00:00:00.000You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.
00:00:06.040When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time.
00:00:10.500You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong.
00:00:15.540This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.
00:00:19.780At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
00:00:24.720Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler, and I am the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement.
00:00:32.220Welcome here and welcome back. We're going to talk about mastering today.
00:00:36.340We're going to discuss why it's so important. We're going to talk about what it actually is, and then we are going to address how to become more masterful.
00:00:45.920But before we get into that conversation, I first want to make a very, very quick announcement of our beard oil that I've partnered up with Origin on.
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00:01:07.140This is 100% made and sourced in America by the fine people at Origin, which happen to be my neighbors, my community members, and of course, my friends and training partners.
00:01:18.840A lot of these guys I train with as well.
00:01:20.520So if you want, again, to condition the beard, make it look good, you don't want to look like a homeless person, you want to look like a man, then beard oils will certainly help you do just that.
00:01:31.680So you can go check it out on Amazon right now.
00:01:34.840We're trying to blown it up over there.
00:01:37.340And then if you are interested, if you leave an Amazon review and email a screenshot of that review to promotions at originmfg.com, promotions at originmfg.com, then you will get a free bottle of beard oil sent to you.
00:01:57.840With that said, I want to get into the concept of mastery.
00:02:00.960I've been thinking a lot about this, and particularly I was thinking about this last night as I was training jujitsu, and I started to think about what separates those who are successful from those who are not.
00:02:13.860And there are a lot of factors, certainly physicality, athleticism, talents, gifts, skills, abilities, some of these things that we're innately born with or not, some more than others.
00:02:25.020I don't consider myself to be uniquely athletic.
00:02:29.240Some of the guys that I train with are, but I'm certainly not in that camp.
00:02:33.360So there's a lot of different factors, but I also think one of the biggest components is this concept of mastery.
00:02:39.020And so as I was training and as I continue to train over the past roughly three years now, you know, I'll watch a video or instruction or listen to Pete give instruction on a particular technique or strategy, or I'll look in a jujitsu book and it'll show me, you know, different moves and defenses and sweeps and everything else.
00:03:00.060And it's interesting how many little things go into making it effective.
00:03:04.740You know, if you're going for a sweep, for example, it's not enough just to knock somebody off balance.
00:03:09.320You've got to take away their potential posts, which might be an arm or a leg or a knee, and you've got to isolate that.
00:03:46.620Whether we're talking about jujitsu or building wealth in their lives, successfully navigating difficulties and challenges within a marriage,
00:03:55.960any experience that you could potentially run across in your life, there's going to be certain people who are better at it than others.
00:04:04.340And I think that the best thing that an individual, that a man can do in order to improve his life is to strive to become masterful at whatever is a pursuit of his.
00:04:16.700And this is really what I wanted to focus on, this idea, this concept of pursuit.
00:04:20.400Because a lot of the times when we think of mastery or phrases like, I want to reach my potential, the problem is those are both moving targets.
00:04:40.460Let's say that you are trying to get a promotion at work and you've got a certain set of skill sets now that have gotten you to the point where you are, but you want to get that promotion and you want to secure that.
00:04:52.580So you have to develop and learn a new set of skills and become more valuable to your employer and to your clients.
00:05:02.300Congratulations, you secured the promotion.
00:05:04.100Does that mean you reached your potential?
00:05:05.640No, it means you reached what you thought was your potential, but now clearly because you have a new skill set, you are more effective, you are more efficient, you are better.
00:05:25.260You don't ever truly become the master and then check it off your list.
00:05:29.140I think mastery is more of a pursuit than it is an objective and a goal in and of itself.
00:05:34.120And I think when we look at it that way, we can find more meaning in the monotonous and the mundane and the difficult and the challenging.
00:05:43.880And what I've seen too many men do is work towards a particular pursuit that they said they were interested in only to be disrailed, to lose interest, to quote unquote fail, and to not achieve what it is thereafter.
00:05:59.340Now, what we do is we come up with all sorts of reasons and excuses and ideas as to why we didn't accomplish what we set out to accomplish.
00:06:09.400But in many cases, they're simply forms of justification for not achieving that thing.
00:06:15.480It no longer being a priority is a valid reason.
00:06:18.800But most of what we come up with is a justification.
00:06:28.400Maybe there were circumstances that were outside of our control.
00:06:33.560And so we'll say these things to justify our poor performance.
00:06:36.680But I think the reason most men throw in the towel too soon is because they've created this unrealistic expectations of what it would take to achieve success.
00:06:46.680What would it take to create a marriage that would last five, six, seven, eight decades?
00:06:54.660What kind of effort and work and toil and blood and sweat and tears would it take to start a business from the ground up and build it and grow it and overcome competition and emerging technologies and the ever-changing landscape of social media and other tools that we have at our disposal?
00:07:16.680What will it actually take for you to become a jujitsu black belt or somebody who can go on his first hunt and successfully harvest a deer or an elk?
00:07:35.260And part of the reason that we do is because we jump on social media, speaking of, and we see these people who are doing miraculous and wonderful things and what we're experiencing on our little dynamic devices.
00:07:47.620Called the cell phone is the result of the effort and work that people have put forth.
00:07:55.680So we'll see the harvested animal on the hunt.
00:07:58.580We'll see the degree or the designation or certification.
00:08:01.120We'll see that somebody started in a new business or we'll see that they already lost the 50 pounds they've been trying to lose for two decades or that they're celebrating their 20th year anniversary.
00:08:11.100And so we see the result and we think that because we're not experiencing the result for ourselves, that there must be something wrong with us.
00:08:18.740And what we don't have the opportunity and the privilege of seeing, and I would consider it a privilege because once you start to see what I'm going to share with you here, you're going to tee yourself up for more success in your life.
00:08:30.320We don't get to see the years and years and years of effort and struggle and toil and working and failure and feedback and adjustments along the way.
00:08:45.400So these individuals that you guys follow, men like Jocko Willink and David Goggins and Steve Rinella and the incredible men that we've had, Andy Frisilla is another one that comes to mind, the incredible men that we've had on the podcast, you want to experience what they're experiencing.
00:09:04.540But most of us aren't willing to put forth the effort and actually become masterful, the pursuit of mastery.
00:09:13.640I remember several months ago, I was sitting down with Andy Frisilla and we were having this conversation specifically for the podcast and I can't remember exactly how it got brought up, but I said, you know, if I were to, if you were to take me and just plop me into your role at first form and everything else that you have going on, the weight of what you deal with would crush me.
00:09:38.480He wasn't saying it from an arrogant or egotistical position.
00:09:41.580He was saying it from a truthful, like you couldn't handle this because he's developed it over decades of doing this work.
00:09:50.300So guys, rather than focusing so heavily on the outcome, which is what most of us will do because we see it and that's what we're rewarded for and there's nothing wrong with having goals and desires and ambitions and wanting to get a promotion, wanting to start a business, wanting to lose 50 pounds, wanting to secure your next belt promotion in martial arts.
00:10:29.400A master is somebody who's a perpetual student, somebody who's on the pursuit of mastery, somebody who's putting forth the work and the grind and the effort and the toil and the sweat every single day.
00:10:44.860And not to mention, they're getting all of the little details right.
00:10:49.780I think about this a lot when it comes to growing this organization and movement and specifically with this podcast.
00:10:55.580I ask myself, how do I make this better?
00:11:37.440And so, again, a lot of guys will get the 80% right.
00:11:42.660But we know through the concept of Pareto principle that it's going to be 20% of the effort is going to produce 80% of the results.
00:11:51.160So, so many of us are focused on the macro.
00:11:54.140What can you see that looks good or looks the part, but how often are you getting that little 20% right?
00:12:00.640And that's what a true master would get right, by the way, to go back and circle back to what I was talking about with jiu-jitsu.
00:12:07.200Yeah, you might get 80% of the technique down, but 80% isn't going to yield the result.
00:12:12.680A hundred percent is going to yield the result.
00:12:14.680And that means that your foot needs to be at this particular angle or that you're, you got a bridge right as you bump.
00:12:22.860I mean, there's different things and all of it has to be firing together.
00:12:26.960Now, here's the beauty of this, is on your path to mastery, whatever that is, whether it's jiu-jitsu or physical fitness or your marriage or your business or competitive shooting or archery or painting or maybe you're a musician or a pianist, a guitarist, whatever, is that there's going to be a starting process, obviously, where you're a novice, right?
00:12:48.720You're a beginner, an amateur, and you have to focus on every little detail.
00:12:53.860Like, everything needs to be paid hyper attention to.
00:12:57.280When you're trying to learn new chords on the guitar, it's like, and as I did this over the past several months, it's like, how do you stretch your pinky up there to that fret?
00:13:04.900And how do you do that while you're trying to put your middle finger on the second fret of the second string?
00:13:10.100And so you have to focus on every little detail, and it's painstaking, and it's slow, and then gradually, because you want to be a master and you want to do it right, the pinky's stretched, the middle finger's there, and you start to notice it coming together, which does what?
00:13:26.960It frees up the mental capacity for you now to focus on something that amateurs can't focus on.
00:13:34.460They just don't have the capacity to focus on it because their mind, the power, the computing power in their brain is tied up with things that you've become so accustomed to at this point that it's no longer a thought.
00:13:48.700That's a pretty powerful and cool thing to see is that I can get better and better and better and better, and what we start to see as we improve, as we start to see opportunities and little things, little adjustments, little tweaks in the way that we show up that will help us yield just that much more, just a little bit more.
00:14:09.740And you compound these days over and over and over and over again, and before you know it, you look back over a five, six-year period, and you're amazed with the results that you've been able to produce, but it's not about the result.
00:14:24.740It's about who you've become in the process, a master, at least somebody who's on the pursuit of mastery.
00:14:30.100So, what I'd like you to consider as we start to wind things down here for today is how are you showing up, not for the big things, everybody shows up for the big things.
00:14:41.660You know, if you go to the gym and you think, okay, well, I'm going to do my deadlifts, I'm going to do my squats, I'm going to do my bench press, I'm going to do, you know, all of these things.
00:14:49.460Well, let's just isolate one of those lifts for a second.
00:14:54.660If you go in and you just walk up to the bar and you lift, you're probably going to be able to lift some weight off the floor.
00:14:59.740And as you continue to do it, you're going to get stronger, of course, inevitably.
00:15:04.860But what if for a second you decided to do it right, to learn where to position your feet, to keep that bar as close to you as possible, to pull, you know, all the way up, push through the floor to keep the back straight so you're not potentially injuring or hurting your back.
00:15:21.700Like, what if you actually did it right?
00:15:24.360And actually before that even, you put the right shoes on and you got the right amount of sleep the night before and you were hydrated and you didn't need a bunch of junk food.
00:15:34.640You ate the right food because this is what a master would do, right?
00:15:38.720A master is not going to just show up and wing it and hope it works.
00:15:41.140No, a master is actually going to go in and they're going to figure out all of these little details that amateurs overlook and they're going to make themselves the absolute best they possibly can.
00:15:52.220When I come here to do a podcast, I don't just wing it.
00:15:55.520I don't just start yapping and talking about whatever crosses my mind.
00:16:07.460I've already thought about and articulated, even written down what it is I want to talk with you about today because I want to be masterful at this.
00:16:37.520Like, do you get home, not really pay much attention to your wife or your kids, not really think about how you may honor your commitment and word to her?
00:16:46.280When you have dinner with the family, hopefully you're doing that.
00:16:49.600When you have dinner with the family, are you distracted by your phone or your wearable that keeps buzzing at you or are you fully engaged and fully present in your wife and your children's lives?
00:17:03.160Because if you want to be a masterful father, and I think a lot of us do, then that's what you would do.
00:17:09.360And by the way, guys, I'm not saying I'm perfect at this.
00:17:11.900I'm not pointing fingers and saying you need to do this.
00:17:15.080When I'm talking to you, I'm actually talking to myself as well.
00:17:17.780If I care about it, if I value it, then I will do what a master does.
00:17:23.280And a master isn't somebody who's just taking the path of least resistance.
00:17:27.480It's not somebody who is resting on their laurels or their past successes.
00:17:32.320Somebody who's very wrapped up in the details of what makes a success a success.
00:17:41.680It's somebody who's very intentional, not just about the performance itself, but what leads up to the performance.
00:17:47.320What is your mindset like when you get home?
00:17:50.620If it's stuck on what happened during work or you were unproductive at work, then of course, it's not going to be as efficient or good at home because you're wrapped up there and you're not fully present here.
00:17:59.860I'm going to be thinking about this a lot more because I want to excel.
00:18:07.560And when I look around and I see, and by the way, I've had conversations with, I believe, close to 330 extremely, extremely successful men via this podcast.
00:18:16.100This is one of the things that I notice is that they do things that most of us do not.
00:18:28.140So what I'd like you to think about this weekend, so we're Friday right now, if you're listening to this today, it's recorded, is ask yourself, how can I make this better?
00:18:47.740How can I make this weekend better for me?
00:18:52.320How can I make this weekend better for my wife and my children?
00:18:57.260How can I make it so that as the weekend comes to an end and I potentially go back to work, that I'm actually a better person.
00:19:03.940I'm better equipped to deal with what I'll have to address next week.
00:19:07.840That I don't slide back into bad habits or default modes, but that I'm constantly pressing and moving forward.
00:19:17.740How can I make the way that I project myself into public settings, whether that's for my client or my wife or other relationships, a boss, employer, what can I do from the way that you communicate, how you articulate a message, your grooming, the things that you're wearing, the way that your car looks?
00:20:41.220I'm going to be using my battle planner that I've used for.
00:20:44.180Well, I've had this one for probably four or five years now to help me see where I'm falling short and where I'm doing well.
00:20:51.620I'm going to continue to ask myself, how can I make this better from this podcast to the email I'm going to send out to the phone call I'm going to have to the conversation I'm going to have with my kids.
00:21:00.640Every interaction that I have is how can I make this better?