The 5 Marks of a Man
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Summary
Pastor Brian Tome, author of The Five Marks of a Man, unpacks what he thinks are the five marks of manhood. He argues that manhood requires staking out a minority position, being part of a pack, and creating more than you consume.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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We often think of the difference between a boy and a man as a matter of age, but Brian
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Tome says that there can be 15-year-old men and 45-year-old boys, and that the real difference
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maker in being grown up isn't a matter of the number of years you accumulate, but the
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Brian is a pastor and the author of The Five Marks of a Man.
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Today on the show, Brian unpacks what he thinks are the marks of mature manhood.
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We talk about the need to have a vision and how life-giving hobbies can create that vision.
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Brian argues that manhood requires staking out a minority position, being part of a pack,
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And we discuss the ways men can still be protectors in the 21st century.
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After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is slash marks.
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So you have spent your career as a pastor who's particularly focused on working with men.
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What are the problems that you saw come up over and over again with the men that you interacted
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with that drove you to write this book, The Five Marks of a Man?
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Yeah, well, it probably started when I got a lot of feedback from women saying,
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hey, could you do something to get the men in this church in line?
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And I at first took it as, well, you're just complaining because the guys who you want to
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But the more I heard them and the more I observed a lot of men's behavior, the more I realized
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there is a bunch, a bunch of guys who haven't grown up yet, a bunch of guys who still aren't
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Even a commitment to talk to a woman, even a commitment to date somebody.
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I tell fraternities, I've spoken to a number of fraternities around the country, and I tell
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them, I said, guys, if you will talk to a woman, you can have any woman here you want
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They're okay to text them, okay to be in a group context, but just not comfortable.
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And I saw again and again and again how young men were struggling.
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And then I saw older men and I used the men loosely.
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The premise of the book, Brett, is there's such a thing as a 15-year-old man and there's
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It's a matter of these marks that I started to discovering.
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And I saw these guys, a couple of my friends, I just thought, gosh, dude, you're 45.
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You still have a hard time getting up early and going to work and keeping the same job.
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You still have a hard time keeping a commitment to a woman after all this time.
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You still act like the way I acted when I was 15.
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And so that was all part of the stew that I was swimming in at that point.
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Yeah, these 45-year-old boys, in the words of my son, 13-year-old son, Gus, he would say,
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Yeah, well, that's one of the marks that I uncovered.
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And when I say these marks, I would just have the listeners say, if you picture a man who
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you respect, your father, a father figure, even a man from history, Abraham Lincoln, a
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Winston Churchill, I think you'll find that these five things come up again and again and
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And one of them, you just mentioned with your son's amazing quotes.
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If I do a revision of the book, Brett, I'm going to quote your son.
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And what he's basically saying there is these guys don't have a vision for their life.
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And until there's something out in the distance that you don't have that you want and is going
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to take two things, time and difficulty, that's what a vision is.
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There's time and difficulty before you get there.
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They don't want to work out and get their physical goals.
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They don't want to work their way up the food chain in the business world.
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They think immediately everybody should hear their ideas because they're so amazing.
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No, when you have a vision, there's something out there that's giving you reason for why
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you're doing what you're doing today, whatever that vision is.
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It could be getting college education, getting married, being the first person in my family
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to actually stay married, starting a business, doing a triathlon, whatever it is, a boy will
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never take off a goal like that because he just wants to have a good day.
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I've noticed this too in a lot of grown men is they, a lot of them who are floundering,
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They just, yeah, they lack a vision that they're shooting for.
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Why do you think there's so many men lacking that bigger vision for their lives and for
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I think there's a confluence of a lot of things that have come together.
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The men today and brought by men, I'm talking about anybody in their, you know, 20s, 30s,
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Everyone thinks that the, the earliest generation is the weakest generation.
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Every German generation from John Adams back, all thinks, oh, these new Americans, they're,
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But I do think if we look back at the things that we've done to bless our kids, the things
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we've done to set our kids up for success, I think we've made them more short-term focused.
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I think as we've talked about things like follow your passion, follow your passion, you get
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up every day and you go to work and you find that you're really good at something.
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And then that becomes your passion because you're finding you're having results with
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Every, every 18 year old is supposed to be a social media influencer.
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That's never been an option, Brett, for any male in history.
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So we've got all these things that are first offs that we're dealing with right now in,
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in America, things that have never happened in anthropological history.
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Even the idea of adolescence, that term wasn't known until about 1900.
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There's this weird thing that's happening with kids as they come into puberty.
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Well, that went from being when you were 13 to when you're 13 to 18.
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You know, people feel like they still can't make commitments or are still trying to find
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It's okay that we're all on a journey of self-discovery, but we have to say, at this point, I don't know
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I've got some outages and I've got to look at those instead of just an idea for what I
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I love that idea of not following your passion.
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Instead, this is from Cal Newport from that book he wrote, So Good They Can't Ignore You.
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And he talks about, instead of following your passion, find what you're really good at and
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And then you'll develop a passion because you're displaying mastery and you're actually
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And he says, yeah, the problem with passion, you're following your passions.
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You can be excited about being a social media influencer.
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You can be excited about, I don't know, lifting weights or being a coach.
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But if you find that one thing you're really good at, you discover what life has called
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you to and try to do that with all your might, then you'll develop that passion as you do
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And you discover it not by taking an online survey or seeing somebody else's life that
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You discover it by working, by putting one foot in front of the other.
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That's actually the second mark that I found in my research is that men work and boys play.
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Men wake up, they feel like they have a job to do.
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And a boy isn't so much concerned or interested in that.
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But when you have a work ethic, when you just start hitting the same nail, something happens.
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And I think, Brett, that's one of the ways that our younger generation of men are at a
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You and I could probably compare all the crappy jobs we had from age 13 on.
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I could tell you about when I would deliver papers, satchels over both shoulders, cutting
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into my neck when I had the big Sunday edition and having to figure out how to do it in the
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I could tell you about flipping hamburgers at Hardee's over an open flame, getting third
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degree burns under my inner thighs when cleaning out the fryers.
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I could tell you about, you know, when I was a grunt worker, all of us who are older have
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those sort of stories of things that were just crappy to do.
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The demands on school also can tend to be so high that people don't even have time for
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Like how many kids do you know actually have a minimum wage job?
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I think our parents and we're trying to bless our kids by maybe letting them have it easier
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But in the process, we're short circling a way for them to develop work ethic, which will
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help them discover what their passion is because they find that they're good at it.
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So finding your vision or developing a vision isn't about, it's basically, it sounds like
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you have to just start doing stuff in the world.
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And as you do those things, you'll discover what that vision is, but it takes action.
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And again, young males in the history of all of civilization, that's what they did.
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They had a path that they had to get on and follow that path.
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Get myself a teepee, go out and hunt, take care of these things, sleep outside.
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These are all things that every man in every corner of the globe throttle history have done
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And so I think that there's been things that naturally were in place to grow a young male
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And some of those things we've evolved out of, and it's actually to our destruction.
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I think one of the reasons that also may be contributing to a lot of men these days,
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maybe in their thirties, forties, who don't feel like they have like a vision for their
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life is that before, you know, let's say a hundred years ago, this is kind of related to what
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you were saying about the rites of passage in cultures.
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And now we live in an age where this is, this is a blessing.
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You get to decide what you're going to do, but that blessing can also be a curse.
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Cause it's like, oh man, there's so many things I could do so many things I could have as a
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vision for my life that it can become so overwhelming that you just don't do anything.
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I interact with people in corporate America who are making huge amounts of money, massive,
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And it's very common for them to think, yeah, but what would have happened if I'd been a
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You know, what would have happened if I started my own business?
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We didn't have these options way back when we just put our head down and went after it.
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And I think that we're just, uh, we're spending too much time navel gazing as men.
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As the Bible says, here goes first Bible quote, because I am a pastor by day, you know, put
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When you're plowing a field, you want to fix your eyes on a tree on the other side of the
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Most of us don't have the attention span to fix our eyes on a tree on the other side of a
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We're just looking left and right, wondering, does somebody else have a better ox than we
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Is somebody else doing it better than I am looking behind ourselves, second guessing my
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No, man, just, just look forward to what you think is best and go.
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So I think the takeaway there, if you're a young man and you want to develop that vision for
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your life, try different, like do different stuff, try different things.
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What advice do you have for a guy who's in his thirties and forties?
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You know, he's got a career, maybe he's got a mortgage he's got to pay and he doesn't feel
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like he has the ability to go do other things, try different things.
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Cause it might just mess everything up, you know, make it so he can't pay the bills.
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Any advice for those guys who feel listless cause they don't have something bigger they're
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I think there's a couple of things that they could do.
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One is to just look under their nose, see what's around them and recognize that there
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is long-term lasting impact they can have in their relationships around them.
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You know, as we've put off having a family, I know that you did a bit a while ago when
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you said one of the marks of man was procreation.
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As we take a look at, you know, history, I really liked that a lot.
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Maybe there's six marks of a man, but there is this thing of I've created somebody who's
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You know, your business isn't going to outlast you, but you create a person.
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If you got, if you have kids, like that's an unbelievable vision that is going to outlast
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you and you can replicate yourself in those guys and women in huge ways.
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I think the second thing that you're probably touching on here, Brett, which is another
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passionary of mine is many men feel that way, but the answer isn't finding a new vision
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You need some hobby that captures your imagination, something that you can improve in.
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Because I think it's important for us to men to feel like we're on some sort of improvement
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You know, I know for you, at least for a while ago, your hobbies seem to be cross-training
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Ask other men questions about how to rebuild a T-150 transmission.
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And it takes creative thought and it's a vision.
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And I just meet a lot of guys who aren't doing anything fun.
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And they think the answer is I need some huge career shift.
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But first, is there anything you do that brings you life that you're not paid for?
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Is there anything you sink a lot of money in simply because you like it?
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So your vision doesn't have to be just constrained to your career.
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So sometimes a hobby itself can form that vision or purpose for your life.
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And something I've noticed too in my own life is hobbies can inspire a different vision
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I was on one of my hobbies is adventure motorcycling riding.
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And I never thought that that would do anything other than just be fun to camp with other guys.
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And we were on a campfire one day and I wasn't looking for a new vision.
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And one of the guys around the campfire opened up about something really vulnerable in his life.
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It was one of those moments like when someone goes there, everyone around the fire says,
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And I could probably say something like that right now if I had the courage.
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And there was this really great bonding moment.
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And the next morning before we were heading out, we were on the same campfire.
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And I said, guys, every time we come and do this, people open up, we get vulnerable,
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And I don't think it's the fact that we're on motorcycles.
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I don't think it's the fact that we're staying away from our home for a couple nights.
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I think we're tapping into this thing of camping and being around a campfire.
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Like every man from all history has sat around a fire and shared their heart or encouraged one
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another or had drinking stuff or gotten ready before a big battle.
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I said, what could we do to make something like this accessible to more men who are never going
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And that became this thing that has become a vision for my life that I never, ever, ever,
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And I would have never said, hey, how can I have, we have 3,000 guys, seven different
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countries, 40 different states coming together actually tomorrow.
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And I could have never, ever, ever, ever, ever thought, well, how could I, what could I do
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that would gather 3,000 people from around the world?
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I would never, but because I was just trying to take a break, I was trying to have a hobby,
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Then an idea came to me and I realized, oh, I'm actually kind of set up for this.
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That's how these big visions come, these quote unquote big visions.
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When you're just being faithful with what you feel you need to do, and then something
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comes to you and you decide to step out and put one foot in front of the other.
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Going back to that idea of just, you know, putting your hand to the plow and just looking
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I mean, I know a lot of guys, once they've decided, this is my vision, this is what I'm
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It can be really tempting to be like, well, I'm just getting tired of this.
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Because as you said, the boys live for today, men play the long game.
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So any advice on getting better at playing the long game?
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I think if you're going to make a shift, it needs to be because you've been doing the
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same job for a long time and you've really tried to innovate in that job, but you're
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repeatedly seeing really bad, negligible results.
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And if that's your situation, you've been faithful, you've been hitting the same nail
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over and over again, then you might want to look at a, look at a change.
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But I think for most of us, the problem is that we don't hit the same nail.
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You could line up a railroad tie and you could put tent nails in it and you could take your
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hammer and just start hitting each of those nails as you feel hitting them.
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But the only one that's going to go down is the one you stay on and you keep hitting the
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There's a lack of tenacity that's bred into us by our culture.
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So when a man can learn to focus on a thing, he's almost always going to find that he's
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going to have success because very few men are able to focus.
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And I remember when I was, I was like 18 or 19.
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At this point, he was probably 25 years in the job.
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And I asked my dad, how do you do, like every day is the same day for you.
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And his advice was, he says, I just focus on each day and try to make the best I can
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Then everything else just kind of takes care of itself.
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So the second mark you talk about in the book is men take a minority position.
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Yeah, well, boys are always looking to be in the majority.
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In Cincinnati, we don't have a pigeon problem because somehow, and it's debatable how this
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happened, was this introduced or did they just come here?
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There were peregrine falcons that came to our city.
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There was a couple of families that actually went to one hotel a number of years ago.
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And there was the falcon nest sitting right outside.
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And what happens is these peregrine falcons, they just waste all the pigeons.
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They come down and just crush them and destroy them.
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There's few of us who have principles that we'll die for.
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There's few of us who will endure hardship and feel like it's a mark of manhood to just
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Because sometimes you have to do that as a man.
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Your beliefs as a man, you're going to find they're in the minority relative to the rest
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A man doesn't intentionally love to be in the minority.
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He just recognizes whatever it is, he's got a guiding star.
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He's got a north point on his life that that's more important to him than the approval of
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Let's say a man who's got a career in a particular profession and there's a lot of pressure to
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But this particular man says, no, family's more important.
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So I'm going to spend more time with my family and less time at work.
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They might have opportunities to advance in their career, be limited because of that
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You can't work out five times a week, be well read, be up to speed on the latest TV shows,
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binge those, have a career that's thriving and going someplace, have a wife who loves you,
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You got to be happy having a couple of those things to a really, really high degree.
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And then other ones, you just play in and dabble in from time to time.
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So having a vision will sometimes require you to take a minority position.
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And that can mean being a minority in terms of the smaller number of people who recognize
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But it can mean also bigger things, big professional, moral, ethical decisions.
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Any advice on strengthening the nonconformity muscle that will allow you to go against the
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Because a lot of men, as soon as they meet with some resistance, they're tempted to just
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give up because it's easier to go with the flow.
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Well, what I do personally, as I look at the historical figures that inspire me, and it
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seems like all of them were a voice in the wilderness.
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You know, Winston Churchill saying, hey, we have got to take the Nazis serious here.
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He was taking a minority position until finally they realized, okay, we have to go to war.
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I was over in Germany just last week touring some of the sites of chaos and destruction
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And at all these sites, there's a person that's memorialized because they didn't go with the
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One of the sites I went to was a concentration camp outside of Weimar.
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And there was a pastor there who got thrown in because he refused to give Nazi propaganda
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when he was doing a funeral, got thrown in there and then refused to take his hat off
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So he threw him in solitary confinement, which is right where the buses came in, unloading
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And the guy started preaching out of the window.
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And then they put boxes over all the windows so that nobody could do that in the future.
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So when I see these things, Brett, of people who stand for what is right, who go,
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And I just kind of log it away in my mind and say, okay, Brian, when people don't understand
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you, when they think you're doing the wrong thing, even if you think it's the right thing,
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That can be a great way to strengthen, to steel yourself up.
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Another one would be look in the past to when you took little mini stands.
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Look, it's the many things that we do that prepare us for the future.
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And so with the minority position, we think back to, I remember when I was in college and
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And I remember they were talking about the id and how some people believe in God.
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And he said, well, for instance, does anybody in here happen to believe in God?
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And there was about 80 people in this classroom.
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I started to have a cold sweat breakdown in my face.
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This is, this is 1983, you know, no one was, it felt like it was three hours.
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And I remember raising my hand and then he had a, he didn't belittle me.
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And when I was done with that, I thought, wow, that was a big deal.
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I think it's the first time I stood up and was the only one in a room and raised my hand.
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That formed me for things on down the line that were later on.
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And so I think about those things and I tell myself, you've done this before, Brian, this
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is just the most recent one, but this is in your history.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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A third mark you talked about is men are team players and you argue that it's boyish to want
00:25:47.400
And I'll say to guys, I'll say, you mean you're weak and you're going to die sooner
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And they always look at me like, what are you talking about?
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And I say, well, anybody who knows wolves knows that when you're a lone wolf, you're
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weak and you die sooner because wolves can only live when they're in a pack because that's
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We've even dramatized, mythologized this beautiful characteristic of not needing anybody or not
00:26:16.320
I think this is why men are four times more likely to die of suicide.
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And all of our other statistics are horrible because we are not making relationships, which
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We're not entering into team environments with people, other guys or women.
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For the strength of the pack is the wolf and the strength of the wolf is the pack.
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Brett, why didn't I talk to you before I wrote this book?
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And it goes to this idea of going back to ecology when they observe wolves.
00:26:51.200
The lone wolves are usually the ones that got kicked out of the pack because they were
00:26:58.300
And so they oftentimes they're like the pack reject.
00:27:03.200
So I know a lot of men these days, we've talked about this on the podcast.
00:27:05.960
A lot of men these days feel like they don't have a pack.
00:27:07.960
They don't have a group of friends that can strengthen them.
00:27:10.820
Any advice to those men who particularly in their 30s and 40s, that's when it gets really
00:27:15.980
When you're in your 20s, you're still in college.
00:27:19.720
Any advice for men in their 30s, 40s, 50s who are looking for a solid group of friends
00:27:29.500
It's not an easy path, but I 100% have the answer.
00:27:38.740
Women, there was an old book decades ago, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.
00:27:48.300
And he said, yeah, women go to lunch, men go to their cave.
00:27:52.040
Women tend to be more able to just go to a meal and look at somebody and talk or have
00:27:57.340
a book study tend to be able to do that better than men.
00:28:02.580
I'm just saying that tends to make more sense or come more naturally to a woman.
00:28:06.560
Men, on the other hand, we get friends when we do things together.
00:28:12.320
It's not because we're in college that we had friends.
00:28:15.120
It's not because we were in high school that we had friends.
00:28:16.480
There's no magic friend dust in high school and college campuses.
00:28:27.740
We were doing things that caused us to be around people.
00:28:35.300
We're so immersed with our career or with our streaming or with whatever it is that we're
00:28:43.420
And when you're not doing things with other men, you're not going to be able to find another
00:28:52.820
You take up a hobby of restoring a 1978 Jeep CJ7.
00:28:56.560
There's things that you don't know and YouTube won't help you with that a friend of mine has
00:29:02.520
He'll come over and like, hey, you got to do that.
00:29:07.860
You're going to find people to do that with you.
00:29:12.960
I had a group of closest friends where we were riding motorcycles together.
00:29:19.740
So we said, we can't let these friendships die.
00:29:23.880
And so we have text threads of where are we going to go this year?
00:29:26.900
What kind of, what kind of gear are you getting?
00:29:29.960
And it's, it's, it's banter and it's beer planning meetings and all that stuff, because
00:29:39.200
And I want to tell you, brothers, you're not a bad person.
00:29:42.620
If you don't have a hobby, you're not a bad person.
00:29:45.780
It's just, it's okay to spend money on yourself and time on yourself.
00:29:49.680
It'll make for a healthier you and a healthier family.
00:29:56.220
I know a guy who joined a bagpipe band and he does that and he does like, they do parades
00:30:02.200
and he's made a lot of great friends doing that.
00:30:06.040
We're not talking about doing stereotypical manly things.
00:30:14.880
But I'm even saying, do you want to go to a poetry writing class and learn how to write
00:30:21.720
And there's other men there and you're like bouncing haikus off each other or something.
00:30:26.280
This isn't a matter of doing classic masculine stuff.
00:30:28.400
It's just doing something that fills you up to get you on other men where who knows
00:30:36.800
I mean, like back in the day and people still do this today, but I think you had more
00:30:41.560
Like men would get together just to play cards, play poker, play bridge.
00:30:47.000
And what's the thing about doing this stuff together, like doing stuff with other men, you might
00:30:50.780
not have these deep, vulnerable conversations, but doing the stuff allows that to happen
00:31:02.820
I remember my dad going to, he wasn't a poker player, but he played bridge club.
00:31:17.140
You go by a softball field 30 years ago, every night you'd see guys out there playing
00:31:21.820
who probably shouldn't have been playing, but they're grown over.
00:31:28.640
All of this connective tissue we had in our culture, Brett, that would enable us to connect
00:31:33.900
Because again, men connect with other people when they're doing something.
00:31:37.860
So all this stuff that we would do and meet men, that connective tissue is gone and
00:31:44.420
So a man's going to have to really figure out how to create that connective tissue for
00:31:48.780
But it is job number one for your mental health and for your future.
00:31:51.680
And I think the advice there for men who want to start growing that connective tissue,
00:31:55.260
I think something that helps is just manage expectations.
00:31:57.560
Like it's going to, it might take a while and it could be a lot harder than you think.
00:32:02.200
Because I've noticed this when you try to get other men together, like they're busy.
00:32:05.680
They're like, they're not used to doing stuff with other people.
00:32:10.040
So the idea of prioritizing friendship or doing stuff, it's hard for them.
00:32:13.480
So they might flake out or they, oh, I can't make it.
00:32:16.520
But you just got to keep being consistent with it.
00:32:19.360
And you got to play, you got to play the long game with this, going back to that other mark
00:32:27.360
It's going to be time and difficulty and there's going to be misses.
00:32:31.100
And actually what you might find too is the initial guys who want to be your friend are
00:32:39.080
You know, I mean, there's some people out there that are just not helpful and it may
00:32:43.740
take you a while to break into a friend group that will have you or to find another person
00:32:48.700
like yourself who has all the right stuff just is dealing with the same thing.
00:32:55.740
The mental health statistics are very, very clear on this.
00:33:05.520
In this section about men are team players, you talk about how boys reject authority and
00:33:13.560
And you talk about respecting the authority of like teachers in law enforcement.
00:33:18.140
But something that I thought was interesting is that you said you need to respect the authority
00:33:26.920
First of all, it's a complete turn on that you've actually read my book.
00:33:30.780
I can't, I can't tell you how many podcasts I've done where someone just looks at the
00:33:40.300
Let's go to one of the greatest teams that a man could be in ever be on.
00:33:45.280
It's the ultimate team with a person who compliments you.
00:33:49.180
You're in relationship with people who have skills and abilities you don't.
00:33:52.500
And so you're married, you're with somebody who has body parts that you don't skills and
00:33:56.860
abilities that you don't, whatever your skills, abilities are and theirs.
00:34:00.140
Now, when you think about the number of people who've been divorced, which that statistic
00:34:05.640
And then if you think about the number of people after divorce who say their friend says, I saw
00:34:16.040
So I encourage young men to get references on people they're going to date or while they're
00:34:24.760
dating them, while they're dating them, ask around, do you know this woman, you know this
00:34:30.340
girl, what's your history been like, what's she been like, you're not looking to see some
00:34:34.540
perfect woman, but you're looking to see if this woman is somebody who can't pay attention
00:34:42.200
You need to know that if this is a woman who doesn't serve, he, she never serves.
00:34:49.400
We do references when we hire somebody for our business.
00:34:52.380
Why don't we do references when we go out on dates with somebody?
00:34:56.320
Your, our divorce rate will be lot, lot, lot, lot lower.
00:35:00.820
So if you're a friend, part of being a friend is letting your, letting your friends know
00:35:06.180
like, well, maybe you're not making a great decision here.
00:35:09.000
And that's another thing you talk about in the book is that men want to make other men
00:35:13.660
Boys just want to make sure everyone feels comfortable.
00:35:18.800
There's a, there's a, there's a scripture verse that talks about the wounds of a friend
00:35:24.440
You know, it's when my friends see me doing something that I get healed.
00:35:30.000
I've taken significant amount of time off every summer.
00:35:34.180
And I thought a couple of years ago, Brett, I thought, you know what?
00:35:40.460
I know you you're really in love with Vermont and doing all that.
00:35:45.860
And I had a friend of mine say to me, he said, man, you sound like someone who has bipolar,
00:35:50.740
who's feeling good and thinks they can now go off their meds.
00:36:09.080
I couldn't weather criticism the same way because I didn't have just the clarity of
00:36:16.200
I was less energetic, less resilient in the face of criticism.
00:36:25.580
And my friend was trying to tell me something that I didn't realize.
00:36:30.680
You need friends not just to laugh with somebody and have some beers with them.
00:36:33.800
You need friends that give you golden wisdom and insight that no book or no counselor is
00:36:42.900
So if your friend gives you hard advice, they've, they've taken the minority position.
00:36:52.240
I've got a friend who I'm giving him hard advice and he's just not listening.
00:36:58.360
He's been, he's gone through divorce and he's not detaching from his toxic previous wife,
00:37:07.560
And everything he, he just keeps allowing himself to be manipulated and controlled.
00:37:15.160
I mean, I just, I mean, I've, I've, you start nice and soft and then you, you just, you take
00:37:23.060
He's trying to fire up somebody in the locker room because you see their emotional welfare
00:37:28.640
And I'm making a little progress, but he will tell you that if it wasn't me giving him some
00:37:34.300
wounds from time to time, he'd be way, way worse off.
00:37:39.180
And that's why we need our pack to build into us and round us out a bit.
00:37:42.980
Another Mark you talk about, we kind of mentioned it earlier, is that men work.
00:37:46.580
How does a boy's approach to work differ from a man's approach to work?
00:37:56.540
A boy wants to only work at something that is, that is fun to do.
00:38:00.880
A boy wants to work just long enough at minimum.
00:38:07.940
A company sends in this financial guy to help me figure out what I'm going to do with retirement
00:38:13.980
And he says, okay, what time, what age do you want to retire?
00:38:16.780
And I said, I just mouthed as a boy, because I was a boy at 21, I mouthed what I'd heard
00:38:27.260
So he put some pencil to paper and figured out, well, you have to save this much every
00:38:32.920
And I said, okay, maybe I'm not retiring at 55 because that was, that was too difficult.
00:38:42.940
I, I can't believe that I actually thought at 55, 55 is what I want to be done.
00:38:49.780
I feel Brett, like I'm just starting to figure out life right now.
00:38:52.600
I, I can't believe that I fell hood to boydom as a fantasy to be retired at 59.
00:39:02.160
So I could retire to Florida and play golf and watch Price is Right while the mosquitoes
00:39:16.060
I'm sorry to go Bible on you, but I am a pastor.
00:39:17.900
So it's the most foundational story in the Bible.
00:39:22.600
Put on the earth, whether you think it's literal or figurative, that's your prerogative.
00:39:27.380
And what do they do before anything happens in the world?
00:39:30.200
They work before anything happens wrong, before they bite of the forbidden fruit, they're working.
00:39:38.320
They're naming the animals that tells us that work isn't something that is evil.
00:39:51.460
When a man stops working, the dementia and the physical fitness and the death comes way,
00:39:58.840
We talked about these guys who are old and like still going on, like Clint Eastwood.
00:40:03.940
Nobody would have seen this guy who created spaghetti westerns, you know, decades ago.
00:40:09.320
I used to watch as a kid, no one would have thought that that guy would be a prolific director winning Academy Awards in his 80s.
00:40:33.240
So I'm not saying, Brett, that you need to be in corporate America and you need to be earning a paycheck until the day you die.
00:40:40.780
You're not going to be as physically capable to fill a job.
00:40:44.040
But that's not what I'm talking about with work.
00:40:45.720
When I'm talking about work, I'm talking about adding value, making the people around you better, having a reason to get up in the morning.
00:40:54.320
And a man should never, never have some goal of taking it easy and not working.
00:41:02.860
Work is also doing service or being a mentor or taking up some, I don't know, working for a nonprofit when you retire.
00:41:12.980
And I like that, you know, adding value and having that outward mindset can really keep you going for the long term.
00:41:18.300
But also, I think a lot of men, some men struggle with, they embrace work too much.
00:41:25.160
So how do you balance work with other areas of your life, like family or those life-giving hobbies you were talking about?
00:41:34.460
I think most people, when they think of balance, they think of it as a, you know, a scale where you have equal weights on either side.
00:41:40.860
And I think the best metaphor for balance is a golf swing.
00:41:46.660
You know, to hit the ball as far as possible, you have to load up different sides of your body.
00:41:58.800
If you're balanced, then you're not going to swing.
00:42:00.820
The process of swinging is, by its nature, unbalanced.
00:42:08.380
Recognizing there's certain seasons of our life where I'm going to be really weighted up in one specific area.
00:42:17.200
Because it takes wisdom to learn when you're too weighted up on work.
00:42:21.820
It takes wisdom to learn when you're too weighted up on pleasure.
00:42:25.760
But you need to be able to have both those things.
00:42:28.100
Younger guys, I give young guys the same advice.
00:42:32.240
My son, my son has more hobbies, more outlets, more things than I ever had at his age.
00:42:43.260
And what I spoke with him about, and he's doing really, really well with this,
00:42:47.540
I say, hey, your 20s is a time for you to be unbalanced.
00:42:52.040
Because right now, what you want is to become amazing at whatever your job is,
00:42:58.660
or find by the time you're 28 what your job is, cycle through a few.
00:43:02.860
This is when you want to be weighted up on that, loaded up on that.
00:43:05.960
Because that's going to create freedom for you and financial margin and options in the future.
00:43:11.180
But if you right now just want to work 40 hours a week and have all your hobbies,
00:43:15.940
you're not going to have the life as a 50-year-old the way you can.
00:43:20.760
Which is why one mentor of mine, Bob Beal, who wrote a book on decades,
00:43:24.560
he says the most successful, effective, productive decade of a man's life is his 60s.
00:43:34.860
And the reason being because we've learned, we have networks, we've got knowledge we didn't have
00:43:43.860
And that happens because over the long span of your life, you've been doing the right thing.
00:43:47.440
So for the balance, I think you've got to say where I am right now,
00:43:51.080
what is the right amount of work life right now?
00:43:53.780
You always have to take care of yourself in terms of having adequate friendship time
00:43:58.540
But those things are going to change over the years.
00:44:07.400
So how can shifting from a consumer mindset to a producer mindset,
00:44:25.800
he said, let's keep the economy rolling, keep spending.
00:44:29.760
We don't spend that much time talking about producing.
00:44:32.340
We're just looking at the consumer price index.
00:44:40.060
how to produce something that somebody else doesn't have,
00:44:48.380
Producing widgets, producing kids, producing wisdom for other people.
00:44:54.560
But how can I add value and make things better because of my role and spot on the earth?
00:45:04.000
Boys, consuming is just about taking from the pot.
00:45:11.460
It was Adam Man who said, it's always take, take, take.
00:45:18.800
I said that one time to my son who was a teenager.
00:45:44.720
And that doesn't bode well for our relationship or for your future.
00:45:48.440
You've got to be known as a guy who gives more than he takes.
00:45:51.280
You've got to be known for a guy who creates more than he consumes.
00:45:55.060
That's a message for all of us to be reminded of.
00:45:57.760
So the fifth and final mark is men are protectors.
00:46:00.720
What does being a protector look like in the 21st century?
00:46:07.260
It was very obvious in the past, the way you're a protector, you're a protector of your tribe.
00:46:14.640
And that's why today there's even conversations in, in Ivy League classrooms that have been on the
00:46:24.200
Like, I can't believe we said, do we even need men?
00:46:26.880
And what they're saying is we've evolved as a society and a civilization.
00:46:31.820
We have machines that are doing work for us and we're not raiding the neighboring tribe
00:46:38.820
So, you know, what, what, what are, what are men needed for?
00:46:45.080
Now, sometimes that does mean you're gonna have to put your body in front of a situation.
00:46:52.480
So I found out about a guy at the gym where my wife was working out and he was hitting
00:46:58.040
I ran across, uh, email or something like that.
00:47:01.120
And, uh, he's a trainer at the gym and I had to walk in there and call him out in the middle
00:47:08.640
I said, I need to see you in the parking lot right now.
00:47:10.160
And he came out and fortunately I caught him, caught him off guard, freaked him out.
00:47:14.840
And I just told him, Hey man, you need, you need to stay away with my wife.
00:47:23.920
That was, that was a sense of protecting there.
00:47:30.560
And I said to him, Ryan, because of your ordeal in your spiritual depth, you can protect people
00:47:37.920
by giving them wisdom that they're not going to get anywhere else.
00:47:48.080
And also I've noticed as I've gotten older, one of the protecting roles that I play as a
00:47:55.720
I'm always looking to see if there's any individuals who either intentionally or unintentionally
00:48:04.520
And I think the boy thing would be like, well, I just won't say anything.
00:48:17.320
And that individuals feel safe and they're not being annoyed.
00:48:21.060
And so it requires having uncomfortable conversations with individuals saying,
00:48:25.720
hey, you're doing stuff that's making this person feel really, really uncomfortable,
00:48:29.780
or you're just messing up the dynamic of the group.
00:48:32.720
And I'm here to make sure that that doesn't happen.
00:48:43.720
He doesn't assume somebody else is going to do it.
00:48:45.920
If you look at these five marks, Brett, and you said, is there any through line through
00:48:50.020
I would say the through line is passivity versus being aggressive.
00:48:54.760
And by aggressive, I'm not talking about powering up and dominating somebody.
00:49:12.780
Or he would just stop attending the group when he would just judge and complain about the
00:49:22.940
But a protector, that's what he does instead of a predator.
00:49:31.960
Well, Brian, this has been a great conversation.
00:49:33.380
Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?
00:49:35.120
You can go to bryantome.com and The Five Marks of a Man is available in bookstores everywhere.
00:49:47.300
It's been a bucket list item to be with you and honored to do so.
00:49:53.760
He's the author of the book, The Five Marks of a Man.
00:49:55.860
It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere.
00:49:58.240
You can find more information about his work at his website, briantome.com.
00:50:01.820
Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash marks.
00:50:14.340
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast.
00:50:16.920
Make sure to check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you find our podcast archives,
00:50:20.300
as well as thousands of articles that we've written over the years about pretty much anything
00:50:24.360
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00:50:30.480
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00:50:33.660
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00:50:37.220
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