.520
if you're doing it correctly. So, I don't want you to beat yourself up if, for example, you're trying
00:05:52.260
to pull 500 pounds and you don't get it. I don't want you to beat yourself up over that. What I would
00:05:57.540
like you to beat yourself up over is the fact that you missed workouts, the fact that you didn't get
00:06:02.720
out of bed on time, the fact that you made up all the excuses why you didn't have to do that or
00:06:07.600
justify why you need a break or whatever it is that you tell yourself or how you justify all the junk
00:06:14.020
food or the alcohol or the drugs or the sedation or whatever it is you're doing that's keeping you
00:06:18.680
from the ultimate result that you desire. That's a loss. So, if this morning you were supposed to get
00:06:25.580
up and get out of bed and not hit snooze and go into the gym and you didn't do that, that's the
00:06:30.840
loss. That's where you lost. It's not in two months when you have to pull that 500 pounds. It's today
00:06:38.580
when you slacked on the small, seemingly insignificant things and you told yourself,
00:06:43.720
it's okay, I can miss today because I can make up for it tomorrow. Well, you can't actually.
00:06:49.280
You can't. You will always be a day behind if you do that. In fact, it'll be worse than that
00:06:54.280
because it compounds. You can never make up for it. Now, that's not to say that we should
00:06:59.880
beat ourselves up over our past mistakes and indiscretions. It just means that you need to
00:07:06.280
fix your consistent schedule now. And that's what I'm advocating for you today is think about what it
00:07:15.760
is that you want to accomplish. It's the 500 pound pole. It's the marathon. It's the fixing the
00:07:21.220
relationship with your wife. It's salvaging relationships with your children. It's starting
00:07:26.000
the business. It's securing the promotion. It's getting a raise. It's getting out of debt.
00:07:30.700
These are the results. Need to focus on them. Need to figure out what they are, but only so we can
00:07:35.940
redefine the win, not as the result again, but as the effort. So, once you have the result,
00:07:42.800
I want to pay off all of my debt, for example. Now, break it down into the strategies that you need to do
00:07:49.420
every single day. And as long as you get up and you're able to check that box and say,
00:07:53.760
I paid a little bit towards debt today, or I drank the amount of water I wanted to drink,
00:07:58.140
or I went to the gym and I worked out, or I had that conversation free of distraction with my wife,
00:08:04.060
or I played catch with my son, or I listened to my daughter tell me stories, or go and I went and
00:08:10.860
watched her dance recital. Those things, if you can quite literally check them off, and by the way,
00:08:16.160
you should be checking them off. You can use our battle planner. I'm grabbing it here. You can use
00:08:23.000
our battle planner. We've got this physical version. You can find that at store.orderman.com,
00:08:29.560
or we've got the digital version, which can be found at 12weekbattleplanner.com, the number 12.
00:08:34.260
So, 12weekbattleplanner.com. And if you write down those small wins, you will begin to experience
00:08:42.760
big results as a natural and inevitable result of the daily tactics, the things that you are doing
00:08:51.720
every single day. And what I want is I want you to write down four things that you are going to
00:08:57.620
accomplish every single day. And I don't know what it is for you because I don't know what your goals
00:09:01.760
are. So, it might be journaling. It might be a deep and distraction-free conversation with your wife,
00:09:09.200
or a date night with her, or paying a certain amount of debt off each and every day.
00:09:15.940
These are the small wins. And what you do is you combine them, you stack them, and it isn't one
00:09:22.200
plus one equals two. It's one times two times 10 times 50. And you have this compounding effect.
00:09:30.120
Guys, stop swinging for the fences. You're setting yourself up for failure. And in my experience,
00:09:35.840
what happens personally, and the men that I've coached and seen, is that they lose steam. They
00:09:41.180
lose traction. They get discouraged. They get frustrated. And then what do they do? They quit.
00:09:47.340
And then after they quit, they revert back to all the same types of activities and things that they
00:09:52.340
were doing before that were producing less than favorable results. Hitting the snooze button,
00:09:57.100
not reading, not working out, not having conversations with their wives,
00:10:01.840
not paying off the debt, not showing up the way they can at work or for their clients.
00:10:08.480
And then they tell themselves, I don't know why. I don't get it. Why is everybody else
00:10:13.720
experiencing results and I'm not? Because you swung for the fence, you missed, and then you got
00:10:18.980
discouraged. So let's be a little bit more realistic. Let's reframe this as the win is the action.
00:10:27.660
It's the thing that you're doing on a daily basis. And it needs to be daily because the consistency
00:10:33.020
of the mechanics of your swing, if we're going with that analogy, is what's going to produce
00:10:37.900
the greatest results over time. Now there's going to be in a disparity initially, but what happens is
00:10:44.940
you start to stack these things up. Let's take the gym, for example. You're going to show up
00:10:49.080
and you're probably not going to see the results that you want immediately. Remember,
00:10:53.540
you spent 10 years eating junk food, not working out and doing this. But what you want is you want
00:10:59.140
in the next two or three days for you to see some sort of tangible result. Well, it took you 10 years
00:11:03.120
to get to this point. It's probably not going to take you two days to get out of it. So we don't
00:11:07.760
define it by the result because that's going to be discouraging. But if you consider a win that I went
00:11:12.680
to the gym today, I went Tuesday, I went Wednesday, I went Thursday, I went Friday, I went Saturday,
00:11:18.020
I went Sunday. Notice I didn't say there was a break in there. And I'm not saying go balls to the wall
00:11:21.840
every day, but you need to be exercising every day. It's the consistency. It's the small wins on a
00:11:27.040
daily basis compounded over time that will inevitably produce the results that you're after.
00:11:31.960
And you will hit more home runs. And that will be sexy. The work isn't always sexy. And that's why
00:11:37.780
guys don't do it. So figure out what the small wins are for you. Start doing them on a daily basis.
00:11:45.120
And it's those small wins over time that are going to produce the big results. All right, guys,
00:11:50.480
with that said, let me give you two resources. I already gave you one. It's the battle planner.
00:11:54.060
So you can go to store.orderofman.com and pick up our battle planning, battle planner,
00:12:00.460
our physical, tangible battle planner. Or you can go to store, excuse me, 12-week battle planner,
00:12:08.480
the number 12, 12-week battle planner.com. And you can pick up the app. So that's number one.
00:12:16.900
Number two is our iron council. This is our exclusive brotherhood. So you can check that out
00:12:22.740
at orderofman.com slash iron council. You're going to get the tools, the resources, and specifically
00:12:29.260
for the month of August, we're talking about accountability. What that means, what that
00:12:34.420
looks like, what you're after, what the guys in the iron council are after, because you're going to be
00:12:38.160
better when you have a system of tools and processes and resources to help you consistently hit
00:12:44.820
these small wins on a daily basis. And the iron council is built to do just that with close to 900
00:12:50.600
other men who are all on the same path as you. You can check that out at orderofman.com slash iron
00:12:56.860
council. All right, guys, stop swinging for the dang fences. It doesn't work. It looks good when you
00:13:03.980
make contact. It looks like garbage when you strike out, which is more likely to happen. Your mechanics
00:13:09.280
break down, you fall apart. You get on base less. You feel like a loser. Instead, small wins. Keep the
00:13:18.240
mechanics. Keep the form. Do those things on a daily basis. The things that most people don't think
00:13:23.680
matter, it matters. Do it and it will serve you better. All right, guys, we'll be back next week.
00:13:30.200
Until then, go out there, take action, build those small wins, and become the man you are meant to be.
00:13:36.020
Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life
00:13:40.720
and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.