Order of Man - The Stories You Tell Yourself Define You as a Man

00:00:00.000 never speak to yourself or about yourself in a way that is inconsistent with the way that you

00:00:05.260 would speak with other people. Would you ever call anybody that? You wouldn't do that, but you would

00:00:09.900 do that about yourself. So don't tell yourself that and don't start to wrap up your identity

00:00:13.840 in these negative behaviors. Like I'm a failure. You're not a failure. You may have failed. So my

00:00:18.420 identity is not wrapped up in failure, but in the fact that I have failed and yet I continue to push

00:00:22.980 forward and move forward and grow and develop and learn and get better. If you're going to wrap up

00:00:27.300 your identity in something, choose something that's going to be valuable for you.

00:00:34.320 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.

00:00:40.380 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time you are not easily deterred or

00:00:46.220 defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will

00:00:53.240 become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:01.700 There is no way that you could convince me that the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves

00:01:07.200 and about other people define who we are. Unfortunately, most of the stories we tell

00:01:13.200 ourselves are not real. They're made up. They're stories. They're fabricated. They're fiction.

00:01:17.460 We think they're real because we tend to support them with biased evidence that tells us that we're

00:01:25.600 right. Maybe those stories that we tell about ourselves, about how horrible we are, or even

00:01:32.120 maybe how good or successful we're destined to be have been implanted in us from the time that we were

00:01:37.960 little boys. Regardless, it's very, very important that we learn and understand that the stories that

00:01:43.880 we make up about ourselves, about other people, and about the way this world operates define our

00:01:50.500 ability to be successful, define us as men, define who we are and how we show up, and ultimately the

00:01:56.820 results that we produce. So I'm convinced that when you see a man who is hyper-successful by any metric,

00:02:03.860 whether it's financial or family or his contribution to society or community at large, that that individual

00:02:10.980 has good stories to say about himself and his life. And the people who are not successful,

00:02:17.140 whether they're broke or destitute or alone or addicted, are the men who have decided to tell

00:02:22.180 poor stories about themselves. Now, I will throw a little disclaimer in here. When you're a child,

00:02:27.660 you're still making up stories the same way you are as a man. But as a child, I think it's a little

00:02:32.740 harder to differentiate between what is fact and what is fiction. But at some point, as we become men,

00:02:40.980 the honest is on us to evaluate and examine what we believe about the world, what we believe about

00:02:47.680 other people, and what we believe about ourselves in spite of all of the horrible and tragic and

00:02:53.860 beautiful and incredible things that have happened throughout our lives. We are just the product of

00:02:59.380 our experiences. And I would even suggest more than the experiences, the narrative that we've crafted

00:03:06.300 around the experiences that we've had. So today, we're going to talk about what the verbiage you use

00:03:11.360 in your own mind and even vocally says about you, what the verbiage you use towards other people says

00:03:18.120 about them, even though it might not be true or accurate, or maybe even harsh as I have been in the

00:03:22.880 past towards others. And also what you say about other people, how that defines you. We're also going to

00:03:29.180 talk about what it means to be a victim versus a victor. And then I'm going to give you a handful of

00:03:32.980 questions. I think I have five questions here that you can ask yourself. So maybe perhaps for the first

00:03:40.360 time in your life, you can begin to evaluate whether or not you're lying to yourself in a

00:03:45.420 constructive manner, or you're lying to yourself in a positive manner. Now you might question, what do

00:03:50.700 you mean lying to myself in a positive manner? What I mean, guys, is that all of the stories that we say,

00:03:56.140 or share, or think, or believe, or vocalize? It's all made up. Let me give you a very silly example.

00:04:03.520 You're driving down the road. Maybe you have to run over to the grocery store on the way home from

00:04:07.280 work. Your wife asks you to pick up some milk or some bread or some eggs. And so you run over to

00:04:12.100 the grocery store on the way home and you're anxious to get home. You don't want to go to the

00:04:15.540 grocery store, but you do because you've been asked to do that. And that's how you can contribute on

00:04:20.100 the way home. And as you're driving home, you're driving, there's, you see a car pull up in the,

00:04:25.300 in the right lane. And that person just hits the gas and jerks the wheel right in front of you and

00:04:31.220 cuts you off. Now, the story most of us would say is that guy's a dick. He's an asshole. He's not

00:04:37.140 paying attention. He's dangerous. And all of those things could very well be true. The problem with

00:04:43.180 stories is we don't know if it's true. And how does thinking that guy's an asshole actually serve you?

00:04:49.020 In fact, if anything, I would suggest that maybe it won't because we've seen this time and time

00:04:53.600 again, that somebody will cut you off. And how often do we see guys get offended and upset and

00:04:59.780 butthurt about it and decide to turn it into road rage and then get themselves and other people

00:05:04.660 injured and or killed. You've seen videos of this happening all the time. What if instead of that

00:05:10.820 story, you decided to say, you know what, I don't really appreciate necessarily what that guy's doing.

00:05:16.040 And so we can be defensive drivers for sure. But what if instead you decided, I don't know what's

00:05:21.880 going on in that guy's life. Maybe his wife just called him and said that their baby is on the way.

00:05:29.740 Maybe the wife called and said that he's got that one of the kids has a broken arm or, you know,

00:05:36.380 fell off the roof or something, and he's got to rush to the hospital.

00:05:39.740 Uh, maybe he just didn't see you. Those are just as likely as anything that you may have conjured up

00:05:47.960 in your mind. And I have too, by the way, I've been offended and slighted when somebody cuts me off,

00:05:52.360 but it's a lie. All of them are lies. And so if you're going to lie about what's happening, or at

00:06:00.100 least use your imagination around what's happening, use something that's going to serve you. And so if

00:06:04.580 you think to yourself, well, maybe that guy has to get to the hospital for some unforeseen reason,

00:06:08.740 that's going to serve you significantly better because you're going to let it go.

00:06:13.160 You're going to go on about your day. You're going to pay more attention possibly to the way that

00:06:17.100 you're driving or the way other people around you are driving. And you're going to get to the

00:06:20.360 grocery store, pick up your bread, get home to your family safely. But if you decide, no, I'm going to

00:06:25.500 be a dick back. And he tried to get me as if it's personal and I'm going to go, you know,

00:06:31.060 race him or try to push him off the side of the road. What are you doing? Really, truly,

00:06:36.020 what are you doing? You're basing your decisions off a story you can't even confirm or corroborate.

00:06:43.480 We need to be very careful of the things that have been told to us. Another example,

00:06:48.520 maybe something more deeply seated is how many people, how many men in particular struggle with

00:06:52.460 their financial decisions. It isn't because you're dumb. It isn't because you're incapable of earning money

00:07:00.140 or building wealth in your life. Some of the dumbest people I know on the planet are millionaires

00:07:05.040 and they're not real bright. So it doesn't really have anything to do with your level or lack thereof

00:07:10.880 of intelligence. But maybe you grew up thinking that rich people were something to be ashamed of,

00:07:17.060 that wealth automatically meant that you were a non-virtuous or unrighteous person because that's

00:07:24.700 what your mom or your dad or whoever you listened to told you and ingrained into the way that you live.

00:07:29.480 And you believed it. It's not entirely your fault as a youth, as a child, because you don't know any

00:07:35.880 better. We're these blank slates and somebody's drawing their maps all over our mind. So you don't

00:07:42.340 know any better. But as a grown man, a man, you should. And you can rewrite those scripts if you're

00:07:48.120 deliberate and intentional about it. And you've got to consider too, when it comes to the way that you

00:07:54.860 talk about yourself. And we say good things about ourselves at times. And we say some not so good

00:08:02.500 things about ourselves at times. I heard this exercise one time. I can't remember or recall

00:08:08.300 where it was from, but I think it was at a conference. And the gentleman said, I would like

00:08:14.520 you to partner up with somebody, sit across the table from them, knee to knee, shoulder, you know,

00:08:21.140 knee to knee, and look them in the eye, in the face, and say all of the negative things you feel

00:08:26.500 about yourself. I'm lazy. I'm weak. I'm a failure. I'm a coward. I haven't been able to create anything

00:08:35.280 successful in my life. All of these things that you would say about yourself. And we all have those

00:08:40.040 things, right? We all have those internally ingrained beliefs about the negativity around us.

00:08:46.020 And nobody had a problem coming up with all of the reasons why they're a horrible person,

00:08:51.700 why they're a bad person, all this kind of stuff. So everybody got done with the exercise. And he

00:08:56.560 says, great. Now what I want you to do is I want you to look at your partner and all of the things

00:09:01.620 that you said about yourself, I want you to tell the partner the same things about them.

00:09:09.840 You're a failure. You're a loser. You're a horrible person. You're a piece of shit. You're going to

00:09:14.580 fail. You're miserable. And nobody could do it. Nobody could do it because when it comes to telling

00:09:21.500 other people how crappy they are, we have a harder time than telling ourselves how crappy we are.

00:09:28.160 So the lesson here was never speak to yourself or about yourself in a way that is inconsistent

00:09:33.540 with the way that you would speak with other people. If you are thinking at night, when you put

00:09:39.160 your head on that pillow as you go to bed and you think to yourself, I am just a piece of shit.

00:09:44.580 Would you ever call anybody that? I mean, maybe on social media, maybe reserved for the select few

00:09:51.060 who maybe actually truly are, but you're not going to tell people that you care about and people that

00:09:56.380 you have a vested interest in their lives, that they're piles of crap. You wouldn't do that,

00:10:01.100 but you would do that about yourself. So don't tell yourself that. And don't start to wrap up your

00:10:07.200 identity in these negative behaviors. Like I'm a failure. You're not a failure. You may have failed.

00:10:11.440 You don't need to wrap up your identity in that. If you're going to wrap up your identity in

00:10:18.260 something, consider that maybe you failed, but you're still kicking. You're still here. You're

00:10:24.220 still in the fight. So my identity is not wrapped up in failure, but in the fact that I have failed,

00:10:29.620 and yet I continue to push forward and move forward and grow and develop and learn and get better.

00:10:34.280 If you're going to wrap up your identity in something, choose something that's going to be

00:10:39.320 valuable for you. But don't ever speak to yourself in an inconsistent matter with the way that you

00:10:47.000 would speak to somebody else. And the other thing that we need to be very aware of is how we're

00:10:51.860 talking about other people. Now, a lot of the times we won't necessarily vocalize these things

00:10:56.300 because men don't gossip. At least we shouldn't. We don't talk about other people. We don't throw

00:11:03.060 other people under the bus. We don't belittle them at least at a minimum without them being in the

00:11:09.680 conversation available to defend themselves and have a deep and meaningful conversation about it.

00:11:14.500 But how many times have you seen a guy at the gym and you're like, that guy's a fat piece of crap

00:11:18.840 because he happens to be 50 pounds overweight? Is he a fat piece of crap? Or is he a guy that's

00:11:25.560 motivated enough to look himself in the mirror and say, you know what? I'm not as healthy as I could

00:11:30.140 be. I need to get into the gym and get in shape. And he's the one actually there busting his ass

00:11:34.640 while everybody else is sitting in their beds, comfy beds in the morning, sleeping in.

00:11:41.420 It's not about that guy. Or here's another one I hear a lot. Oh, well, you know, wouldn't it be nice?

00:11:48.840 Wouldn't it be nice if I had the success that Ryan did? Wouldn't it be nice if I had the success

00:11:55.300 Joe Rogan had? Wouldn't it be nice if I had the reach? Wouldn't it be nice if I had the money?

00:12:00.640 Wouldn't it be nice if I had the skill? Wouldn't it be nice of fill in the blank?

00:12:05.240 That's not good language, guys. That's victimhood language. Because what you're saying is that

00:12:12.320 their success, and you are acknowledging their success. Well, if I had Ryan's connections,

00:12:17.760 if I had Donald Trump's money, if I had this person's reach, you're acknowledging their success,

00:12:24.540 but you're attributing it to something that is entirely outside of their control and yours.

00:12:31.420 Why would you do that? Because if it's entirely outside of your control, you don't have to do any

00:12:35.720 work. That's why we do it, because we're lazy. So we put the responsibility on something that is

00:12:45.000 entirely outside of our control. And then all we have to do now is just sit back and wait for our

00:12:49.360 ship to come in. Oh, I'll hit the lottery. Oh, my day will come. My boss is going to see my hard work,

00:12:57.800 and he's going to acknowledge it, and he's going to give me a promotion. Or one day, this is going to

00:13:01.120 happen. Or one day, that's going to happen. Or one day, this person... It's not how it happens,

00:13:04.920 guys. But when you walk around and you discount what successful people have done to achieve success in

00:13:11.480 their life, you're basically saying that there's nothing you can do in your own life to have the

00:13:17.220 level of success that you desire. Instead, I might suggest that if you see somebody who's extremely

00:13:24.900 wealthy, and you acknowledge their level of prosperity, that you say, I wonder how that guy did

00:13:30.560 that. I wonder what kind of value that man added into people's lives. I wonder how many people that

00:13:38.440 person is served. I wonder how much information and knowledge and experience and utility that man

00:13:47.280 has provided to other people. And how did he do it? Exactly. How did he do it? Because I want to

00:13:54.200 emulate that. Or if you go to the gym and you see a guy who's fit and jacked and ripped, and I go to

00:13:59.160 the gym just about every single morning, six days a week, and I see a handful of guys there every day,

00:14:04.000 and I'm like, that guy's got a good physique. That guy's got some big, strong arms. That guy's got

00:14:09.260 a six pack. That guy's lean. That guy's got a 600 pound deadlift. That guy has a physique that I want

00:14:16.660 to have. I don't say it's genetics. Now, is it? Maybe. Partially. Genetics? Sure. But that doesn't serve me.

00:14:26.360 If it's just genetics, what am I supposed to do about it? I am who I am genetically. There's not a

00:14:33.160 whole lot I can change from a genetic standpoint, at least not in our modern era. Maybe in the future

00:14:38.400 sometime. But I can't change it. But if instead I choose not to necessarily acknowledge the

00:14:44.920 genetical side and I say, you know what? Even though he's got great genetics, I see him here every day.

00:14:49.420 Here's the workout he's doing. Here's the lifts he's doing. Here's what time he gets in. Here's how he

00:14:54.020 moves. Here's his discipline. Here's his diet. Here's his nutrition. And I start emulating what that guy

00:15:00.760 is doing. I'm going to produce results in my life. It's not even a question of if I will. It's just a

00:15:05.120 matter of how long will it take me to replicate those results. But I'm not going to discount it to

00:15:10.780 something that's beyond my control. I'm going to craft the narrative around something that serves me.

00:15:16.220 And that is, he's disciplined. He's here every morning. He probably eats clean. He's probably

00:15:21.800 disciplined in other aspects of his life. He probably takes care of his body. He probably gets the rest

00:15:27.080 in the nutrition and everything else that he needs in order to have the physique that he has and enjoy

00:15:32.320 the strength that he does. It's all stories. I don't know. I don't know what that guy, I don't

00:15:37.300 follow that guy around and like document his, his nutrition. I don't have like a journal based on

00:15:43.920 when and where he eats and what time and how much, I don't know. But I can create a story that is

00:15:50.800 probably relatively accurate. And even if it isn't, it's still serving me well. And this leads me into

00:15:57.540 the point that I wanted to make of the victim versus the victor mentality. Everything that you

00:16:03.500 say about yourself and about other people and all the things that you do on a daily basis are a direct

00:16:08.280 result of stories that you've internalized. And are those stories on the victim side of the aisle or

00:16:14.620 equation or the victor side of the equation? That's all there is. There's no gray area. There's

00:16:21.960 no middle ground. There's no, maybe it's a little bit of both. No, the things that you're telling

00:16:27.260 yourself are either proving that you have been victimized by society or another person or God

00:16:34.740 or however you choose to look at it, or on the other side of the equation that you were made to be

00:16:42.680 successful. You were built to do something wonderful. You're here to add value in this

00:16:49.240 world. All of the negative experiences and the hardships and you have endured them are deliberately

00:16:55.740 placed before you to be better than you were yesterday. Divorce, job loss, bankruptcy, medical

00:17:04.400 issues, people taking advantage of you, lawsuits. All of that is designed as long as you believe it.

00:17:12.220 Again, it's, I don't know if it's true, but I believe that all of that was designed to make me a better

00:17:18.860 person. And because I believe that I act differently. If for example, I have a business partner that

00:17:26.460 decides to screw me over and screws me out of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And then I just

00:17:31.900 play the perpetual victim forever. What does that do? Well, I no longer trust people. I'm no longer

00:17:39.200 getting into business with people. I'm always going to be skeptical about what their angle is.

00:17:44.460 And I'm not saying there shouldn't be some healthy dose of that. That's not what I'm saying at all.

00:17:48.420 But if I'm completely shut off to opportunities because I got screwed by one person,

00:17:52.640 is that serving me? If on the other hand, I look at it and say, you know what? That was a crappy

00:17:59.260 situation. I don't ever want to experience that again, but I still know there's good people.

00:18:04.960 And I still know there's people who know different things than I do. And I still want to grow my

00:18:09.860 business or businesses. And I still want to invest in these things because they're important to me.

00:18:14.020 And I see how it can build wealth so that I can serve myself, my family, my loved ones, et cetera.

00:18:20.520 Then I'll be a little bit more aware of the lessons I need to learn about how I vet people,

00:18:26.140 who I trust with my financial resources, and what red flags I look for and what green flags I look for.

00:18:32.260 It's going to make me better. Same scenario. Screwed by this guy. One person says, I'm never

00:18:38.940 doing business with anybody ever again because of X, Y, and Z. The other guy says, hey, I'm screwed

00:18:43.640 by this guy. I need to be smarter about it because I don't want that to ever happen again. But I still

00:18:48.860 realize this could go really, really well if I learn the lessons that need to be learned.

00:18:53.780 You're a victim or you're a victor. And that's not to say that victors haven't been victimized.

00:18:59.300 Of course they have. Of course they have. You know, I think about this when it comes to

00:19:04.180 the amount of women, and this is mind boggling to me, and I need to talk more about this, but the

00:19:08.880 amount of women who are molested, sexually assaulted by men is astounding. And as a man with a daughter,

00:19:19.080 it concerns me. And I know women, I have plenty of women in my life who have been victimized

00:19:27.680 as a result of some sort of sexual abuse.

00:19:35.220 Some women choose to look at that as all men are evil. Men are the enemy. You can't ever trust a man.

00:19:44.740 I'm going to be guarded. I'm going to like, this has happened to me. This is a reason why I'm not

00:19:50.260 successful. And they lean on that like a crutch. And I'm not saying it's horrible. And I'm not even

00:19:55.380 trying to discount what these women have gone through. Of course I'm not.

00:20:00.140 But if that's the story that they're telling themselves, then they're always selling themselves

00:20:04.060 sure. If on the other hand, they say, you know what, this happened to me, we address and face

00:20:09.660 reality. We're not going to pretend it didn't exist, but this happened. And here's what I learned.

00:20:16.040 And here's why it's important that I stay vigilant. And here's why it's important that I learned to

00:20:20.300 defend myself. And here's why it's important. I learned to surround myself with good men. And

00:20:24.580 here's why it's important that I pay attention to red flags I see in guys and not ignore those things.

00:20:30.240 Then can we all agree that in spite of a tragic, horrific, horrible event, that that person is

00:20:36.220 in some way more capable than they were before? Same scenario, different story. It's all about the

00:20:47.180 stories you tell yourself and the stories you say about other people. And let me move into these

00:20:51.800 last questions, guys, and then we'll wrap it up for today. Cause I want you to ponder on these things

00:20:55.100 for the weekend. Um, these are the five questions I came up with. Number one, what, excuse me,

00:21:01.900 what am I telling myself about myself and others? So when I conjure up a story about why I got passed up

00:21:12.800 for the promotion, for example, what am I actually telling myself? If it's a story about why I was

00:21:22.580 victimized and why it's all office politics and this is bullcrap and they don't see the value that I

00:21:29.860 add, that's not helping you. It's really, it's just making you a miserable person and it's making

00:21:37.520 you bitter and contentious. And you're just going to get passed over for more promotions down the road.

00:21:42.800 If on the other hand, you say to yourself, well, you know what? I got passed over this

00:21:47.040 promotion and I'm not telling you to be completely ignorant or blind to what actually happened,

00:21:51.160 but I got passed up for this promotion because my boss didn't see the value that I added. That

00:21:56.840 could be real. And instead of complaining about it now, maybe you can say, well, maybe I need to add

00:22:02.360 more value or maybe I need to find a way to articulate and communicate the value that I offer

00:22:09.240 to the office. Or if you say, well, it's all office politics. That's why office politics,

00:22:15.760 I can't, nothing I can do. That's just politics. He likes him more than me. Well, how about instead

00:22:19.740 of that, you say to yourself, okay, if it's office politics and it very well might be,

00:22:23.980 be a politician. You're not an idiot. You're not incapable of learning new skills. So if you know

00:22:30.640 your boss is playing politics, play the game. It's part of getting ahead. And so if you say, well,

00:22:37.460 it's office politics, so I need to learn how to play politics. Good. You're going to be better

00:22:40.780 off than you were before because politicians in a lot of ways can be very successful at creating

00:22:45.640 influence, credibility, and authority with other people, warranted or not. They can because they

00:22:50.000 know how to do it. What are the stories that you're telling yourself saying about you and about other

00:22:56.420 people? If you're looking at what other people are doing or not doing and attributing it to genetics or

00:23:03.760 luck, being in the right place at the right time, you're just telling yourself that there's no way

00:23:10.380 for you to get better. The only metric or key to success is just being in the right place at the

00:23:15.340 right time. I don't believe that's true. So what am I supposed to do for the next 20 years until my

00:23:22.160 quote unquote ship arrives? Sit here and hope it comes sooner or get my butt to work and do what's

00:23:28.740 going to help me be a success. All right. Number two, what lessons am I learning from the words that

00:23:35.020 I am using? What lessons am I learning from the words that I'm using? This kind of ties into the

00:23:41.080 first one. But if you're saying negative things about how hard it is for you to lose weight,

00:23:45.760 the lessons you're learning is it doesn't really matter what I do. I can just eat whatever,

00:23:50.360 do whatever, work out, not work out because I don't see a difference either way.

00:23:53.620 But is that really the lesson that you want to learn? Is that really the lesson that you want

00:24:00.160 to extract from the challenge of getting strong and losing weight, for example? You know, I hear a

00:24:07.320 lot of other people say things like, well, I'm not a runner. I've said that to you. I'm not a runner.

00:24:10.920 I'm not a runner. Okay, then you just resigned yourself to not being a runner. So you're never going to

00:24:17.740 run. And you might be okay with that if you are all the power to you. But if you're not, don't tell

00:24:22.220 yourself you're not a runner. Because the lesson you're extracting is that there's nothing you can

00:24:28.120 do to get better at this thing that you have a desire to get better at. People say this about

00:24:33.280 writing books. I've wrote a couple of books over the past several years. And I've had a ton of people

00:24:38.920 tell me, well, I just I'm not a writer. Well, you're a writer. If you write, I don't know what you mean.

00:24:45.860 You might not be a published author, but that's different than being a writer. Writers write,

00:24:50.720 runners run. Musicians play musical instruments. I didn't say you were going to be, you know, the

00:24:59.580 next greatest rock legend ever. I don't even know if that's a goal that you're after. But if you want

00:25:06.780 to learn how to play the guitar, don't say to yourself, well, I'm not a guitar player. If you

00:25:13.060 play the guitar today, then you're a guitar player. I'm not a runner. Well, if you went on a mile run

00:25:19.380 today, then you are indeed and in fact a runner. Stop wrapping up your identity in things that you

00:25:26.260 can't control. And quite frankly, a lot of us do that on purpose because it's a little ticket for

00:25:32.100 an excuse. It's a hall pass. You guys remember that when you were a kid, you needed to go to the

00:25:37.180 bathroom and the teacher gave you, I don't know, some sort of like yardstick with, you know, just

00:25:42.380 something to completely embarrass you. So when you went through the halls, the hall monitors,

00:25:46.360 the hall monitors, the Gestapo and all the teachers who wanted to put you in time out or

00:25:50.840 get you in trouble could see, okay, well, he's got a legitimate pass. That's what you're doing

00:25:56.940 when you come up with these excuses. You're giving yourself a pass not to do the work required to be

00:26:04.260 successful, right? If you thought to yourself, the only way to be successful in life is to have the

00:26:12.200 right connections. And I just wasn't born with good connections. So there's nothing I can do.

00:26:19.560 That's your hall pass for being a loser as simply as I can say it. Or if you thought to yourself,

00:26:26.080 the only way that I'm going to get fit and strong and be better looking and feel better about myself

00:26:30.220 is if I had good genetics like that guy does. And that's your hall pass for being lazy, overweight,

00:26:38.380 slob, fill in the blank. Don't give yourself a pass. You can get strong. You can get wealthy.

00:26:46.960 You can add value. You can be successful. I wouldn't say that you're destined to, but you are designed to.

00:26:54.700 You're built to do it. And there's things that you are going to need to overcome. And they're

00:27:00.860 going to be different than what other people need to overcome. I have to overcome different things

00:27:05.060 than you do. Neither one of us have it better or worse or whatever. It just is. Number three,

00:27:13.020 is that really what is happening or do I not know? When you get passed over for the promotion,

00:27:21.020 you say, well, the boss is just an asshole. He just doesn't like me. Is that really truly what's

00:27:27.620 happening? Or do you just not know? And you're filling in a bunch of blanks that don't exist.

00:27:33.800 Because if you say he just doesn't like me, he's a dickhead. Again, what, what do you do with that?

00:27:40.160 There's nothing you can do with that. You're not going to change him. He's probably 50, 60 years old.

00:27:44.600 You're not going to change the guy. So now you just have to sit on your thumbs and wait

00:27:49.140 for him to change who he is after being on this planet for five decades of his life.

00:27:56.180 If you don't know, it's okay to say, I don't know.

00:28:00.440 I remember when I was young, um, and I'm going to go back to my glory days of high school baseball.

00:28:06.240 They weren't that glorified. Let me tell you. Um, when I was a senior, I was playing in a game. I can't

00:28:14.760 remember the game, but my coach benched me, pulled me out of the game and benched me and put a

00:28:19.880 underclassman in to catch that game. And I remember complaining to my mom later that night or that

00:28:26.060 weekend. And I said, he benched me. I don't know why. Like, what, why did you do that? And she said

00:28:30.200 very, the perfect words, she handled it perfectly flawlessly. And she said, I don't know. Go talk to

00:28:37.540 him about it. And that was the right answer. She doesn't know. And she's not willing to make a

00:28:44.680 bunch of assumptions and guesses about why that's the case. How many parents now would be like, yeah,

00:28:49.040 your coach, he doesn't know. He just, he, he doesn't want to win. He just wants to like play

00:28:53.480 politics. No coach wants to do that. Coaches want to win. So do they have favorite players? Of course

00:28:58.940 they do because they want to win. So they play the players that they think will help them win.

00:29:03.880 So she said, go talk to your coach. I don't know. And so I went and talked to my coach and he told

00:29:10.360 me, here's why you didn't do what you need to do in the off season. You're not playing as well as

00:29:14.940 you should. So you can do one of two things. You can quit the team or you can stay on the team and

00:29:19.120 help and try to earn your spot back and help this guy as an underclassman, be a better catcher

00:29:23.620 because you do have a lot of good qualities that he could learn from your choice. And fortunately I

00:29:29.540 made the right choice and decided to stick around on the team and help out where I could. And we had a

00:29:33.040 pretty good season. Wasn't the way I wanted to go, but I learned a lot of good lessons about

00:29:37.120 life through that. Is that really what's happening or do you not know? And if you don't know, it's

00:29:45.280 okay to not know. Go ask. If you need to know, just go ask. If you feel like your wife is upset with

00:29:53.080 you or you're having a hard time instead of saying, well, she just being a bitch or she just doesn't

00:29:58.040 love me anymore or whatever you normally say, instead say, I don't actually know why she's

00:30:03.000 upset. So maybe there's some things you can do. Like, I don't know. Hey hon, you seem to be upset

00:30:08.940 over the past month or so. We seem to be on edge with each other over the past couple months. I don't

00:30:14.480 really like where we're at. I don't want to be there. I want to love you. I want you to love me.

00:30:19.440 I want to create a happy relationship. Is there something going on? Stop operating based on

00:30:24.840 assumptions. They're wrong. They're wrong. Get to the root of the problem and really figure out and

00:30:31.460 just be willing to say, I don't know. I don't know what's wrong. So I'm going to figure it out. And if

00:30:34.840 you can't figure it out and there are some instances, like the guy told you about who cut you off on your

00:30:41.020 way to the grocery store, you're never, you're not going to be able to ask him like, Hey, is

00:30:43.900 everything okay? Like you don't have that opportunity. So if you don't know, then make up good stories

00:30:50.040 like, Hey, that guy probably just didn't see me and no harm, no foul. Everybody's good.

00:30:54.840 Or that guy, I don't know. Maybe he could, uh, maybe one of his children is in the hospital and

00:31:00.680 he's rushing to the hospital. I don't know. So I'm just going to assume it's that. And that makes

00:31:04.320 your life better. I promise you. Um, number four, where did I learn to think like that? So when you

00:31:11.720 catch yourself in these moments of playing the victim story and the things that are outside your

00:31:16.360 control and why everybody hates you and the world is out to get you and everybody despises you,

00:31:21.920 why do you think like that? It's really important to understand who, who told you that? Who told you

00:31:30.120 you were a loser? Who told you that rich people are evil? Who told you that you're just destined to be

00:31:40.080 overweight because that's the genetics of the family? Like who actually told you that? And what

00:31:44.700 exactly did they say? And then once you know what it is, you can begin to say, you know what?

00:31:50.740 I remember them saying that when I was six years old, a little impressionable boy who couldn't make

00:31:56.300 up his own mind because my brain hadn't fully developed to the point where I was able to do it.

00:32:01.360 But now as a 35, 30, 40, 45 year old man, I actually going to make some different decisions in my life.

00:32:08.360 I'm going to take this under my control. And I don't believe what that person told me. I still love

00:32:15.320 them. You know, if my mom said something about money, for example, and she's told me plenty of

00:32:20.100 things about money that I don't believe. I just don't believe anymore. I believed when I was little,

00:32:24.740 but I made different decisions because I surrounded myself with different people who told me different

00:32:29.380 stories, more constructive stories about how to build wealth in my life. I don't love her any less.

00:32:35.880 I don't hold it against her. She learned it from somebody else, her mom and dad, probably.

00:32:42.060 But I get to choose the stories, but I can only choose those once I know where the old stories

00:32:48.040 are coming from. And I can just hit a little delete button. Because isn't that how like computers work?

00:32:55.200 I'm not very computer literate, for example, but it's just, it's a set of code. Like when you say,

00:33:02.800 oh, the stupid computer is not doing what I told it to do. It's not being spiteful. Like I know we

00:33:10.740 talk a lot about AI, but like their computer doesn't have a mind of its own. It's doing exactly

00:33:16.280 what it's programmed to do. And if it's not doing it, it's either faulty and that's a possibility

00:33:22.260 or it's user error, which is more likely. So if you're not producing the results in your life,

00:33:29.600 it's because the information, the code is faulty or it's user error, you're not applying it properly.

00:33:37.880 It's only one of those two things. It always is. All right. And the last question here,

00:33:43.100 if I'm going to make up a story, is there a better story I can tell?

00:33:49.160 When I was in the throes of going through the divorce a couple of years ago,

00:33:54.720 I had a friend, Alan Placer. He's been a good and dear friend to me. We don't always see eye to eye.

00:34:00.360 We like to butthead. We actually, I think we actually enjoy it. We enjoy pushing each other's

00:34:04.320 buttons, but we're still friends. And I was, I was really down based on what I was going through.

00:34:12.880 And he said, you know what, Ryan, yours is not a, I can't remember the exact verbiage. And I'm,

00:34:19.960 so I'm paraphrasing here a little bit, but he says, this is not a loser story. This is not a bad story.

00:34:27.020 I think it was something like that. This is not a bad story. This is a story of triumph.

00:34:32.520 This is a story of overcoming hardship. It's just not played out yet. But that's what this story is.

00:34:43.800 That's what your story is. It is not defined by what you're going through in this moment. Highs or

00:34:49.780 lows, it doesn't matter. It's not defined by what you're going through right now. The story isn't over.

00:34:54.840 I learned this best with Joseph Campbell, I believe is his name, The Hero's Journey. And he talks about

00:35:02.380 the storyline of a hero. And you see it in every book, whether it's Harry Potter or Star Wars and

00:35:10.900 Luke Skywalker or James Bond. I mean, name a story. It's The Hero's Journey. You have this person

00:35:21.580 that has a lot of redeeming qualities and some flaws. And they're faced with some existential crisis,

00:35:30.180 some external event outside of their control that they have to overcome.

00:35:36.600 And they find a mentor after being defeated. They find a mentor, a coach, a guide, somebody to walk

00:35:43.820 them through what they're going through. And in the process of dealing with the external,

00:35:49.680 they confront the internal confusion, frustration, turmoil, and challenges of their life.

00:35:58.500 And in solving the external, they make themselves into the hero, a better human being than they were

00:36:05.780 before. That's The Hero's Journey in a nutshell. That's your story. That's my story. They all take a

00:36:13.640 little bit of a different story arc. And there's all sorts of different characters and different actors

00:36:17.700 that come into our lives in and out. But our story is one of The Hero's Journey. It's just not over,

00:36:23.660 guys. That's it. And you can prolong the pain, and you can prolong the suffering, and you can make

00:36:30.900 yourself and everybody around you miserable through the stories you're telling yourself. Or you can decide,

00:36:36.700 you know what? That stops today. I'm not going to be miserable. I'm not going to wallow in my own

00:36:44.380 self-pity. I'm not going to talk negatively about myself. I'm not going to talk negatively about other

00:36:50.260 people. I'm going to give other people and myself the benefit of the doubt. I'm going to afford myself

00:36:54.520 some grace, and I'm going to start behaving differently with a new set of scripts and stories

00:37:00.180 that I decide. Not my parents, not my grandparents, not all the friends and everybody else who came into

00:37:08.520 my life over the past three, four, five decades of my life. I get to decide what stories are relevant

00:37:14.940 and which ones I live by. The more you do that, the more successful you will be, and the quicker

00:37:23.400 you will get out of the despair you might currently be in. That's it, guys. The stories you tell yourself

00:37:30.060 will define you as a man. If they're bad stories, we know where that leads. If they're good stories,

00:37:37.020 we also know where that leads. Choose good ones. All right, guys. That's all I've got. If you want

00:37:42.400 another after-action review kind of tool where you can actually analyze where a lot of these thoughts

00:37:47.340 and ideas are coming from and what went well last year and what didn't go so well and how you can

00:37:52.580 improve, but you just need some prompts because you don't know where to start. And I was there. I'm

00:37:57.680 like, I don't know how to do this stuff. I've learned over the past 10, 15 years now. But if you go to

00:38:02.640 orderofman.com slash A-A-R. Orderofman.com slash A-A-R as an after-action review, drop your email.

00:38:13.140 I'll send you the after-action review right into your email inbox, and this will give you some

00:38:17.460 insight into what went well, the stories you're telling, and what kind of stories you're going to

00:38:21.260 tell yourself in the future. Again, orderofman.com slash A-A-R. All right, guys. We'll be back next

00:38:27.680 week. Until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

00:38:32.640 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life

00:38:40.180 and be more of the man you are meant to be. We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - January 24, 2025

The Stories You Tell Yourself Define You as a Man ｜ FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

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