Order of Man - The Ancient Secret to Modern Discipline

00:00:00.000 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart

00:00:04.980 your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:10.420 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who

00:00:17.220 you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,

00:00:22.780 you can call yourself a man.

00:00:24.700 man i want you to think about the last time that you broke a promise to yourself it may not have

00:00:31.080 been dramatic maybe nobody else even noticed but the odds are is that you noticed you said you're

00:00:38.800 going to wake up at five and instead you hit the snooze you said you weren't going to drink this

00:00:44.040 weekend and you did you said that you were done with that relationship or that job or that habit

00:00:51.780 And then one text later, one bad day, one weak moment, and there you were into the same habits that you were before, right back at the starting line, over and over and over again.

00:01:04.480 Now, here's the question that most men will ask themselves after something like that.

00:01:09.540 They'll say, what's wrong with me?

00:01:11.720 Why can't I just get this right?

00:01:13.840 Or why can't I just be disciplined?

00:01:16.300 And I'm going to tell you today that I think you're asking the wrong question.

00:01:20.340 because the problem, it's rarely discipline. The problem is design. You're trying to fight

00:01:28.120 a battle in a moment of weakness that should have been decided long before the battle even started.

00:01:38.440 You are trusting a potentially weaker, more compromised, more tired, stress-tempted,

00:01:47.480 emotionally compromised version of yourself to make the same good decision that you made when

00:01:54.180 you were level and clear headed and motivated. And that is not a strategy. That's hope. And hope,

00:02:05.660 as we know, is not a plan. And the man I want to introduce you today, he understood this.

00:02:11.260 He was a warrior, a king, and one of the most strategically intelligent men in the history

00:02:18.880 of literature.

00:02:20.640 And over 3,000 years ago, he solved this exact same problem, not with more willpower, not

00:02:28.340 with more motivation, but with a very simple, ruthless act of what I would call pre-commitment.

00:02:37.300 His solution has a name now.

00:02:39.340 It's actually called the Ulysses Pact.

00:02:41.260 And by the end of the discussion today, you're going to know exactly how to use that in your

00:02:46.660 life. So here's the story. It comes from Homer's The Odyssey, and it's obviously one of the oldest

00:02:53.220 pieces of literature in the Western world. If I remember correctly, it was written somewhere

00:02:58.080 around the 8th century BC, but the man at the center of it, Odysseus, the Romans called him

00:03:05.900 Ulysses, Latin for Odysseus, is the kind of character that he doesn't age, right? He's

00:03:11.040 timeless. He's not necessarily the strongest warrior in the story. He's not the fastest or

00:03:17.100 the most powerful, but what makes Odysseus legendary is his mind and how to use his mind

00:03:23.380 effectively to accomplish what he wants to accomplish. So after 10 brutal and devastating

00:03:30.160 years fighting in the trojan war uh odysseus and his crew are finally sailing home and what should 0.95

00:03:37.700 be a return trip turns into a 10-year odyssey of its own it's storms and it's monsters and god's

00:03:45.380 working against him all the things that we have to deal with in different form today and plenty

00:03:49.980 of men of course dying along the way but there's one stretch of water that every single sailor in

00:03:56.240 that world feared above everything else and they were the sirens. The sirens weren't monsters as

00:04:04.260 you might know in the traditional sense anyways but they were creatures I guess you could say

00:04:10.040 half woman half bird by some accounts and they sat on this rocky island and they just sang and

00:04:18.420 tempted sailors and men and the song it was it was perfect it was everything that a man wanted to hear

00:04:27.500 it called to something deep inside them it told men whatever they were that whatever you were

00:04:36.680 searching for whatever you needed whatever you lost it was right there on those rocks with the

00:04:41.580 sirens just beyond those rocks all you had to do was get there and so every ship came near

00:04:48.220 and they wrecked and it's and it's not because the sailors were cowards and it's not because

00:04:55.220 they were undisciplined the same way that you might scrutinize modern men today but because

00:05:02.080 once they heard that music all rationality left the building and how often do we hear this story

00:05:08.960 whether it's tempted by a woman or tempted by alcohol or substance abuse men would grab the

00:05:16.820 helm. They'd tear it away from whoever was steering, and they would drive the ship straight 0.89

00:05:24.020 into the rocks, in a way, self-sabotaging themselves. Again, it's a story as old as man

00:05:30.240 himself. Men would throw themselves overboard. They'd swim towards the sound. They'd do whatever

00:05:36.200 they could to get to that sound, and they could not stop themselves. And you see it in yourself

00:05:42.180 when you self-sabotage, you blow up a relationship. You make choices that you know are not the best

00:05:48.600 choices for you. You're tempted to be weak or lazy or immediate gratification. And what's

00:05:57.060 interesting is the sirens, they weren't killing weak men. They were killing all men, every man,

00:06:04.280 because every man is tempted by something. And Odysseus knew this. He'd been warned about it.

00:06:11.480 and here's where his intelligence i think separates him from all the other captains

00:06:19.000 whoever sailed that route and drove their ships right into the rocks he didn't try to just simply

00:06:24.160 resist the temptation he didn't try to willpower his way through it in the moment he didn't just

00:06:31.100 say i'm strong enough i'll just hold the wheel tighter he didn't stuff his ears excuse me he did

00:06:36.500 stuff his ears with wax and pretend that he wasn't curious. He actually wanted to hear the song.

00:06:45.600 He just knew that he couldn't trust himself once he did. And have you ever felt the same way?

00:06:52.560 Again, tempted by a woman, a toxic relationship, substance abuse, bad habits, poor decisions.

00:07:01.840 So before Odysseus' ship even got close to that water, he made a decision because he knew once he got close, he wouldn't be able to make the decision.

00:07:12.400 So he ordered his crew to tie him with rope to the mast.

00:07:18.060 They bound his arms.

00:07:19.640 They tied the ropes.

00:07:20.660 There's no slack.

00:07:22.240 And he stuffed their ears.

00:07:24.200 So he didn't stuff his ears.

00:07:25.440 He stuffed their ears with wax.

00:07:28.400 so the song couldn't reach them and then he gave them one very important almost iconic order

00:07:37.320 and you probably have heard this that no matter what i say once the music starts no matter if i

00:07:44.060 beg if i command you to if i threaten your families you do not untie me and not until

00:07:52.040 we're past the rocks and his crew they they followed the order and those sirens like they

00:07:57.840 had before, all the temptations that the men are dealt with. And that's just a representation of

00:08:01.640 temptation, right? So all the temptations that the men had to hear and deal with,

00:08:07.220 they were there, they were present. And Odysseus lost his mind, just like every other man who'd

00:08:15.760 ever heard them. He screamed at his guys to let him lose. He cried. He ordered the men to release

00:08:23.400 him. He was furious and frankly, he was irrational. And we get like that, right? When we see what we

00:08:29.240 want, we become irrational. And he was in that moment completely, totally compromised, but his

00:08:38.840 crew held the line and they sailed through. And that act, making that binding decision, so to

00:08:46.640 speak in his rational state to protect him from his irrational state is the same thing that we

00:08:54.540 men can adopt today in order to ensure that in hard times or in times of temptation and weakness

00:09:01.440 that we can hold the line that we can do what we said we wanted to do and that's what behavioral

00:09:09.400 economics uh economists uh and psychologists even now call what what i said earlier is the

00:09:16.100 Ulysses contract or the Ulysses pact. It's, it's a pre commitment strategy. And the principle is

00:09:23.200 very, very simple. The, the version of you, this is the principle that the version of you

00:09:29.140 who makes the decision should not be the same version of you who's in the middle of the crisis.

00:09:37.520 So if you think about what Odysseus did, he made the right call on a calm sea before that song

00:09:43.440 even started because he knew that once it did, he wasn't the right man to be making the call

00:09:50.560 anymore. Again, I don't, I don't consider that weakness. Although a lot of men would say,

00:09:55.740 if you can't just resist temptation, you're weak. No, it's, it's not weakness. It's actually

00:10:00.400 wisdom. And most men have never applied it to a single area of their lives. And, and here's why

00:10:08.600 men, why they struggle without it. And we don't, I don't think we talk enough about this in men's

00:10:16.960 spaces. Willpower is not a virtue when, when you can store it up or that you can store up 0.76

00:10:24.740 indefinitely. It's, it's a resource. It's a finite resource. It depletes your willpower will

00:10:29.700 deplete over time and throughout the day. And it depletes the fastest, probably when you need it

00:10:37.020 the most. It's under stress. It's under pressure. It's under the deadline. It's under emotional

00:10:41.760 weight. It's when you're tired or impatient or angry, or maybe when you're feeling lonely,

00:10:46.920 when the easy option is right in front of you. It's like hitting that easy button.

00:10:53.880 That's when your willpower is depleted. And the science backs this up. When we are under

00:10:59.560 emotional load, our prefrontal cortex, that's the rational decision-making center of the brain,

00:11:05.800 it just goes haywire it goes offline and and what's called the limbic system kicks in it takes

00:11:13.160 over and it doesn't care about your goals it doesn't care about your wife or your kids or

00:11:19.140 your mission or your ambitions or your objectives or even the man that you're actually trying to

00:11:24.020 become down the road it cares about relief right now it just wants to feel better it wants what

00:11:30.540 it's after. And that's why we're tempted by sex and alcohol and drugs and pornography and gambling

00:11:38.560 and gluttony and binge watching the latest Netflix series because it gives us relief.

00:11:46.700 So the man who's relying purely on in the power, in the moment willpower, he's, he's playing a

00:11:53.620 game that he can't win. He might do it temporarily, but he won't do it indefinitely because that

00:11:58.920 moment that he needs the discipline is, is the moment that his brain is actually least

00:12:06.860 equipped to supply it. And so here's what makes it worse. And this is, this is devious. It's

00:12:12.420 unfortunate, but it is most men compound the problem by then adding a bunch of shame to the

00:12:19.000 equation. You know, they break the standard, right? And then they beat themselves up and then

00:12:23.420 they recommit with even more just emotional intensity, but they don't have any structural

00:12:30.280 change. And then they break it again. And the cycle repeats itself over and over and slowly

00:12:36.700 men stop trusting themselves. And I want you to ask if that's you, are you the kind of man who

00:12:43.100 has stopped trusting yourself? Not because you're bad, but because you've been trying to solve

00:12:49.900 what I think is a design or functionality problem with just effort, right? It's that

00:12:56.620 whole thing of just do it harder. Well, if you're doing the wrong thing harder without structural

00:13:02.080 or design change, you're just going to achieve failure faster. And this psychological phenomenon

00:13:10.400 called again, the Ulysses pact is the design or structural solution. So let's, let's bring this

00:13:17.060 out of the realm of myth and lore and put it somewhere where you'll recognize and ask yourself

00:13:23.420 if you've, if this falls in line with the way you felt about, about your situation, about your life

00:13:29.300 at some point. So let's do scenario one. Let's assume it's a man who's rebuilding his finances.

00:13:36.140 So you've got credit card debt and you know it, you've done all the math behind it. You've seen

00:13:42.320 it. It's not flattering. It's not fun to talk about, but you've made a commitment to stop

00:13:48.100 spending money that you don't have. And for three weeks, you do it. You're solid. You knock it out

00:13:55.780 of the park. You're budgeting. You're tracking your expenses. You're working with your wife.

00:14:01.160 And then Sunday comes around and all the guys are going to go out and there's a deal on something

00:14:07.220 that you've been wanting. Maybe it's a new computer, a new toy or a new gun or a new knife

00:14:11.240 or whatever. And, and your mood is low, right? Like you're, you're tired from the week or maybe

00:14:18.540 you're exhausted or maybe you're frustrated. Maybe you, you and your wife got into a fight.

00:14:22.240 Maybe you're dealing with something with your kids. And so you're compromised emotionally.

00:14:26.460 And that, uh, that retail therapy, so to speak is calling. And then what our brains do is we

00:14:32.360 start negotiating or rationalizing. Well, I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to buy this one

00:14:37.200 thing. I've been good. I've been good. I deserve it. I'll make it up next month. If you have no

00:14:43.820 pact, then you're just relying on willpower. You're probably going to spend that money

00:14:49.300 because again, that version of you on that Saturday is not the right guy to be making

00:14:58.080 financial decisions, but the Ulysses pact, it looks like this. So I'll give you an example

00:15:03.640 on on a sunday morning when you're calm and you're clear and you're level-headed and you're rested

00:15:11.100 maybe you sit down and you write four categories of spending and you just put your your discretionary

00:15:18.700 cash your extra money into a completely separate account and and you can give your wife or maybe a

00:15:27.200 friend, an accountability partner, the ability to actually see your purchases. So you remove the

00:15:33.960 credit card from your wallet, you lock it up somewhere, it's where it's inconvenient, you give

00:15:38.240 it to your wife, or even cut it up if you have to. And then you write down, down the rule, the pact

00:15:46.300 outside of these four categories, the answer is no, it's not maybe it's not in this circumstance

00:15:53.400 is just no, if it falls outside of these categories, it will not be spending on these

00:16:00.740 things. And then you let other people see it. Now you made that decision in, in what Odysseus's

00:16:08.000 calm sea would look like. So when Saturday night rolls around and those sirens, the temptation

00:16:15.100 starts singing, there's, there's nothing to negotiate. You can't even do it if you, if you

00:16:20.480 wanted to. The decision was, was already made by a better version of yourself. All right. So that's

00:16:29.100 the financial scenario. Let's take, um, let's take a drinking scenario and, and maybe you're,

00:16:37.000 maybe you're drinking a little too much and you're not in denial. You know, you drink too much.

00:16:41.220 I knew I was drinking too much and you've made a promise to yourself a hundred times. It's my last

00:16:45.800 drink, my last drink, my last drink. Tomorrow's my last drink. Saturday's my last drink. I'm never

00:16:49.160 going to do it. And you actually mean it. That's the hard part. Every single time you say, I'm

00:16:53.160 going to stop drinking, you actually mean it. But what happens? Friday rolls around.

00:16:58.780 The work week was hard. Your boss jumped down your throat. You missed a deadline. You lost a

00:17:05.580 client and somebody cracks that bottle, right? Or hands you a beer. And the version of you that

00:17:12.020 made that promise on Tuesday morning, nowhere to be found, completely gone. So the pact here is

00:17:21.140 direct and it involves again, other people, which is essential. This is why it's so important that

00:17:25.460 you have good people in your life because this pact doesn't work without it. It's, it's a

00:17:30.600 significant, a significant other. It's a band of brothers. It's men in your corner. And so you

00:17:37.680 might do this. You might say to your wife, Hey, when we go out, I'm going to have two drinks or 0.75

00:17:43.520 one drink or no drinks. And if I reach for a third or reach for a drink at all, you don't ask me

00:17:48.020 about it. You just tell the server that we're ready for the check. Or maybe you tell your best

00:17:54.080 friend, Hey, if you see me ordering past my number, whether it's zero or one or two, you pull me

00:17:59.780 aside. Don't do it in front of everyone, but you pull me aside, just you and me. And you tell me

00:18:05.240 or, you know, maybe he calls, you call your doctor and start keeping a drinking log that

00:18:13.900 someone else reviews. Okay. Like whatever you need to do to get other people involved in the

00:18:19.380 process who know what you're trying to do and also have the courage they do, they have to have the

00:18:24.560 courage to be able to honor that pack, that commitment that you're making with them. Okay.

00:18:29.580 Again, you're not relying on the man at 10 PM who's exhausted and beat up and tired and frustrated

00:18:34.000 on Friday to make the right call. You're letting the guy from Tuesday, the version of you on

00:18:38.540 Tuesday morning, run the meeting. And that's the guy who's equipped to run the meeting.

00:18:43.500 All right. So let's, let's talk about scenario three. Maybe it's, um,

00:18:49.780 and by the way, I've, I've had all of these. So it's the, it's maybe not the alcoholic,

00:18:54.420 but it's the workaholic who just can't seem to turn it off. You know, he says he's present with

00:18:59.980 his family. And he, and he, again, he means it. He thinks he's present with his family,

00:19:03.240 but at 7 PM, the phone buzzes and he's back on email. His kids have stopped asking him to play

00:19:09.880 because they know he won't. His wife stopped reaching out to him. The intimacy, intimacy is

00:19:14.640 dead. And then he keeps saying that he'll change next week or, or after this deadline or after

00:19:19.980 this big project is done once things settled down. So here's, here's the pact that you can make

00:19:26.640 on a Sunday afternoon, maybe you remove your work email from your phone entirely.

00:19:33.940 There's a novel concept. Just remove the temptation. Or maybe you set an auto reply

00:19:39.640 that goes out after 5 p.m. every weekday. Or you tell your team, hey, I'm not available anymore

00:19:48.060 from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. If it's a genuine emergency and here's what the emergencies are,

00:19:54.920 then you can call my cell phone and then maybe you create a

00:19:59.280 Even a physical ritual. I had a friend who did this years ago. He told me about it

00:20:03.900 But when you walk through the front door, maybe you put your phone in the basket by an entrance

00:20:07.540 Maybe you don't pick it up until the kids are in bed

00:20:10.280 One of my friends would literally hang from a tree limb before he walked in the door

00:20:16.240 I asked him what he was doing when he told me he did it and he said i'm hanging my troubles at the door

00:20:20.420 even those physical

00:20:22.100 rituals and practices will help with this pact. Again, the man who creates those rules

00:20:28.260 is the man who should be running the show, not the man who's responding to that notification or

00:20:36.260 that chime or that buzz or that email or that quote unquote emergency on eight o'clock on a

00:20:42.080 Thursday while his daughter is trying to show him her latest dance recital. All right, I'll give you

00:20:51.000 more. This is the guy who just blows up in arguments, right? He's frustrated. He's angry

00:20:57.160 and he's maybe impatient. And so he just goes nuclear during arguments. You love your wife,

00:21:03.820 right? Of course you do. But when conflict arises and escalates, something in you crosses the line

00:21:10.900 and you find yourself saying things you don't mean. Maybe you shut down, maybe you leave,

00:21:17.020 or maybe you even stay and worse you escalate it and you keep pushing and pushing and pushing

00:21:23.720 until there's actually real damage done to the relationship and then every time afterwards what

00:21:28.500 happens you hate yourself you're mad you're frustrated that you that you did it on top of

00:21:34.260 being frustrated about whatever the argument was about again guys you cannot negotiate that in the

00:21:39.340 middle of the argument your nervous system is flooded the chemicals are just pouring through

00:21:45.760 you. It's not the time to be thinking logically about what you're doing. You're just reacting.

00:21:51.420 So the pact, the Ulysses pact at that moment might be this sitting down with your wife on a,

00:21:58.400 on a neutral, calm afternoon and agree together, both of them, you and her, that when either one

00:22:06.460 of you says, says a specific word or a phrase that the conversation just stops for 20 minutes.

00:22:15.840 It's just timeout conversation stops for 20 minutes. No exceptions. Nobody gets to override

00:22:21.780 it. Nobody gets to say, Nope, we're finishing this. The rule was made again. When you and your

00:22:27.580 wife were sitting down, you were both calm and level-headed about it, level-headed about it.

00:22:32.160 it, the, the pact runs the meeting when, when you're not. And maybe you also tell

00:22:40.020 an accountability partner, a brother, Hey, I'm working on this. I want to ask,

00:22:44.760 I want, I want you to ask me about it every single month, not as a gotcha moment or like a,

00:22:49.820 but just as accountability, because that pact has to have witnesses.

00:22:54.960 People have to be witnessed to the decisions that you're making in those scenarios.

00:22:58.180 Guys, this is so crucial and I could talk on and on and on and on about

00:23:04.440 scenarios

00:23:05.640 But i'm sure that there's already scenarios running through your head that you can think where I might need to make a pact because every time

00:23:11.760 I let my

00:23:13.120 My my weakness my my temptations get the better of me. It goes bad

00:23:18.760 So here's here's five principles that I want to give you

00:23:21.920 On this pact and this will help and then even jot these down and think about how they might apply to your unique situation

00:23:27.900 Okay. So number one, the pact, and I already said this, the pact has to be made before the pressure.

00:23:33.940 The commitment made has that in the middle of a temptation, that's not a pact. It's just,

00:23:40.820 it's just wishful thinking. The entire power of the strategy is from separating your decision

00:23:48.320 in the moment of crisis from the action itself. You make the call on a Sunday morning, you make

00:23:56.120 it after a workout. You make it during a quiet time in your life when your head is clear and

00:24:02.440 your values are right in the front of your mind. Not when the bottle's open, not when the arguments

00:24:07.140 are already started, not when the spending is already happening before. It's always got to be

00:24:11.500 before. All right. Pack number two, it must have friction built in. A rule that's really easy to

00:24:20.320 break, I don't think is a rule. It's kind of like a boundary that you're unwilling to enforce is

00:24:25.600 really just a suggestion. When we go back to the story of Odysseus, he didn't tie himself up with

00:24:33.880 a loose knot. In fact, he didn't tie himself up at all as men did. Those ropes had to be strong

00:24:38.480 enough to hold that man, hold Odysseus as he was screaming to be released. And your pack needs the

00:24:45.440 same thing. That means removing access, giving people codes involving other people, creating

00:24:53.100 consequences or just making the bad decision genuinely harder than the good one. You know,

00:24:59.160 one of the most simple ways to look at this, and you've often heard this example, is if you're

00:25:03.880 trying to stop drinking, the first thing that you do is remove all the alcohol from the house

00:25:08.720 because you make it harder. James Clear in Atomic Habits has some great information on creating

00:25:17.040 friction for these bad habits. And that's the mechanism. Friction is the mechanism. And without

00:25:22.680 it, the pact has no, no power. All right. Number three, the pact has to involve accountability.

00:25:30.860 You can't be the sole enforcer of the commitment that your, your compromised version of yourself

00:25:37.300 is going to try to break because you know, you know yourself better than anybody else,

00:25:42.240 even subconsciously, which means you know exactly what you need to do and say to do what you know

00:25:48.220 you want to do, but no isn't good for you. So again, going back to Odysseus, he gave the

00:25:54.460 authority to his crew. They were the ones holding the line, not him. Every serious Ulysses pact in

00:26:02.480 your life needs a person attached to it. Someone who knows the commitment, someone who has permission

00:26:11.040 to hold you to it. They won't flinch. Again, I told you earlier that they've got to be courageous

00:26:15.420 enough to uphold it. And I don't think guys accountability is weakness. Again, it's the

00:26:21.680 mechanism that saved Odysseus's and his crew's life. Frankly, it's not weak. It's wise. All right.

00:26:28.920 Number four, the pact has to be specific, vague commitments, weak, soft language is going to

00:26:36.540 produce vague, weak, soft results. Uh, I'm going to be better with my money. That's not, that's not

00:26:42.400 a pact. I will not spend outside of these four categories. That's a pact.

00:26:50.640 That's what you need to do. Okay. The more specific the rule that you have, the less room

00:26:56.580 there is for your compromised self to wiggle around it, to negotiate it, to massage it,

00:27:02.700 to manipulate it, to do, to not do its job and let you do what you want it to do all along.

00:27:08.180 specific specificity is what removes the argument in in the moment where you need it to hold up

00:27:16.080 all right number five the pact is an act of respect it is an act of respect for your future

00:27:23.680 self and this is the one i want to leave you with today because some men i think i worry that some

00:27:29.260 men will hear this concept and they'll feel like it's some admission of weakness or flaw or failure

00:27:35.660 Like like if you have to build a structure around yourself, it means that you don't trust yourself

00:27:41.820 I I want you to flip that on its head

00:27:43.840 the ulysses pact is not

00:27:47.060 A sign or evidence that you're weak. It's evidence that you know yourself well enough to protect

00:27:53.420 The future version the future man

00:27:56.420 That you're trying to become from the man who might come into your life

00:28:01.580 who is weak

00:28:03.260 and 1.00

00:28:04.160 frankly, pathetic under pressure. That's important to know because you need to be aware that there 0.98

00:28:13.700 is temptation, that there is a version of yourself and you should be aware of this because you're

00:28:18.720 familiar with him, but there is a version of yourself who will do the wrong thing in a moment

00:28:24.540 of compromise. Again, I don't, I don't think Odysseus, Odysseus was the smartest man in the room.

00:28:30.020 i don't think he was he was the strongest or the best the the best warrior but he was he was wise

00:28:40.820 and and he was wise and i guess maybe he was the smartest man in the room but he was he was wise

00:28:47.780 not in spite of the ropes that were bound around him but because of them guys when you build a

00:28:54.180 you're saying, I respect my future self enough to make my decisions easier. I respect my mission

00:29:04.240 enough to protect it from the worst, most compromising moments. I respect my wife and

00:29:11.980 my kids and my friends and my colleagues and my clients and my coworkers enough to build systems

00:29:18.000 that keep my commitments even when my willpower doesn't show up.

00:29:23.620 Again, that's not weakness.

00:29:25.680 I think that's how grown men operate and how they make good decisions.

00:29:30.340 So here's the challenge that I want to give to you this week.

00:29:33.000 I want you to identify one area of your life where your future self

00:29:37.020 keeps betraying your present values.

00:29:43.500 You probably already know what it is.

00:29:45.240 You don't need to overthink it, but just write down the pact again, make it specific, build,

00:29:50.740 build the friction into it. Tell somebody what it is not tomorrow, this week, because guys,

00:29:57.320 those sirens, the temptations in your life, women, alcohol, drugs, porn, gambling, idleness,

00:30:05.520 slothfulness, gluttony, they're, they're always out there and they don't stop singing because you

00:30:12.160 want them to. The temptations in your life, they don't take days off. They don't care about your

00:30:19.440 goals. I already said this. They don't care about your family or your mission, but you can still get

00:30:23.600 through them. You just have to tie yourself and let other people tie you to the mess as Odysseus

00:30:31.700 did before that song starts. So guys, I hope that serves you. You might've heard some background

00:30:41.440 of noise. I'm sitting in a, uh, in a lodge up here in Kalispell, Montana, uh, visiting with

00:30:47.620 some friends. And this was introduced to me by a friend of mine, Ryan Partain. And he talked about

00:30:53.340 this Ulysses pact. I'm like, man, that's really good. I want to research that. I want to study

00:30:58.060 that. I want to learn about that. And I want to share. So some of these concepts I'm learning

00:31:02.520 for myself. I don't stop learning. Um, but I think it's important that we take this information in,

00:31:08.040 we process it, we ponder on it, and we figure out how to improve our lives. We implement it to the

00:31:13.980 best of our ability to make ourselves better and the people around us better. If it serves you in

00:31:18.920 some way, please share this episode with someone who might want to hear it. That's how we grow this

00:31:23.920 movement. That's how we get the word out. And it's the most effective, powerful way to get a good

00:31:27.880 message to other men. And also because I'm up here in Montana, I just dropped some guys off at the

00:31:32.800 airport, spent three days up here. Unfortunately, one of our good friends lost his wife unexpectedly,

00:31:39.720 so we wanted to be up here to support him for that. That's why brotherhood is so important,

00:31:45.560 and brotherhood is part of the Ulysses Pact. Odysseus had his crew to hold the pact in place.

00:31:52.760 They would have all died had he not done that. If you guys don't have a brotherhood and you're

00:31:56.960 looking for one, or you're looking for a better, more effective one that helps serve you and the

00:32:02.140 people in your life better, then go to orderofman.com slash ironcouncil. I'm up here with my

00:32:07.620 ironcouncil guys, some of them at least. And that's where I learned about this, the conversations

00:32:13.340 that we had around the campfire. We went to a friend's ranch and helped him build some of his

00:32:18.300 fence. And that's just good when you have other good, strong men in your life. If you don't know

00:32:23.060 where to turn, then go to orderofman.com slash ironcouncil. All right, man, I hope that helped.

00:32:29.540 We'll be back tomorrow for our Ask Me Anything.

00:32:33.040 Until then, go out there, take action, build in Ulysses Pax,

00:32:37.780 and become the man you are meant to be.

00:32:40.020 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.

00:32:43.000 If you're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be,

00:32:47.060 we invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - May 26, 2026

The Ancient Secret to Modern Discipline

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