Using Parkin's Law to Your Advantage, Why Morning Routines Don't Always Cut It, and How Curiosity Wins in Communication | ASK ME ANYTHING
Episode Stats
Summary
When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated. Resilient. Strong. This is your life, this is who you are, and who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart
00:00:04.980
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
00:00:17.160
you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done,
00:00:22.700
you can call yourself a man. Kip, what's up brother? Great to see you after a long weekend
00:00:28.140
for me. You were telling me it's probably a long weekend for you as you build your home as well.
00:00:33.660
Yeah. I was working and then you'll appreciate this. I'm sure everybody that's a father's ran
00:00:40.080
into this, but the four-year-old last night around 10, dad, my stomach hurts. He could not fall asleep.
00:00:49.260
Then I think it was around 1 a.m., sits up in his bed and just spews.
00:00:53.800
Fuse everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah. And then just, it was a rinse or repeat process
00:00:58.800
all night long. I'm like, you know, what's so weird is
00:01:03.640
little humans are so weird. Normal, normal size humans, big humans are so weird. We're weird.
00:01:11.080
All of us are weird, but have you ever had one of your children come in and you'll be in your bed
00:01:18.320
and they'll run and they're like, dad, my stomach hurts. I think I'm going to go throw up. I'm like,
00:01:22.780
what are you, what are you telling me for? You're like, run. You're like, get out of here.
00:01:28.000
Go somewhere else. It's like, go to the bathroom. I don't understand why you're coming in to alert
00:01:32.980
me. Just go throw up. You don't need to tell me about it. And not only that, they tell you and I'm
00:01:39.960
like, well, go to the bathroom and go throw up. And they'll throw up on the way to the bathroom.
00:01:43.400
I'm like, see, if you would have not come and wake, woken me up, you would have been able to
00:01:49.180
go right there. The other one that always kills me. And I, I think I had my second did this one
00:01:54.580
time. And I said, go to the bathroom. Like you got to throw up, go to the bathroom, throw up. It's
00:01:59.060
fine. Whatever. He runs in the bathroom. He throws up in the sink. I'm like, bro, the sink.
00:02:08.860
I've got the tub too, which is kind of gross. Cause then like you have this backlog of junk.
00:02:14.980
I'm like, you can't just go literally 12 inches to the left and just throw up in the toilet.
00:02:22.860
Now somebody's got to clean up everything. And so I'm not, I'm not very empathetic when it comes
00:02:28.940
to puking. I'm like, just go puke. We all puke. It's what we do. Just go take care of it. Don't
00:02:34.920
alert me. Don't tell. In fact, the less I know about it, the better off the world will be. So just
00:02:39.840
do it and leave me alone. Yeah. We eventually had him in the hallway on a towel. And then we had a
00:02:47.400
bowl and then we're like, all right, buddy, if you have to throw up and you can't make it to the
00:02:51.240
bathroom, here's this bowl. And then same thing. Oh, I'm getting sick. Gets on his hands and knees
00:02:58.580
and just goes all over the floor. And the bowl's like, Oh, the bowl. That's why I gave that to you.
00:03:04.960
I was like bodily functions, bodily. Finally got the bowl. Yeah.
00:03:12.180
Bodily functions. That's the one thing I just have little, little, little tolerance for. It's
00:03:18.400
like you little idiot. Like just don't make it's hard. I get it. It sucks, but don't make everybody
00:03:25.600
else participate in your misery. Okay. Just take care of it.
00:03:30.500
That's funny. So I'm tired. I'm like, I think I may have slept about an hour total. So
00:03:37.220
well, we'll get it right into some class. I'm tired for a different reason. I was going to tell
00:03:41.880
you. Oh yeah. Yeah. What was your, you had a long weekend. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was long,
00:03:46.200
but it was good. We went down to Bedros Koulian, uh, runs, uh, a program called operation black
00:03:52.620
site. And it's different than the project. It's definitely not as intense. Like the modern day
00:04:02.360
night project is intense. It same thing with the squire program for young men, super intense
00:04:09.280
squire programs overnight. Um, MDK is I think three or four days, but it's super intense.
00:04:17.260
This was less intense and more focused on business networking and developing certain skills. So we did
00:04:26.320
some grappling, but the other cool thing about operation black side is they have world-class
00:04:30.180
instructors. So Mike Chandler was there teaching the grappling and Tony Blower, who a lot of you guys
00:04:37.100
know the spear system. Uh, he was there. So those two guys, Steve Eckhart, um, they taught the self
00:04:43.260
defense martial arts stuff. And then we did a lot of like room clearing house sweeping. Cause they built
00:04:49.300
this house with catwalks up top. So instructors can see how you're moving through the building.
00:04:54.120
And that was taught by Tim Kennedy and, and other, that's cool. Special forces guys. So like,
00:05:00.360
and the, and the people they bring in are phenomenal. So we, it was a really cool Ray cash care. Of
00:05:07.760
course, Bajos was there, Tim Kennedy, Mike Chandler, some guys that are world-class that people
00:05:14.000
unfortunately just don't know about. And maybe at some point they will, but it was phenomenal.
00:05:18.420
And I was fortunate enough that I, I was able to bring my two old boys down with me. So yeah,
00:05:23.940
if you guys are interested in a really cool weekend, I'm actually thinking about, and I'll
00:05:27.780
keep this between you and me and the hundreds of thousands of people who will hear this.
00:05:30.900
I was going to say, uh, do you want to pause really? Um, I'm actually thinking about investing
00:05:37.160
with, with B and the team down there in that. And what's cool about that is not only will it's
00:05:42.320
investment, but also we'll be able to use that facility for our own events, which is cool.
00:05:49.300
Yeah. Yeah. That'd be cool. Stay tuned. Cool, man. That sounds fun. That sounds fun. I think I saw
00:05:54.720
you posted something, I think, cause I saw something about, or maybe Bedros did a post.
00:06:00.720
Maybe he did. I don't, I may have posted, I may have reposted in stories. I actually haven't posted
00:06:06.460
on Instagram in quite a while, except for just updates on podcasts, taking a little bit of hiatus.
00:06:12.880
I'll probably share a little bit more on, on Facebook and social media and Instagram.
00:06:16.560
I'm still pretty active. I still jump on and follow people and things like that. But as far
00:06:21.780
as me posting, it's been significantly less. It's been nice actually. So yeah, cool, man.
00:06:30.120
Well, we've got some good questions. It looks like, uh, we're interviewing or, uh, questioning
00:06:33.280
guys from, or I guess they're asking questions of us from the iron council. So I, I went through
00:06:38.600
these and we've got some good ones. Some that I know I'll get fired up about and some that
00:06:43.640
hopefully I'll give some good insight on. Yeah. Sounds good. All right. Our first question
00:06:49.340
is from Pramit Ball question for Ryan regarding the transitioning topics in a podcast setting.
00:06:56.200
When I record episodes for my own podcast with a guest, I sometimes find myself using a lot of
00:07:01.200
filler words or, uh, okay. Now let's talk about instead of having a natural flow. I found listening
00:07:08.580
more intently creates better jump off points into the next topic, but it's not always a
00:07:13.360
guarantee. Would love to know if you have any insights and tips, if you have any insights
00:07:19.480
and tips in that regard. Yes. I am never at a loss for insights and tips, whether you should
00:07:24.300
accept them or not. That's a different story, but never at a loss for those things. Yeah.
00:07:28.680
Look, I did this when you're, I don't know how long Pramit's been podcasting for, but yeah,
00:07:33.220
when you're starting a podcast, it's, it's awkward. You got this microphone in front of your face.
00:07:37.960
You've got a camera in front of you. It just changes the dynamic. But imagine if you're sitting
00:07:44.320
down with a friend at a restaurant over a drink at the game, fight nights, golf, like however you
00:07:52.940
guys interact, would you ask that person a question? And then they answer the question.
00:07:57.900
You're like, Oh, great. And you write it down. You say, now my next question is you would never do
00:08:02.980
that. Yeah. And if we get to the root of the reason why you wouldn't do that, it's because you care
00:08:07.460
about that person. That's why you care about what they have to say. You care about their insight.
00:08:12.960
You care about what they might be experiencing or going through. And so it's a genuine level of care
00:08:18.220
when in a podcast setting, I found that our care for other individuals is diminished relative to the
00:08:26.480
care that we have for our friends, because we don't really know those people. And so what are we doing?
00:08:30.540
Well, we're looking to extract value from them. And it's not inappropriate. That is the point of a
00:08:41.040
podcast. If I have you on as a guest kid, it's my job to extract value that you have to share. And so
00:08:45.860
I can present that to my audience. But then it diminishes the humanity of it a bit, the humanity of
00:08:52.940
the conversation. And I don't even say I interview anymore. I say I have conversations.
00:08:57.000
And I might go into a podcast with a very rough outline of what I want to talk about or a direction
00:09:05.440
I'd like to go. And I'll let you guys in on a little secret. Sometimes I don't even read the
00:09:10.680
books, the authors write. Sometimes I don't really know everything about their programs or their
00:09:17.880
offerings. And I actually do that by design because I want to go into the conversation with an open mind
00:09:25.460
and a whole lot of curiosity about a particular subject. But if I read the entire book, then it's
00:09:31.400
like, okay, I got it. It loses some of its curiosity. What were you going to say?
00:09:37.180
And as me as a listener, you're aligned with me as a listener, right? So you're going to ask the
00:09:43.340
questions that I'm thinking in my mind, if I haven't heard of this person before either. Does it make
00:09:48.340
sense? And so that's going to resonate better than if you're like deep diving in some theory of a
00:09:54.220
book that I haven't read yet as a listener of the podcast. And I'm like, what are these guys even
00:09:58.500
talking about? That's not valuable to me, right? To your audience.
00:10:03.160
A friend of mine, Jordan Harbinger, the Jordan Harbinger podcast. He is a great, I call him
00:10:08.600
conversation, not interviews, conversationalist. And one thing that he told me one time is that
00:10:13.660
your audience doesn't have a voice. So you have to be their voice. And you can know that because
00:10:19.640
I hear from guys who are like, man, Ryan, I was in the car and you asked this question and I was
00:10:24.120
screaming because I wanted you to ask this other question. You didn't ask it. Or you asked the
00:10:28.380
question and I was, he said something and I didn't believe it. And then you said the same thing. And
00:10:31.940
so I'm so glad you went down that rabbit hole. That's how you know that you're starting to resonate
00:10:36.800
with your, with your guest or excuse me, with your audience. So what I would say is number one,
00:10:41.920
don't pigeonhole yourself into questions. Don't, I would not as quickly as I could just get away
00:10:47.820
from prescripted questions. Like I hate these podcasts that ask all their guests, the same 10
00:10:54.140
questions. Well, you don't care about your guests. You don't care about your audience. All you care
00:10:59.520
about is whatever you're producing. Don't do that. Okay. That's not what you do in a conversation.
00:11:04.220
Get away from that. Uh, number two. Well, I think this is part of it by getting rid of questions,
00:11:10.660
prescripted questions. You're allowing yourself to explore things that you wouldn't normally explore.
00:11:17.660
So one thing I've actually tried to do a lot lately with podcast guests is when they say something that
00:11:23.860
either I don't understand, or I don't necessarily agree with, I'm going to challenge that a bit.
00:11:29.940
It took me a long time to figure that out, but I don't have to be confrontational, but I do have to
00:11:34.940
ask if you say something Kip, and I don't quite understand, I'm going to say that, Hey, I don't
00:11:39.020
understand what you mean by that. Like help me connect the dots. Or if you say something, I'm
00:11:43.640
like, Whoa, hold on. I got to challenge that. And here's why. What do you have to say about that?
00:11:49.320
And then just actually have a real conversation with these guys. It's so much more powerful.
00:11:55.140
Um, I, I think that's what I would do. I would come with less questions and I know Promet personally.
00:12:00.960
I know that he's prepared. I know that he's researched. I know that he's super intelligent.
00:12:07.160
Um, but I also know that in Promet, look, I'm not saying this to beat you up that sometimes
00:12:12.940
your communication comes across a little bit stiff and, and, and that makes it awkward.
00:12:17.860
And so I think you should practice not being so researched, not being so prepared and allowing
00:12:24.540
the conversation to just go where it's going to go and experiment with that and toy around with that
00:12:29.520
and see if that helps you in that conversation. Yeah. Cool. All right. Greg, by the way, hold on.
00:12:35.460
I got to say one thing on that. Sometimes I say things and you know, like, and I'm, and I'm like
00:12:41.700
that. I said, you know, sometimes the conversations a little bit stiff, for example, like I'm not saying
00:12:48.560
that to call out, call him out. I'm saying that because I hope it helps you. I hope it serves you.
00:12:55.020
I hope me being honest and my assessment gives you something to improve upon. Like it's not mean
00:13:00.940
spirited. It's in the spirit of, of, of help and brotherhood. So I hope it comes across that way.
00:13:07.820
Yeah, I think it does. Well, at least those that know us or that know you, you know what I mean?
00:13:13.300
They, they understand that. I think I'd hope. All right. Next question. Greg Cleaver, Ryan,
00:13:19.160
you spoke about the concept of building a buffer into your weekly and daily planning in a recent podcast.
00:13:24.700
What practical ways do you find balance when you are planning to make sure responsibilities,
00:13:30.180
self-growth steps are accounted for while still finding enough buffer time for yourself to avoid
00:13:35.320
burnout? I'm finding myself hitting burnout too often. And I know I need to pivot.
00:13:41.860
Well, okay. So when I was talking about buffer the other day, that isn't actually what I was
00:13:46.000
talking about. I'm going to address your question. Yeah. But I, I hope we're not having a
00:13:51.100
misunderstanding here. When I was talking about buffers, I was talking about buffers in our
00:13:55.240
calendar. So if I had, for example, on a point, well, today, here's a great example. You and me
00:13:59.920
have a podcast. We record at nine o'clock AM mountain time, Monday morning, and we get done at
00:14:06.660
10. It's an hour recording, but I don't schedule another interview, another interview or conversation
00:14:11.780
or, or, or appointment at 10 o'clock mountain. It's usually going to be 10 30 or maybe even 11
00:14:19.040
because I know Kip, sometimes we go a little longer. Sometimes there's certain agenda items
00:14:23.760
that we need to talk about off air. So I don't schedule it right on top of each other. And that
00:14:29.480
way I have a little bit of buffer or margin to be able to decompress or to take some notes for the
00:14:34.860
podcast or get up and take a leak if I have to, or do whatever it is. Or I just got a text on my phone
00:14:40.480
a minute ago. I'm not going to answer it now, but you know, I'm probably going to have a few texts I
00:14:43.980
can answer between the end of this conversation and my next appointment. If I stack everything to
00:14:49.920
the brim, I actually noticed myself being less productive. I'm doing a whole lot more. Yes,
00:14:54.720
definitely. But a whole lot less productive throughout the day. So that's what I meant by
00:15:00.860
buffers is creating buffers for that. Now, Greg, what you're talking about is making sure that you're
00:15:06.300
balancing work activities with taking time off or mixing it up. And that's a great question. What I
00:15:13.920
would say is to experiment and then to allow yourself intentional time. And there was another
00:15:22.200
question I saw. So maybe we'll get deeper into this in a minute, but, and you could pull it up
00:15:26.980
because he's talking about, I was going to say, give me the gist. Ask that question too, right now,
00:15:32.800
because I think this will answer both of these questions. So, so, so what was that question?
00:15:37.120
It's the one I'm referring to. Well, give me the gist really quick. Cause there's a bunch here.
00:15:43.120
Yeah. I'll tell you, he was talking about, in fact, I have a routine. Uh, no, it was from,
00:15:49.360
I think it's from Austin. Yeah. Austin Carter. Carter. Okay. Got it. Yeah. All right. Austin Carter's
00:15:55.740
question, which is related here. When is leisure relaxation acceptable? At what point in a man's day
00:16:02.780
can he give himself permission to rest and relax? And what do you fellows do just for fun or no
00:16:09.720
quantifiable productive outcome other than joy, wonder, and having fun watching a movie, going to
00:16:15.780
a concert, reading a fictional book for entertainment, et cetera. Yeah. Okay. So I'll
00:16:20.660
answer the second half of that in a minute, but the first part of that aligns nicely with what Greg
00:16:24.500
was saying. And here's what I would suggest to you is that your relaxation or your buffer time in this
00:16:30.600
case, Craig, that you're referring to. It just needs to be intentional. Yeah. Just needs to be
00:16:35.500
intentional. If we give ourselves too much time or we hit the burnout stage. And then what do we do?
00:16:44.220
Like, let's say you've been working out 90 days straight. You've been going in for an hour and a
00:16:49.020
half every single day because you're training for some particular event. And now you're just exhausted
00:16:55.260
and burned out and burned up. What usually happens is you take way longer to go back to the gym than
00:17:00.000
just taking a day off. Yeah. So if instead of working out for 90 days, maybe you should train
00:17:06.540
hard for 30 days and then allow yourself a day break. And I'm not saying sit around on the couch and
00:17:12.380
eat bonbons and Cheetos. I'm saying maybe instead of working your ass off that day in the gym,
00:17:17.360
maybe you just go for a walk with your family or you go on a nice little hike in the afternoon or
00:17:22.560
something like that. Right? So you're still moving, still being intentional, but you're mixing
00:17:27.400
it up. And the beauty of that is that you're still achieving your goals. You're still marching
00:17:31.680
forward. I had a great presentation from Wes Watson. A lot of you guys know who Wes is. He's been on the
00:17:37.680
podcast, but he was at Operation Blacksite. And he said that people always ask him, how does he get so
00:17:45.360
far ahead? Five years ago, this is a guy who was in a state penitentiary and he had $200 to his name.
00:17:52.100
Now he's making tens of millions of dollars a year through his coaching services. How did he get
00:17:57.280
so far ahead? He says, I never stop. Every single day I'm marching forward. He's like, some guys will
00:18:04.580
do that for five days and then they'll take two, three huge step backward every Saturday and Sunday.
00:18:11.440
He's like, I don't do that. I march forward every single day and we can do the same thing, but we can
00:18:16.960
mix it up. Right? So now you're going to go for a hike instead of doing a workout. Now you're going to
00:18:21.160
go for a walk or you're going to play a round of golf and it's mixing it up. So you're not doing
00:18:25.260
the same monotonous thing all day, every day. And it's giving you a new way of looking at things,
00:18:30.240
exercising new muscles, training the brain to see things differently because you're engaged in
00:18:34.680
different activities, but it has to be intentional. If you wait until you're burned up, you're just not
00:18:40.160
going to do anything. And you're going to take way too long to get back into the saddle the way that
00:18:45.440
you want to. Does that, do you think that helps? Yeah, I do. I do think that helps. I mean, I think
00:18:51.200
the, I think the intentionality is everything. It is. I mean, if, if something's really important
00:18:56.320
to you, what do you do? You and I have both note, we put it on our calendars. It's no different,
00:19:02.520
right? So if I want to be intentional and, you know, going on a one-on-one date night with one of my
00:19:08.840
kids is important, then it should be scheduled just like everything else in my life. That's really
00:19:13.480
important. That's my system to make sure I don't miss something that's important. It's no different.
00:19:20.360
Jiu-jitsu is on my calendar, just like my workouts are on my calendar, right? Because of the
00:19:24.360
intentionality around them. So. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I just, if you're not intentional, you'll just,
00:19:30.260
you'll just fall off the wagon. You'll never, never get back on. So if you're feeling burned out,
00:19:34.780
okay, you need to mix something up. You need to take a break and that's okay, but you better tell
00:19:40.460
yourself what exactly is it going to be? How long is it going to be for? How are you going to get back
00:19:45.440
into it? Otherwise you're just, you're, you're just going to take it way too far. We just, we just do.
00:19:51.520
Yeah. Now Austin's second question is just kind of curious around what non-quantitative
00:20:01.740
Did he use the word unproductive? I can't remember.
00:20:07.220
He said like unproductive or non-productive. Quantifiable productive outcome other than joy,
00:20:12.080
wonder, having fun. Yeah. So like, yeah. So he says that or just for fun.
00:20:16.900
Look, other than joy, wonder, like those are things that we should have in our lives.
00:20:23.040
And you kind of barking up the wrong tree on this one because I struggle personally in my own life
00:20:28.900
with this, but you know, I, here's an, I got home. I took my, my two oldest boys to California.
00:20:36.320
I got back and many of you guys know about, you know, my, my personal situation with my ex-wife
00:20:43.220
and the relationship. And, um, you know, technically this is so weird. It's such a weird thing,
00:20:48.760
but let's address it. Like it is like, technically this is my weekend with the kids. Okay. Yeah.
00:20:53.940
And she had the two younger ones because me and the two older ones were in California. And so
00:20:59.680
technically, uh, when I got home, they should all be with me Sunday night. And then I drop them off
00:21:06.900
Monday morning to her for schooling. That's the arrangement, but I'm not, neither one of us are so
00:21:15.240
ridiculous that we're not willing to adjust that as necessary in the situation calls for. So I,
00:21:21.460
I sent her a message. I said, Hey, I know you probably missed the boys, you know, technically
00:21:25.040
they're with me tonight, but would you like the boys to stay with you tonight? Cause we've been
00:21:28.760
gone for the last four nights. And she's like, yeah, I'd really like that. Actually, if you don't
00:21:32.640
mind, I'm like, of course I don't mind. Like, of course I want that. What's good for the kids.
00:21:36.540
I want what's good for her. Of course I don't mind. And she said, well, do you still want the two
00:21:40.700
little ones to be with you? I said, yeah, I want to do me for tonight since I haven't seen them
00:21:44.520
for the last three or four nights. And she's like, great, we'll swap, you know, kind of joking,
00:21:48.240
but it sounds so weird, but it is what it is. That's the, that's the situation.
00:21:52.220
So I dropped the older boys off. I take the two little ones with me and I'm like, Hey,
00:21:57.760
what do you guys want to do? Let's go grab some dinner. Like, good. We'll go grab some dinner.
00:22:01.700
We got here. They got their bags dropped off in their rooms. And then we went for a bike ride
00:22:06.480
and I bought, I went to, I saw a yard sale and I need to get them a couple of bikes. So I went to a
00:22:11.980
yard sale last week and I saw two bikes. I got two bikes for 10 bucks, spent $5 on a tube for each
00:22:16.700
one of them. So I got two bikes for 15 bucks. I'm like, let's go for a bike ride. So we all went
00:22:21.340
for a bike ride and it was awesome. Like there was, there was no objective. Like there was no
00:22:27.920
agenda. I didn't even know which direction we were going to go or how long we were going to be gone
00:22:33.660
or what, like none of that. And it was nice. You know, we just went around the block for a bike ride
00:22:39.900
and laughed and talked and realized one of the bikes that I bought didn't have brakes on it.
00:22:45.300
So we found that out. My daughter, she's going down this hill. She's like, dad, I can't stop. I'm
00:22:50.600
like, just keep going straight. The hill levels out. Just stay straight. And I'm yelling at her
00:22:55.740
because she's ahead of me. I'm like, stay going straight, stay straight. And she did. And she was
00:22:59.980
fine. I guess the reason I share that with you is like, I'm personally trying to find more joy in
00:23:10.440
just in moments. Like what, and you might find yourself in a moment. What is the joy in this?
00:23:16.960
You know, I've, I'm looking outside in the backyard and I've got a baseball net up there because my
00:23:20.820
second and fourth children are playing baseball and coaching their teams. And, you know, sometimes I
00:23:27.780
don't want to be out there throwing soft toss. Like I don't, I got emails to send. I got texts. I got to
00:23:32.560
do, I got this, I got to do this and that and fix the house and change this and do this.
00:23:36.940
And then I just stop and I'm like, you know, this is fun. Like no agenda, just step, throw,
00:23:44.320
help him work on his swing a little bit, laugh at him when he messes up, congratulate him when he
00:23:49.360
does well. And that's enough. Like I'm really trying to find situations where the situation
00:23:54.580
in and of itself is enough. It's good. It's not, it's good enough as in it's hitting the baseline,
00:24:00.820
but it's good enough the way it is and just enjoy it. So those are some of the things that I would do.
00:24:06.180
It's usually involves my kids. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm the same way. I don't, we don't TVs are
00:24:13.840
downstairs in some corner of the house. So it's like, we don't watch movies unless it's like this
00:24:21.080
intentional, like, Hey kids, you want to watch a movie? Right. Other than that, there's, there's no
00:24:26.520
TV on or anything like that. Fictional books. I lately, actually I, my brother's been helping me
00:24:33.980
on the electrical on this house that I'm working on. It's kind of funny actually, because I didn't
00:24:39.560
think he was so nerdy. I'm like, what are you listening to? And he's like, these books about
00:24:44.960
Thrawn on Star Wars. They're so awesome. I'm like, what? You're like, really? And he's like, oh man,
00:24:50.760
there's the cool, like, and he just nerded out. And I was like, that's your brother. All right.
00:24:54.960
Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea. It was super funny. And it's, I was like, all right, which one should
00:24:59.880
I start listening to first? And so now when I work on the house, I'm listening to these old
00:25:04.620
Star Wars books on audible. That's funny. That's fun. Right. But, but I, I, I usually don't sit
00:25:11.820
down at least on a fictional book. I don't sit down and just enjoy the book. It's usually, I do that
00:25:17.080
when I'm multitasking usually, but, but I, I'm the same way. I think it's just go to the nickel
00:25:23.020
K with the, it's usually related to my kids or when we're on holiday and it's, and I get into
00:25:29.520
the mode of like, what do you want to do? And it, and the mode is whatever, what do we want to do
00:25:34.240
today? And that's when I'm fully relaxed, but yeah, pretty much the same. I found, I don't know
00:25:43.180
if you feel this way, Kit, but I found that for me, again, I'm all about being productive. I want to be
00:25:49.260
productive. I have to-do lists. I've got notes everywhere. I've got checklists and things I've
00:25:53.900
got to accomplish. And I feel really good at the end of the day when that's done, but I've actually
00:25:58.120
found myself being more productive, the more time that I take and be quote unquote, unproductive
00:26:03.840
deliberately again, intentionality. I'm not just saying sit around and be lazy. I'm saying I'm going
00:26:08.980
to play catch with my kids this afternoon. I'm more productive when I do that because I know I have a
00:26:15.680
certain window and my schedule has changed. You know, when the kids are the days that they're
00:26:20.760
with, with me is I drop them off at school, which happens to be their mom's house. Cause
00:26:26.540
having them homeschooled was still important for both of us. So we made sure that was the case and
00:26:31.220
that could happen. So I, I dropped them off at eight, nine o'clock in the morning. And then I pick
00:26:38.060
them up from school, which is again, their mom's house at three o'clock. So that means that I lost
00:26:44.240
two to three hours a day when they're with me. Cause normally I would work five to six o'clock
00:26:50.780
at night. Yeah. I thought, Oh man, this is going to be rough. It's not, it's not hard at all. It's
00:26:55.560
just, okay. I got to be more productive in this window. I have a smaller window. It went from, you
00:27:00.560
know, eight, nine hours to six, seven hours. And so I have to be way more productive in this window
00:27:06.500
and I am, and it's fine. It works because we make it work. Yeah. It's amazing. Everyone,
00:27:14.800
everyone can relate to that. Everyone can relate to time where, where you had some type of timeline.
00:27:21.800
You had this ridiculous short window to prepare for a meeting, a lesson, a presentation or something.
00:27:29.340
And you just went all in as fast as humanly possible, laser focused, and you pulled it
00:27:37.760
off. Yep. Yeah. And we normally don't work that way. We, we work distracted constantly. So it's like
00:27:44.440
the intentionality is a whole other, I don't know. I mean, there's a, there's books written on, on,
00:27:50.180
on this whole subject, but anyhow. Well, and it's, I just pulled this up. This is, so here,
00:27:57.220
let's see, this is called Parkinson's law. So it's the adage that work expands to fill the time
00:28:05.040
allotted for its completion. It's Parkinson's law. Again, work expands to fill the time allotted for
00:28:10.120
its completion. So we usually think about that in the context of, well, you know, I, I, I've got
00:28:16.680
two weeks to finish this thing. Right. And so I've got plenty of time. And so I'll, I'll be done in
00:28:23.180
two weeks, but it always be at the buzzer. It's the same concept as, as why I don't think you should
00:28:27.300
go Christmas shopping in October. Cause you're going to be done a day or two before Christmas,
00:28:32.040
whether you do it in October or whether you start in December 1st, the only difference is October,
00:28:37.840
you're going to end up buying way more stuff than if you would have just waited.
00:28:41.700
Cause you won't stop between that and Christmas.
00:28:43.720
So it's Parkinson's law, but the opposite is also true is your work will, it's not even the opposite.
00:28:52.580
It's just a part of the law is that your work will, it says expand, but I will also say it will
00:28:59.940
contract. It will contract to the time allotted. So if I have only five hours to complete a 10 hour
00:29:06.500
project, unless it's unreasonable, I'm probably going to actually get it done in five hours because
00:29:12.180
there's not distractions. There's no procrastination. I'm hyper-focused on the task.
00:29:17.920
Yeah. Yes. Focused on the main thing, as opposed to all the little ancillary type
00:29:22.500
problems that you may have to regularly deal with. So it's work, work is very much the same way.
00:29:29.080
You can get just as much done today. In fact, I would challenge you guys this week, pick a day
00:29:33.400
and, and let's say you've got, you know, eight hours in that work day, try to get all your done,
00:29:39.720
your work done in five hours today. And let me know how it goes. Like get your to-do list out and
00:29:44.480
say, Hey, I've got five hours and tell me if you get it done. I'd be willing to bet the majority of
00:29:49.540
you will get it done in five. What normally takes you eight.
00:29:51.480
So I have a timer. It's a little dial. It looks like a nest dial. And you run this timer. I actually
00:29:59.340
put it on my desk and I actually intentionally do this. So I'll, I'll look at, I don't know,
00:30:04.400
I need to complete something. And I have like a 45 minute window. I'll be like 30 minutes. I'll put
00:30:11.260
it on that timer, put my headphones on and I'll go as narrow focus as humanly possible for that 30
00:30:18.940
minutes. And when that timer's up, I'm done. Yeah. And so I create those time boxes. So then
00:30:24.620
that way I'm hyper-focus sensitive on it too. What is it called? Do you know what it's called?
00:30:30.240
Oh, there's all these things. You can look at time box timers. There's cubes that people have
00:30:35.560
like 15, 30 minute, and you just put the cube on its side and it just starts magically counting
00:30:40.460
whenever the cubes on that side. Yeah. So it's it's handy. Well, I also think Parkinson's law,
00:30:47.300
since we're addressing this is the reason why school, military and government work are so
00:30:51.440
inefficient. Like when we first started doing homeschool, uh, my, my ex-wife came to me and
00:30:57.960
she said, Hey, we're done. This is like at noon. Hey, we're done with school. Like, what do you mean
00:31:02.520
you're done? You're like done for lunch or you're done. Like you don't want to do it anymore. Like,
00:31:07.400
what is that? I don't know what that means. It's like, no, we're done. Like our whole curriculum is
00:31:10.440
done. I'm like, Oh no, we must be using the wrong curriculum. No. What takes a school,
00:31:16.440
a public school, eight hours to do takes homeschoolers three hours to do. Why? No
00:31:23.140
assemblies, no transferring from class to class, no trying to keep up with, you know, take it from
00:31:29.680
the dumb kids. You know, that's not going to, that's going to run. Yeah. The slower kids in
00:31:32.880
the class slowing down the learning process for them, you know, uh, inefficiencies and red tape
00:31:37.940
and bureaucracy teachers have to deal with, uh, administrative nonsense. It's just, it just does.
00:31:44.620
It's not necessary. You know, military is the same way. You know, you guys know this. If you're in the
00:31:49.200
military, you know, this, if you have an hour to train a certain task, it's going to take you an
00:31:56.320
hour, even though you could actually get it done in 15 minutes. Yeah. You know that I remember in
00:32:02.560
basic training, you know, we had a two or three hour time block for physical training, three hours.
00:32:07.740
Come on. We don't need three hours. And we'd go and we'd do the work and they'd look at their
00:32:11.160
clocks. They're like, well, you know, we have 45 minutes left, so let's do extra extra. Like,
00:32:15.700
let's do something else. We got that done. Can we move on to something else and be efficient with
00:32:22.240
it? Nope. Nope. Can't do that. We're on a schedule. Right. And government work is the same way. It's
00:32:27.860
the reason you see all these people leaning around on their shovels, you know, and it's like, or the
00:32:33.320
reason a supervisor or somebody who's been there for a long time will say, Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey to the new
00:32:37.920
guy. Don't work so hard. Like we're like, we're going to be here till this time anyway. So like,
00:32:43.280
let's just extend the workout. Yeah. There's incentives to, to work harder. It doesn't exist.
00:32:49.320
Mediocrity and complacency. It exists everywhere. It's crazy. Crazy. It's insanity.
00:32:56.260
You riled up. It's, it's insane. It really is insane. And yet we all buy into it. All right.
00:33:04.000
What's next. Yeah. All right. Travis Neville for my calibration quadrant this quarter,
00:33:09.440
I'm working on building a morning routine to help facilitate some structure and mental
00:33:14.360
resilience. Is there anything you gentlemen do that helps you in the morning to stick
00:33:19.080
on task to your schedule or challenge yourself? Yes. Um, what I would say to this is that my morning
00:33:27.000
schedule actually starts the night before that, that actually helps me. So what I mean by that is
00:33:33.720
that I don't come into the office or come into work or start my day wondering what I'm going to do.
00:33:38.580
Not like over here, like, okay, well, you know, I got to answer these emails and then
00:33:42.360
should I call? Well, I'm going to call, maybe I can call this person and do this.
00:33:47.780
Maybe I'll do this today. Yeah. No, it's none of that. Or, or like, or the gym. It's not like,
00:33:54.320
okay, you know, I'm going to come over here and okay, let me see what I got at my workout.
00:34:00.920
I don't really know. Uh, let me just jump online and see if I can find a workout.
00:34:05.860
Like if I have to do that, I'm not going to go to the gym or even with my clothes. It's like,
00:34:10.220
okay, all my clothes are dirty. I get up, my clothes are dirty. I'm like, ah, man,
00:34:15.060
I don't have any socks or underwear to wear. I've, uh, I guess I'll do it tomorrow.
00:34:18.920
Well, that's the biggest distraction of getting your work done is not knowing the work that needs
00:34:24.800
to be done. So my most effective mornings start the night before where I actually make a detailed
00:34:30.680
itemized list of everything that needs to get accomplished. And then I grease the groove.
00:34:34.680
So what I mean by that is that if I'm going to go work out, I'm not going to wake up and look at
00:34:38.660
what my workout is. I'm going to look at it the night before. Okay. Well, I got, you know,
00:34:42.980
arms and upper back today. Okay. What's this, this, and this, and this cool check. Got it.
00:34:47.860
So that's, that's part of it. Um, I get my clothes laid out, my pre-workout, my water,
00:34:52.580
my water's in the, in the fridge. Like I don't even pour myself water in the morning. I pour it
00:34:56.400
the night before and put the water bottle in the fridge. So I don't have to pour it. It's in there.
00:35:00.620
I could just grab it out of there. Like everything is streamlined to the maximum degree the night
00:35:07.380
before. And look, I'm not perfect, but I know the days that I don't do that, the mornings are
00:35:12.080
significantly less productive than the mornings where I do actually plan it out the day before.
00:35:17.480
Totally. Totally. Yeah. I mean, I I'm the same way. I mean, I put my workout clothes at least out.
00:35:23.320
So I'm not fiddling in the dark. You know what I mean? Trying not to wake up kids and wife and
00:35:28.320
everything. Um, my morning routine is always, uh, I wake up, go to the gym. You know what I mean?
00:35:35.240
Then I start my day. I do the same thing actually with my assistant every day. We do an end of day
00:35:40.220
before I even leave the office. So I know what look, what tomorrow looks like, any pressing issues
00:35:45.100
that should be on my radar before I even leave the office. So that way I'm not carrying it home
00:35:49.240
with me. I think that's been a huge game changer for me is to prepare for the next day is like in
00:35:55.860
my day. Um, and I think that's really important for people that struggle with bringing work home
00:36:01.240
and vice versa is like, you got it in your day. It's got to be clean. Like I'm done working.
00:36:06.640
It can, now everything can wait until I'm here tomorrow. And then that way you can be a little
00:36:10.780
bit more present. Sorry. That's a little bit of a side tangent, but my, my morning routine is pretty
00:36:15.300
much workouts. I've done a number of things like, um, who's Marcus, uh, what's Marcus's, um,
00:36:23.180
he wrote that book, the one day, the day, do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, when the day
00:36:29.340
Aubrey Marcus when yeah, Aubrey Marcus. Yeah. So he had some good morning routine elements. Same
00:36:35.960
thing with, uh, Travis and other resource, the, the miracle morning. Um, you know, those are,
00:36:41.960
I think those are actually really great books and around having creating morning routine. So
00:36:46.900
I'd, I'd look at those. The thing that I would be cautious of is geeking out over it.
00:36:53.580
Like putting too much into your morning. Yeah. Yeah. Like Aubrey Marcus has some great stuff.
00:36:59.100
He's kind of more in the biohacking arena. He's right there with Ben Greenfield. Those guys are,
00:37:05.240
they're, you know, breaking rules and doing a lot of experimental stuff. And I think it's cool.
00:37:10.160
Like I really do. I'm not going to do any of that stuff. Like, yeah, there was one thing I remember
00:37:15.240
and I was joking with Aubrey about this, about him and Ben, like went and did some sort of infrared
00:37:20.560
ultra Ray light on their balls, on their testicles, because it's supposed to increase
00:37:25.300
their, I don't know, their sperm count, which increases testosterone production, like all this
00:37:30.560
stuff. I'm like, okay, at some point there's a diminishing return on some of this. And I think
00:37:36.580
people, and I don't think this about these guys in particular, cause I know them and what they do,
00:37:41.780
but at some point people geek out on this stuff to excuse them from doing the 80%. Now we're talking
00:37:48.420
about laws and principles, Pareto principle. That's you need to do the 20% of work that's
00:37:55.940
going to produce 80% of the results. So everybody's out there taking testosterone and tanning their
00:38:00.240
balls and their buttholes and, you know, doing all sorts of weird nonsense when it's like, did you
00:38:05.360
drink a gallon of water today? Yeah. Are you still drinking soda? Yeah, right. Okay. So you
00:38:13.400
could do all the weird shit, all the fringe stuff, all you want, but if we're not doing the 20% base
00:38:19.180
fundamental stuff, you know, like guys will take creatine and whey and protein and this and that.
00:38:24.260
It's like, well, where'd you have lunch today? Like, well, I had the double Whopper loaded with extra
00:38:29.020
fries and a Coke at Burger King today. I'm like, well, okay. Like what? So you're taking whey and
00:38:34.620
creatine and testosterone, this and that, and all these things, but you're eating this like,
00:38:39.600
and I'm not, look, I'm not here to judge you because I eat the double Whopper too. I love the
00:38:43.960
double Whopper, but at least I'm not going to lie to myself about it and say that I'm healthy because
00:38:48.660
I'm taking all these supplements when I'm really not like lock in the diet first. And then if you're
00:38:54.360
there, then, okay, now we can talk about supplementation. Yeah, totally. Well, and the other
00:38:59.280
thing is related to what you said, Ryan, and I, I even did this when, I mean, I remember
00:39:04.080
years ago, we covered the morning routine in the iron council. That was my first exposure to that
00:39:10.480
book. And I remember I took it and I was like, Oh, now I got this morning routine. That's like an
00:39:16.840
hour and a half long. You know what I mean? And they didn't even include my workout. Right. It was
00:39:21.360
like, I'm going to journal. I'm going to do this. And it was like this big ordeal and it didn't last
00:39:27.680
because it was too much. Right. It was, it was too difficult. Right. Or, and, and I think it's
00:39:33.680
like, this is the advice I give guys that journal is time box. You're journaling too. Otherwise what's
00:39:38.920
going to happen is you'll like spend two hours and awesome. You'll have this great, amazing journal
00:39:44.500
entry, but come tomorrow, you'll go, Oh man, I don't want to do it. That took like two hours yesterday
00:39:50.100
and then you're not going to do it. Right. So just be mindful of that. Like I've, I've certainly,
00:39:55.780
I still love those books. So check them out, but like time box it. And it's like, Hey, I'm going to
00:40:01.020
nice, efficient, quick. So you can be consistent with it. That's where you'll get the most gains.
00:40:08.100
So, and look, I mean, let's be realistic, realistic about our morning routines. Like
00:40:11.660
let's be honest about it. You know, I wake up, if I go to the gym, I'm usually up about 15 minutes
00:40:18.140
before I go to the gym. Like I'm not, I'm not up two hours before I go to the gym and like stretching and
00:40:25.460
it's not, I get up, my hair's a mess. I'm a little disheveled. Like I'm tired. I'm groggy. I'm still
00:40:33.360
wiping the sleep out of my eyes. Okay. Like that's what I've got, you know? So I go to the gym and I
00:40:38.540
do my thing. I try to drink a bottle of water or at least some water before I go to the gym. I could
00:40:44.640
probably drink more. I could probably put pink Himalayan salt with a little chili powder or something
00:40:50.100
or cumin or whatever products they use to help boost your, you know, your immunosystem in the
00:40:55.360
morning. Yeah. I could do that, but I'm not, I'm not going to do that, but I'll drink some water.
00:41:00.140
Uh, I get done with my, my workout. I come back, I get cleaned up. You know, I, I like to look
00:41:06.320
presentable. So I get cleaned up, get ready for the day. Um, I've already got my task list. So I start
00:41:11.260
knocking a few things out here and there. Um, and like, and I'll, and I'll journal too in the morning,
00:41:16.000
but it's not 15 minutes of journaling. Even it might be just five minutes. Like, Hey,
00:41:20.380
Jim was good today. Felt a little, a little out of it, but pretty productive. Numbers went up,
00:41:25.280
feeling strong today, a little sore from the weekend, met this person, decided to go to lunch
00:41:29.720
with this, uh, this guy that was a long lost friend that, you know, we reconnected with. It's
00:41:34.300
like, and that takes me five minutes. That's pretty much my morning routine. And, you know, am I going to
00:41:41.460
read? Maybe, you know, usually I'll read, like, I'll try to read the Bible at night,
00:41:45.040
read a few pages in the evening, but enough with the people who are lying about their morning routine.
00:41:51.920
That's not what's happening. You know, there are some, there are some, but for the overwhelming
00:41:56.640
majority of people, it's not this like glorious grand thing. Totally agree. He had a question
00:42:02.940
around just building mental resilience. Um, what do you do, Ryan, that you feel like contributes to
00:42:09.620
building, building that, whether it's part of a morning routine or not. I think that just might be
00:42:13.760
insightful really quick. It's anything that you don't want to do, but know that you should.
00:42:22.400
That's how you build by default. Your day has those. Yeah, of course. And if you, if look two
00:42:28.620
choices, when there's something that comes up that you don't want to do that, you know, you should
00:42:31.920
the two choices to do it or to kick the can down the road, kicking the can down the road, diminishes
00:42:37.800
mental resiliency, addressing it head on face, face first. And going after it is what strengthens
00:42:43.900
mental resiliency. That's it. It's that simple. There's nothing more to it. So if you have to have
00:42:49.460
a conversation with a subordinate or your boss and you're dreading it, kicking it off till tomorrow
00:42:55.420
means you're being weak. That's like objectively the case. It means you're being weak. I'm not accusing
00:43:02.500
you. It's just the reality. I do that too. When we know we should do something and we don't,
00:43:08.260
we're being weak. When we do something, we know we should, we're not only being strong. We're also
00:43:12.680
being courageous because it's fear. It's that's, it's the fear. It's the discomfort. It's the
00:43:17.600
uncomfortable. Anytime, you know, you should be doing something and you don't, you're, you're
00:43:22.860
opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. So it's working out, uncomfortable conversation,
00:43:27.640
presentation, working on a specific task, asking that woman out on a date, like anything.
00:43:34.500
And then what's beautiful about that is even if the end result doesn't go your way, let's say you
00:43:39.420
ask that woman on a date and she's like, no, I just want to be friends. Okay. That sucks. That's a kick
00:43:44.780
in the dick, but you know what? You still should feel better about that because a, you know, now you can
00:43:51.600
go find somebody else and be, you're like, cool. I had the balls to actually go do it. And you know,
00:43:56.280
it feels good. When you go have that awkward conversation, it's awkward. It's uncomfortable.
00:44:01.860
It's, it's not fun. And it may not even be better after you will feel better. Not necessarily because
00:44:08.760
of the result, because the result might not be what you want, but you're like, Oh, that sucked. I'm so
00:44:14.080
glad I got it done. And you'll feel better because you know, you're building mental resiliency. That's
00:44:19.100
it. Yeah. And, and please, if your parents look for opportunities to do this,
00:44:24.640
build mental resilience, delay gratification. And, and it's silly. I've never thought of this
00:44:30.520
until geez, about maybe the last couple of years, but this, and our parents probably never put this
00:44:36.340
verbiage to it, but it's totally what it is. This is why you have your kids clean their rooms before
00:44:41.760
they play. It's a great opportunity for your kid to delay gratification, build some mental resilience
00:44:49.460
and actually do something they don't want to do and be rewarded for later. Yep. And, and by you
00:44:55.900
going, you know what, go ahead and go play and you can clean your room later. You just robbed the
00:45:01.140
opportunity for them to build some mental resilience and delay gratification. Yep. No. So anyhow,
00:45:07.820
and we all don't live on farms. So look for those opportunities to do that for kids, you know?
00:45:13.040
Well, all right. Tyler Morgan on a farm. I mean, you can live in a, uh, there's just more square
00:45:16.780
foot apartment. I don't think so. I think if like, you can live in 1100 square foot apartment and
00:45:22.420
there's things to do, like there's always things to do. There's chores, there's projects, there's this,
00:45:26.980
there's that, there's always, there's laundry, there's dishes, there's mopping the floor. Like
00:45:31.560
you can find all sorts of things. Yeah. To make your kids. Yeah. Practice that. I see that. All
00:45:38.820
right. Tyler Morgan. I just started reading the book. Every, everyone communicates few connect by
00:45:44.740
John Maxwell. The premise is that, that the premise is that talk is cheap and words are abundant. So
00:45:51.420
focus on how much is it's actually reaching others effectively. I know that I am not naturally gifted
00:45:57.020
in this area or connecting with communication. I've gotten feedback that tells me it's hard to
00:46:02.200
follow my many thoughts and that I'm not clear and I'm too vague. I know this weekend's weakness
00:46:08.760
has played a role in holding me back from where I want to go. I can replay conversations, have better
00:46:15.020
words after interactions are over, but in the moment I often, I'm a wreck and I don't leave an
00:46:21.080
impression. Yeah. Who is this? Who'd this come from? Tyler. Tyler Morgan.
00:46:27.020
Tyler Morgan. Tyler, my disclaimer, I love you. I want you to win. I want you to be able to
00:46:33.960
communicate effectively with people, but I've got to get after you on this. I, I think I know your
00:46:40.540
problem and let me read your question with some emphasis on a few points. So Tyler, was it Tyler
00:46:48.380
Morgan? Yes, sir. Okay. So he says the premise is that talk is cheap. Words are abundant. So
00:46:56.800
focus how much is reaching others, how much is actually reaching others effectively. He's not
00:47:02.800
gifted in the air. This is important. The area of connecting with connection. Well, no, no, no. I'll
00:47:09.240
get to that. But it says I'm not gifted in the area of connecting. That's important. Connecting
00:47:15.180
with communication. So what I hear in this question is that you want to connect with other people.
00:47:19.600
So I'm not going to tell you this to beat you up, but I'm going to point some things out.
00:47:24.480
If I were to read your statement, there's like 17 eyes in there. I just started reading this.
00:47:32.780
I know that I am, I am not, I've gotten feedback. I'm not clear. I know this is a weakness where I
00:47:39.840
want to go. I can replay the conversations. You see the, you see the problem? Yeah.
00:47:46.080
You're, you're being selfish. You're not connecting. Yeah. That's why you're not
00:47:50.940
connecting with people because if you're translating, and again, I'm saying this from
00:47:54.940
a place of care for you. If your communication verbal is a lot like this communication here,
00:48:00.900
where you wrote this down, I would not want to talk with you either because it's all about you.
00:48:06.740
It's all about you. Instead, we need to learn to make it all about the other person.
00:48:12.080
So how would this change? Instead of me being, I can't, I don't know how to connect with people.
00:48:18.840
I can't connect with people. A better thing would be, how will this person be served?
00:48:24.360
What does this person need from me? What value can I give to this individual?
00:48:30.000
What would this person enjoy in a conversation? See the difference? The more you start focusing on
00:48:36.300
other people, the more connection you're going to make. Because if you come into a conversation,
00:48:41.080
Tyler, with me, and now you're not like, I don't know how to communicate. I don't know how to
00:48:43.920
contact. I can't connect with people. I'm not good at this. I'm not gifted. I'm sick of it.
00:48:49.760
But if you come to me and you say, hey, Ryan, like, man, really value what you have to share.
00:48:55.900
What are you struggling with right now? What are your pain points? What's going well for you?
00:49:01.440
How does that work? Oh, what? You're having success in that avenue? That's amazing. How is that
00:49:06.040
working? What have you tried that didn't work? You see the difference? Now the conversation is
00:49:11.600
all about that other person. And now if you're talking to me, I'm excited to talk with you
00:49:15.640
because I get to talk about myself. So the best way to add value in communication is to let that
00:49:22.100
other person see that it's about them. It really should be about them. And by the way, we're going
00:49:26.380
to talk a lot about this, Tyler, here in the Iron Council. We're going to talk a lot about this next
00:49:31.680
month as we talk about powerful networking strategies. And we're going to share how to
00:49:37.200
communicate, how to add value to conversations, how to look for adding value to people. But the
00:49:42.240
more that you can add value to other individuals, the better connector you're going to be. I promise
00:49:47.460
you. Do you think that helps, Kip? Do you think I just want to make sure he got what he needed?
00:49:54.220
I think it comes down to intent. And the intent can't be, I want to be a great communicator to
00:50:00.780
connect with people. It needs to be, I want to let people know that I care and I want to serve them.
00:50:09.520
And your intent will show. Like, I know people that are actually horrible communicators,
00:50:17.240
but guess what? I know they love me. I know they care. And so do we have great connection?
00:50:23.000
Yeah. We have amazing connection because it's real. So just make it real, right? Just get clear
00:50:30.620
on the intent. And now don't get me wrong, right? If I care about you, Ryan, and I'm a good
00:50:36.680
communicator, that ups my game, right? But I can, I mean, it's the same thing we talk about like
00:50:42.720
leaders, right? You can have an amazing leaders. They can be charismatic, great communicators and
00:50:47.560
everything. But if the intent is to look good and build themselves up and it's about them, it doesn't
00:50:53.840
matter. All their talents are wasted because their intent is not about serving other people.
00:50:59.440
Right. So it gets wasted. So I, just another way of saying the same thing. I think it's,
00:51:06.000
it really has to be rooted in service and, and why you're wanting to connect with people.
00:51:12.760
Agreed. And his second, his question in there is how do you start objectively, how do you objectively
00:51:16.820
judge and correct your flaws when your inability to do so is in the past is the reason that it's an
00:51:20.680
issue that it hasn't improved? Again, change your motive. Yeah. And I think that will, that will
00:51:28.360
begin to show. But again, it's also easy to deceive yourself because you'll, why do we serve other
00:51:35.860
people? Think about this for a second. Why do we serve other people? I would argue that for the
00:51:42.200
majority of us, it's because we feel good when we do, which is selfish. Makes us look good. Yeah.
00:51:48.640
We're self, we're, again, it goes back to selfishness. Kip, the reason I serve you is
00:51:53.280
because it feels good for me to do that. Well, I want to feel good. So therefore the benefit wasn't
00:51:56.840
for you is for me. You just happen to be the medium for me to feel better about myself. So are we
00:52:03.380
actually serving because we care about that person? If nobody was around to receive the accolades
00:52:10.680
or to give you the accolades or give you credit or clap or the round of applause or whatever you're
00:52:15.820
looking for, would you still do that thing? Ask yourself that. Would you still do that? And for
00:52:21.080
many of us in certain cases, yes. If it was our wife or our kids or our loved ones, yes, we would do
00:52:26.680
that. But in a lot of our day-to-day interaction, if we're being honest, probably not.
00:52:32.500
And I think we can lose it. And we do. Like I can answer that question right now, Ryan going,
00:52:38.400
oh yeah, it's, it's, it's, my intent is pure. It's out of service and love and caring. And then
00:52:43.900
within a week that's flipped on its head and I've gotten not focused on the right thing. And I've
00:52:49.140
started worrying about my ego and looking good. And I have to like fight to stay in that mindset
00:52:54.960
and hold onto that. I don't think it's, I think it's like integrity. It's something that we have to
00:53:00.200
fight for every single day and you'll lose it. And before you know it, you're doing stuff because you
00:53:06.000
want to look good and feel good. And it's not about other people. If you don't constantly
00:53:10.540
fight to make sure your intent is pure. Yeah, definitely. One thing that, that he said that
00:53:17.060
I thought you were going to say too, but, and we don't have to dive into it, but, but Tyler also
00:53:23.960
like, and, or anyone else listening, be careful not to buy into things, right? Like, you know,
00:53:30.940
I, I'm not naturally gifted in this area. It's like, well, who's naturally gifted?
00:53:35.600
It like the, I don't know. I, I I'm sure people are naturally gifted in key things.
00:53:41.320
However, you seeing yourself as not naturally gifted will be a roadblock for you.
00:53:46.740
So just let go of it. And, and, and I think a more powerful way of looking at that is I don't
00:53:51.860
have the reps yet. I'm probably gotten enough reps in here. So I'm, I'm probably not good at this
00:53:57.180
particular thing yet. And it's about reps. Um, don't, don't fall into this folly of like,
00:54:03.040
well, I'm a set way of being or a fixed way of being. Um, I don't necessarily think that's
00:54:07.920
true for the majority of us. Now I think we do have talents that we can expand and grow,
00:54:13.880
but a lot of the time, these stories that we have about ourselves, they're not true
00:54:18.180
and they just hold us back more than anything. So just be mindful of that, I guess.
00:54:22.260
I think that's, I think that's really well said. And, and also look, if, if, if you're
00:54:27.840
truly not naturally gifted or talented in that area, good, then you get opportunity to work on
00:54:33.580
it and you could actually be better than somebody who is naturally gifted. Cause what are they going
00:54:40.640
Like somebody who communicates almost seamlessly and flawlessly, they have issues too. They struggle
00:54:48.160
with other things might not be communication, but maybe they struggle. They might struggle with
00:54:52.060
running their mouth. You know, they might put their foot in their mouth or, or, or say dumb
00:54:55.940
things a lot because they just communicate and they just blurt it all out. And that's like,
00:54:59.260
they're good at certain things, but then they share too much. Right. And so that's something
00:55:03.280
that they can work on. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses. And if you're like, I'm not naturally
00:55:07.620
gifted in that area. Good. Now you get to go to work and you get to be deliberate about what part
00:55:11.840
of your life you're going to improve. You get to create it. I like that attitude.
00:55:15.200
Hey, can we take, so we got to take one more, but I, Kip, I want to jump ahead a little bit.
00:55:20.940
You want to jump to one? Okay. I want to answer this one because not only does it apply to my own
00:55:25.880
personal life currently, but I think it kind of ties in line with what we were just sharing with
00:55:31.500
Tyler. So, and that one comes from, that's the last question. It comes from Ryan Mills. Can you,
00:55:37.000
can you read that question? Yep. Yeah. Sounds good. All right. Ryan Mills,
00:55:41.680
Ryan and Kip, thank you both for what you're doing. Appreciate you talking insights.
00:55:45.200
That's all I want. That's all I wanted you to share. Yeah. I was, well, that was my joke. I
00:55:49.580
was going to read that and go, all right. Oh, sorry. I still have room. That's all right. Keep
00:55:53.400
going. Great minds to collect. All right. My question is related to divorced families.
00:55:58.400
I hit, it hit me recently that my kids who I have shared 50, 50 custody with are living a double life
00:56:05.840
in a lot of ways. At my home, we are strict, especially with scripture, study, prayer, church
00:56:12.160
attendance and trying to live the gospel principles at the mother's home. They are not only have the
00:56:17.640
opposite of that, but she became, became, um, Oh, a antagonist towards God and the church,
00:56:26.760
even to the point of making fun of my daughter for wanting to live those principles at her house.
00:56:32.280
I know the pain that, that, that trying to serve two masters creates. My question is what tips or
00:56:37.920
thoughts would you have on smoothing things out and creating more consistency? My kids are all
00:56:44.260
teenagers at this point. Okay. So I wanted to talk about this because this impacts my own personal
00:56:50.260
life and it's fairly new for me. And Kip, you're more of a veteran, obviously with how this relates.
00:56:56.400
Yeah. But I thought this would help to see it. I've had this exact issue too. Okay. Now I haven't.
00:57:03.520
And again, I'm, I'm new to this and, but I have not had this and I really don't anticipate this
00:57:09.920
being a big issue, but I still think I might be able to share some insights, but I'm going to give
00:57:15.180
this little disclaimer here first. Number one, I'm new to this. All right. So it's, everything's fresh.
00:57:21.160
Something down the road, certainly like this could happen. I'm not saying that it can't,
00:57:24.720
I'm just saying it hasn't, and I don't anticipate it, but I want to be aware of it.
00:57:27.980
The other disclaimer I want to give is that my ex-wife and I are pretty much on the same page
00:57:33.600
with just about everything except for being together. Like, but everything else is so huge
00:57:41.520
is pretty much on the same page from spirituality to the way that we want to raise our kids to a
00:57:48.940
thought process about politics, like pretty much on the same page with everything. So I want to give
00:57:53.820
that too. But with that said, I think that one thing that could help, number one, you have to
00:58:00.080
have boundaries and rules in place. And I think it is important that you communicate those with
00:58:04.500
the, the, your co-parent, right? With your ex-wife. Like it's very important that you communicate with
00:58:10.140
her about these things. Maybe you've already done that. Maybe you haven't, if you haven't do it,
00:58:15.360
if you have, there's probably some other little obstacles in here that are going to make this a lot
00:58:21.780
harder. And what we want to do is we want to get rid of those obstacles before we even have these
00:58:27.300
conversations because we need to be amicable and we need to be able to work together on other issues
00:58:34.280
so that it translates into these more deeper fundamental issues. So here's what I would propose.
00:58:40.720
And again, I don't know your situation. So I'm just, I'm just speaking, cause I know a lot of guys are.
00:58:44.980
If when you have the kids, you say you're going to drop the kids off at three o'clock,
00:58:49.120
you dang well better drop the kids off at three o'clock. If your wife calls you or your ex-wife
00:58:55.000
calls you and she says she's having a bad day and she wants to be with the kids because she's upset
00:58:59.960
and she's having a hard time. If that doesn't go over any boundaries that you have, you probably
00:59:05.860
ought to consider doing that because it would be helpful for her and also the kids. If there's
00:59:11.120
little minor disagreements that really don't put you under a whole lot of pressure, stress,
00:59:15.540
or go across any of your boundaries or, or put your kids in any sort of danger or anything like
00:59:19.280
that, you should probably be pretty amicable, but amicable about that. When your kids talk about
00:59:25.380
your ex-wife, even though you may not totally feel like it, you should probably be supportive of
00:59:31.400
your ex-wife and the relationship she has with your guys' children. We were talking about women the
00:59:38.800
other day, my two oldest boys and I, we were talking about different types of women. And I said,
00:59:44.040
you know, you have to be careful with these types of women because of dot, dot, dot. What you want to
00:59:47.500
do is you want to find a great woman like mom. And I wasn't lying. That's true. Like mom, because of
00:59:53.400
these things. And I listed all of these character traits that are so incredible and beautiful in her
00:59:58.720
that I think are notable and worthwhile and worth pursuing. I speak highly of her, not only because I
01:00:06.920
love her, but because they need to see me speaking highly of her. And I will say something else.
01:00:13.000
About this. Again, I'm new to it and this isn't the reason I'm doing it, but you know, who's going
01:00:19.880
to hear about that? Mom. At some point, something's going to get brought up and one of the kids is
01:00:25.620
going to say, oh yeah, dad said he loved that about you. I'm not trying to be manipulative. I'm not
01:00:31.900
trying to use kids to like none of that. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. I truly feel
01:00:40.260
that way. And I want to build goodwill between me and my children and my ex-wife and the dynamic
01:00:47.480
and the relationship. And I want everything around it to be positive and good, regardless of the way
01:00:53.200
everything turns out. Because that time that I need to come to her and I need to say, hey, I need to have
01:01:00.200
a conversation with you about some things. And this is probably not going to be a real comfortable
01:01:04.560
conversation, but I've been really dedicated to making sure the kids get a dose of spirituality
01:01:12.940
when they're with me. And it's very important to me and it's very important to the kids.
01:01:17.400
And I realize you don't feel the same way about it, but I felt like you might be actively working
01:01:24.100
to undermine what we're doing here. And I don't mind that you're not engaged spiritually the same
01:01:30.520
way that I am. We all have to make those choices, but I would appreciate it if you didn't mock or put
01:01:36.020
down or belittle what it is I'm trying to create. That would mean a lot to me. The more that you've built
01:01:41.980
up the bank account with her by dropping the kids off a time, being amicable, being flexible with
01:01:49.460
schedules, going out of your way to serve her and help her in different ways. Again, my disclaimer
01:01:57.780
is that my ex-wife and I are pretty much on the same page, but I can't envision that being the case
01:02:05.740
because there's just goodwill that's being built. What do you think though, Kip?
01:02:09.280
Totally. No, I totally agree. I mean, I don't know what kind of crazy he's dealing with, right?
01:02:15.280
Right, right. Because you might get in a scenario where you're just dealing with crazy, but what you
01:02:21.500
said is still true. And it may just mean it's harder, but you helping, you serving, you going out of
01:02:31.240
your way and not trying to seek justice in all things is only going to help you, right? There's
01:02:39.440
been scenarios where in the past, it's like, hey, you know, I bet we could probably reduce child
01:02:46.000
support now or whatever. I'd save a lot of money and we should do it. It wasn't worth it. Like it
01:02:53.420
wasn't worth the relationship of me going, let me nickel and dime. It wasn't. And where's the money
01:03:02.180
going anyway? To the house where my two kids live. In the grand scheme of things, right? Like I
01:03:08.660
shouldn't be complaining about that, right? Like it could be a lot worse. It could be going to the
01:03:13.560
government, right? Instead. So at least it's going in the household where my kids are. And so
01:03:18.280
what you said is true, regardless, it just may be harder to do depending on the, at the level of
01:03:25.140
crazy that you might be dealing with is all. Yeah. I look, I know guys. Well, Sean Whalen is an
01:03:32.220
example of that where he had, I mean, a horrible divorce and so much contention and animosity talks
01:03:39.860
about it. No, police had to come when they would do the children exchanges was that bad. And he tells a
01:03:47.280
story of one of his mentors saying, you need to write her a letter and tell her all the things
01:03:50.560
you appreciate about her. He's like, hell no, I'm not doing that. No way. And he did. And gradually
01:03:56.880
the relationship, the dynamic change they have from what I can tell, I don't know, but from the outside
01:04:01.720
looking in, they have a pretty solid relationship now, all things considered. So I think a lot of this
01:04:07.740
is in your hands. Again, I feel like I am speaking a little bit from ignorance, but maybe I'm giving you a
01:04:15.440
position that allows you to see it differently than you currently are. I don't know. I hope that's
01:04:20.940
the case. The other thought that came, came to mind. Um, so these are teenagers and, and although
01:04:29.100
an ideal state is that, you know, mom's teaching them the importance of spirituality and you are as
01:04:36.060
well, the, the, they're teenagers, meaning they're going to school and getting the opposite of what you're
01:04:42.980
being given them. They're getting the opposite from other kids already. We, this is a great age for
01:04:50.160
them to start owning whatever it is around spirituality. And so be careful, right? Don't
01:04:57.760
demonize mom. But when, when daughter comes and says, oh, mom was criticizing me for wanting to go to
01:05:04.440
church, use it, go, oh, interesting. So why do you go to church? Why do you think that's important
01:05:12.580
enough to want to go, even though that mom doesn't want to go? How do I support you in you owning this
01:05:18.260
for yourself? So they're at an age that you can do this anyway. So coach up and realize that, Hey,
01:05:26.000
they live in the world and the, and the world's going to be fighting against all these great principles
01:05:30.400
that you're trying to teach them anyway. So help them and guide them. And don't do that.
01:05:36.720
That you demonizing mom or criticizing her for seeing things differently is not going to help
01:05:42.280
them. And one last thought I had that I think is really critical that I think we overlook a lot.
01:05:48.540
Your kids, when we criticize their, their parent, either way, you're criticizing your child,
01:05:55.940
who they are is their mother. And they will identify as the daughter of that woman or the son and,
01:06:03.280
and, or the son of their dad. And there's a special bond there, whether you like it or not.
01:06:10.220
And so be very, very careful. And they will, kids will associate your discontent for their parent
01:06:17.300
as discontent for them. So honor, honor their parent by honoring them, make sure that you're not
01:06:25.200
speaking ill and be an adult and help them like work through their own process, you know, and ask them
01:06:32.060
how they feel about things and just help, help guide those waters.
01:06:36.420
Yeah. I think you brought up a good point about a reflection of them, but also you're mocking their
01:06:41.840
love for them. Right? So if you say, Hey, you know, she's a bitch and she's this and she's that,
01:06:46.080
well, you know, your daughter or your son loves their mother. And so now you say, that's like,
01:06:50.900
you're mocking the fact that your daughter or son loves their mother. Like you're saying that,
01:06:56.280
like you're diminishing how they feel. Um, there's another silver lining here. I think too,
01:07:02.960
does he have sons or daughters? I can't, I don't know if he said that.
01:07:06.880
There's definitely a daughter because he said that his daughter, um, got some criticism,
01:07:10.900
criticism, criticizing from mom, but that's all I know.
01:07:14.160
You know what your daughter is talking to you. Like she, she's relaying whatever mom said,
01:07:21.080
she's brought that to you and she's talking to you. That's awesome. That means she values your
01:07:28.080
relationship because if she didn't, she would just take it to heart and she wouldn't say anything,
01:07:32.240
say anything about it. She wouldn't share it. Like something, something right is going on here.
01:07:37.980
She's opening up to you. She's talking to you. And you said it, kid. You said,
01:07:41.940
how do you feel about that? What are your thoughts? Not, well, mom's a bitch and she doesn't know.
01:07:46.340
Oh, this is how you do it. Totally. It's like, Oh, she did. Oh, okay. That's interesting. What,
01:07:53.040
so what did you say? What, what do you think about it? How do you feel about that? And she might say,
01:07:58.520
well, I think mom's a bitch. You're like, Oh, well, hold on. And now you defend, right?
01:08:03.520
Let's have some empathy. Is she, is she, or is she seeing this from a different perspective? And now,
01:08:09.660
you know, like, you don't want to take mom's side. Like, I'm not saying that, but yeah,
01:08:12.880
there's really an opportunity to just ask some really profound questions here, but I would treat
01:08:18.580
this as a, as a win. She's talking, at least one of your daughters is talking with you about it.
01:08:24.100
That's awesome. Totally. Totally. And, and you alluded to this earlier about dropping them off
01:08:30.300
on time and building that deposit. This just illustrates that you, we have to bring our A game.
01:08:38.620
You have to be the light on the Hill. The, the, the, we do this sometimes I do this, right? When
01:08:45.940
we're married, we go like, you know, I'm going to double down and focus at work. And, and my wife's
01:08:52.660
taking the reins in these other areas. And I get checked out, right? You can't do that. You can't
01:08:58.000
do that as a divorced parent, right? You, you have to like bring your A game and that spiritual
01:09:03.960
environment that you want to create in your home has to be on point and you got to do it really,
01:09:10.740
really well. You can't even do it as a, as a married parent, because if you do it as a married
01:09:15.820
parent, then you'll be a divorced parent. Like my situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know,
01:09:21.200
yeah. Be under a game if you're a divorced parent, but the stakes are even higher, right?
01:09:26.200
Be an A game parent when you're married. So you don't get into this situation. And that's frankly,
01:09:32.580
a lot of what happened in my situation. Dialed in on the business, the finance stuff and not dialed
01:09:38.360
in on the relational family marriage stuff. And here we are. Yeah. It was the natural,
01:09:42.660
inevitable outcome of that. So yeah, there's, there's moments, there's, there's opportunities.
01:09:47.100
And I, and I do, I look at them as opportunities, whether it's with a relationship with your ex or a
01:09:52.420
relationship at work or, and just like, let's just do what we say we're going to do. You say,
01:09:58.120
we're going to drop them off at three, drop them off at three. You say, you're going to check it on
01:10:01.580
the house when they're out of town. Do that. You say, you're going to bring them by. You're going to
01:10:05.120
whatever. And it's not because you want to prove to her that you're doing it right. That's not the
01:10:11.600
motive. The motive is doing the right thing because that's what men do. That's what we do.
01:10:17.720
And I'm not saying we don't falter. I have. Okay. So maybe I'm in no position to tell you,
01:10:22.260
but I think I am because I'm trying to do it right where I didn't do it right before.
01:10:29.360
Yeah, totally. All right. We got some additional questions. Let's have those for reserve for next
01:10:34.060
week, Kip. Sounds good. And we'll go from there. So guys, right now I've got a lot of emails on the
01:10:40.200
battle planners and inserts for the battle planners when there's going to be available. I just made a
01:10:44.720
big order of those. So I think I'm going to do a presale on those just to get them out and you guys,
01:10:49.460
cause they'll, they'll go quick. Uh, so look for that in the next couple of days. That'll be a
01:10:53.620
store.orderofman.com. Um, outside of that, we have our battle ready program. So 30 days to battle ready
01:11:00.240
will help you address a lot of these questions that we asked or got asked here today. And you can
01:11:05.060
check that out at orderofman.com slash battle ready. Anything else, Kip?
01:11:10.400
Nope. Just obviously the connection with you on the, on the socials at Ryan Mickler, um, and just
01:11:17.600
share, right. Let's keep the, uh, growth of the, uh, I don't know if the movement going.
01:11:23.180
Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys, we'll be back, uh, later on Friday until then let's go out there
01:11:28.420
and take action and become a man. We are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man
01:11:32.840
podcast. You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.
01:11:37.600
We invite you to join the order at quarter of man.com.