The Jordan Harbinger Show - 39: Ryan Michler | Why Man Is His Own Worst Enemy

Episode Date: May 8, 2018

Ryan Michler (@orderofman) is a husband, father, Iraq combat veteran, founder of Order of Man, and author of Sovereignty: The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Men. What We Discuss with Ryan Michler: How the dismissal of masculinity as a positive force in popular society has led to an alarming shortage of strong, ambitious, and self-sufficient men. The 13 virtues crucial for men to reclaim their own sovereignty -- and what this means. How men can create a battle plan to level up skill sets within these virtues. Why acknowledging the enemy inside as the source of all troubles rather than blaming external enemies is ultimately empowering. How to formulate an after action review to analyze the effectiveness of every encounter, project, or conversation and grow from the experience. And much more... Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's the same thing with emotions. You don't need to be mad at the indicator. You need to figure out what it's telling you. So if you're angry, which sometimes is the appropriate emotion, great, figure out why you're angry and what you're actually going to do about it. If you're sad, well, that's an indicator that something's off in your life. So figure out what it is, address it accordingly, and then deal with that emotion. That's the more constructive way to deal with emotions rather than pent them up. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. As always, I'm here with my producer, Jason DeFilippo. On this episode, we're talking with my friend Ryan Mickler. He is the author of Sovereignty,

the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Men. It's a great book. I wish I had it in my 20s, but I'd probably have been way too stubborn and arrogant to listen to any of the advice in here. It's not about being some sort of manly man who shoots things and eats them. A lot of this stuff is counter to the narrative of being some sort of unfeeling hard ass, and I was really pleased to see that. Ryan grew up without a permanent father figure. He's seen firsthand how a lack of strong, ambitious, and self-sufficient men has impacted society today. He's also a husband, father, Iraqi combat veteran, and the founder of the Order of Man. So this is a guy who's been exploring masculinity for a while from a position of genuine curiosity because he didn't have the role models

to develop this in a healthy way himself. So I really think this is a good episode for especially younger guys out there, but men and women alike, of all ages, have something to take away from this one. We'll discover that there's a far greater enemy inside of us than there is outside of us. It's good if we take responsibility for things because then, of course, we can control and improve them, and we'll discuss why we're on our worst enemy when it comes to that and why that's empowering. We'll also explore the idea that if we want to regain our sovereignty, we have to let our excuses, even if they are valid excuses. And we'll also learn to formulate an after-action review. This is a process that Ryan has implemented in his life with these five questions to analyze the effectiveness of every encounter, project, or conversation.

It's really key to continual progression in every area of life, and we're going to outline that for you here as well. Don't forget, we have worksheets for today's episode so you can make sure you understand and get all the keys that Ryan is dropping today on the show. That link is in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. All right, here's Ryan Mickler. Hey, Ryan, thanks for coming back on the show, man. Jordan, I'm stoked, man. It's been a, it's been a while. I think we've had you on the show a couple of times our show, but it's been a while since I've been over here. Yeah, it has. And I remember talking with you at the beginning of the writing process or probably before the writing process. And now you've got a book. It must be, you must feel pretty accomplished. I feel good. It was really weird. I was talking about this the other day. I feel good. I feel good about writing the book and going through the process, but it was fleeting. Like it only lasted for a minute because now I'm on to like, okay, I got that done. What's next? And so I'm like constantly thinking about what I can be doing next. But I was on a cloud for a little while there. And it was exciting to get the book under my belt.

So the book Sovereignty, The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Men, great title, really fits your brand. I was pretty impressed. I was like, wow, you really nailed that. You know, when I think of guys doing their own thing and learning how to be a little bit more, I hate the phrase manly men because it sounds too bro for what you're doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. But you know, like growing up, I guess as a man. Yeah, well, I appreciate it, man. That's always been on my mind.

And obviously, you know, we have some guys that are younger, but this is really a mature thing, right? Like, we want to uplift men. We want men to rise up. And so part of that is making sure that our language and brand and the things that we're doing measures the message that we have as well. So it's important to me. Yeah, well, reclaiming the power to control our own lives, our own destiny, if you want to romanticize it. In the book, you've said as much, spent decades giving away the power over our hearts and minds. in the form of excuses, justifications, rationalizations, and lies. Bold statement, but let's talk about

that. What do you mean by this? So everything that I talk about is from my experience. And when I make that bold statement, the only reason that I feel like I have conviction behind that statement is because that's true for me. When I grew up, I didn't have a father figure in my life. And frankly, I used a lot of that lack of a father figure in my life to self-destruct in high school. And as I got into fights and gotten in trouble and did the things I probably shouldn't have been doing. I was like, well, I didn't have a dad, so I don't know how to be. When I struggled in my marriage and almost ruined and burned our marriage to the ground, I said, well, it's all her fault. This is the reason. When I almost failed in my financial planning practice within the first couple of years,

which happened to be in 2008, 2009, and most everybody listening probably knows what was going on on the market. Then it was all the economy's fault. And so every time I've had a failure or a setback or less than what I want as far as the result. It was always because I was blaming it on somebody else or something else. And I spent, well, three decades doing that until I recognized and woke up about six years ago to the truth that I've got a lot more to say and do when it comes to my life than I've given myself credit for. So a lot of people, including yourself, really, we give up our own, I guess, sovereignty to throw the book title around as many times as we can. By blaming your dad or the absence of your dad, the way you were raised, the economy, we can blame our boss, we can blame our spouse.

Basically, anybody but me, right? Anybody but us is a good, good scapegoat. Well, it is. And the reason that this is so hard and the reason I think we subject ourselves to doing this so often is because it's easy. Let's just take, let's isolate one element of this, which was the business, near business failure, we'll call it, in 2008. Well, yeah, the economy was bad. The market was down. People were putting less money into the stock market.

So that excuse that I came up with was not only an excuse, it was a reason. It was a legitimate reason. But rather than focusing on the things that I could control, I decided to dwell exclusively on the reason that I wasn't having success and therefore it became an excuse. Does the distinction make a difference? Maybe. So what you're saying is if we want to regain our sovereignty, we got to let we got to kill these excuses and crush them, even if they're valid in air quotes. even if they're valid excuses. Right, because there are valid, let's take a, let's take a relationship, for example.

It's two people, right? So to say that the demise of my marriage is her fault or his fault or my fault is not the entire truth. It takes at least two to tango. And yet there's not a single thing you can do about another person. So do we focus on what that other individual or that other excuse is or do we focus on the thing that we can actually control? So how do you recommend that people ditch this? Because this kind of sounds like victim mindset, right? We're replacing ourselves at the mercy and control of other people or of circumstances anyway.

Focusing on what we can control is a great antidote to that. But how does this look in practice? So my wife has this saying. And every time she says that I roll my eyes at her because I get a little stressed out and I get a little frustrated with things when it comes to the business or whatever, just life in general. and she says, is there anything that you can do about it right now? And the answer when she says that is, no, usually not, because she wouldn't be asking if that weren't the case. But I think it's a really good question.

If we take the information and the inputs and all of the information at our hand and we ask ourselves, is there anything that I can do with this information? If the answer is no, then we have to find a way to learn to let it go. And we've got the process for that, of course, and we can get into that. If the answer is yes, good. Then we can start focusing on what we can actually do to move the needle. But I think asking yourself powerful questions is the very first step in any level of growth in your life. Okay.

So do you have a practice for this? Do you ask yourself these powerful questions in a journal or something like that? Are you writing this stuff down? Yeah, yeah. I actually do what I've dubbed an after action. I say I. It's not I. I was in the military for eight years.

And we did an after action review after every military engagement. that we engaged in, but this translates perfectly over into civilian life, any, any avenue of life. So after every conversation, after every podcast, after every relationship, after every project, whatever it may be, I'm asking myself five very simple questions that will allow me to continue to move the needle the next time, the next time I do a podcast or the next time I write an article or the next time I write a book. And those questions are powerful. I can get into those five if you'd want me to. Yeah, let's do it. Why not? Okay. So number, Number one is, what did I accomplish? That's the very first question. And that question alludes to the fact that you actually set out to do something, right? Because if you didn't set out in the first place, well, there's no really metric to measure whether or not you accomplished it. So that that'll help you identify in the first place that you've got to have some sort of goal. You've got to have some sort of ambition. So what did I accomplish? Number two, what did I not accomplish? So I set out to do X, Y, and Z. Like I set out to in the last,

90 days to lose 30 pounds. Well, I lost 20, but that means I didn't lose 10. Okay, well, there's a gap, right? So we've identified now that gap. The third question is, what did I do well? Maybe I was extremely, extremely disciplined when it comes to going into the gym and doing the workout every day. And then you get to that fourth question, which is, what did I not do so well? And in that case, maybe you really struggled with your diet. Maybe that was a big part of the issue why you didn't lose that extra 10 pounds. And so now you know, okay, I'm good with the gym. I got to keep doing that, but I've got to dial in this diet a little bit more to make sure I hit my objective moving forward. And then the fifth question, and this is that growth mindset that you talked about

earlier. And Carol Dweck talks about this. I know she was a guest on your podcast as well, is what am I going to do with this information moving forward? So what did I do? What did I not get done? What did I do well? What did I not do well? And what am I going to do moving forward? Now some people hear that and they think that's that's a ton of questions. You do that after every conversation, every podcast, everything that you do. The answer is yes, it's not as scripted as it used to be. But I would recommend at a minimum you're doing that on a daily basis at the end of your day. So let's go back to how you learn some of this stuff for yourself the hard way, of course.

I mean, you've got these 13 virtues in the book. What are these virtues? And how did you come to make these, the centerpiece of your, your life or put them at least in the center of the book. Yeah, this was a real challenge. And I actually figured we'd talk about this. So I thought about this and why this was the case. Because if you look at a list of virtues, just type in virtues in Google or find a list of virtues and you'll find hundreds, if not thousands of virtues. So the question is why these 13? So what I did is I went through all of the things that I value and I got out a piece of paper. What do I value? When I look at other

individuals, men and women who I admire and respect, what characteristics do they possess that I respect? And so I started to break this down and I had a list of probably 50 to 100 virtues. And I started looking at these things and recognizing that some of them directly tie into regaining and recapturing sovereignty in our lives, the control over our lives. And others don't. Like I look at love, for example, or empathy or compassion. I don't think anybody out there, would say that's something that we shouldn't strive for. We certainly should. But I think indirectly those things don't necessarily lead to our sovereignty the quickest. And so what I did out of all these virtues as I had is I just listed, will this help me regain my sovereignty? And I narrowed it

down to 13 virtues that I think if you adhere to these virtues will help you recapture control of your life in the shortest amount of time possible and move the needle as quickly as possible. I want to get into each of those, but I want to first go over the concept of the natural man that you discussed. Yeah. Because I think a lot of guys, they're like, all right, the enemy is, let's see, wimpy guys, or the enemy is women, or the enemy is, and just fill in the blank, you know, the political system or something like that. But your concept of the natural man really is that there's a far greater enemy inside us and there is outside of us. Well, and that's the problem. Like I'm in this in this space of helping and lifting up men. So one of the things that I hear all the time is there's an attack on men. There's an attack on masculinity. There's a there's a dismissal of masculinity. And we go back to that previous conversation about excuses and reasons and is some of that true. Yeah. I mean, if I look in society, I think quite honestly, some of that is is accurate. I think at a minimum there's a dismissal of masculinity in society. But again, we can't do anything about.

about that directly. So why not focus on the things that we can control? Then the things that we can control is ourselves. We can look inwards and we can recognize where we are our own worst enemies and begin to work on that. And that's where this concept of the natural man comes in. You know, the natural man, if you think about, I think about myself personally. I'm lazy. I'm immediate gratification. I want everything I can possibly have. So I'm greedy. And I want it all now with the little or the least amount of effort and work possible. You're a good Mormon, Ryan. That's right.

That's right. But that's how it is, right? I mean, we're all like that. And I don't think that's naturally bad, though. I mean, think about that. If you are trying to get from point A to point B, well, I don't think it's bad to look for the easiest route possible. I mean, that that's not a bad thing. I think we say human nature and we mean it, right?

Exactly. Exactly. But then if you look at it from another. perspective, what ends up happening is we don't strengthen ourselves or condition ourselves to deal with hardships. We run across this all the time and specifically modern times with technology and modern advancements and climate controlled vehicles. And if you're cold at home, you turn up the heater and how quickly it is to order pizza and have it delivered to your door. Like, there's no earning it whatsoever. And so when we face difficult times and all of us as men and women will

face difficult times that natural man, human nature will kick in and we haven't conditioned our minds and our bodies to be able to deal with those stressors. So if we take responsibility for things and we can control them, we can improve them, this is kind of, this is empowering, right? Instead of going well, it's all because of outside external locus of control type of circumstances, we can take the internal locus of control route and change the things we can actually change, right? So then we can stop just being a victim of circumstances, other people, the economy, whatever it is. Yeah, that's exactly right. And it's a really difficult

question to answer as far as like what might you be experiencing if you don't have control over your life. I think it's really easy, for example, to look at somebody and recognize somebody who does have things under control. We often write it off as the X factor. But it's a little bit harder to recognize when you don't and specifically in your own life because we live in this box and we put those barriers up and we put those walls up and we genuinely start to believe our own lies and again, justifications and rationalizations because we've been telling ourselves those things for 30 years. And in many ways, society has actually conditioned us to do that. One example I use in the book and it seems like a silly example, but I remember sitting around the dinner table and

and eating dinner with my sister and my mom, and she would always make us recite, may I please be excused before we got down from the dinner table? And of course, there's nothing wrong with that. But that's just one little small example of how from the time we were children to look to other people for permission to do certain things. We see it in the school system where we're told to sit down, be quiet, do what you're told, color within the lines. We have to ask our bosses for time off from work. And so we've been conditioned for a long period of time to give the responsibility to somebody else. I don't want this responsibility. Give it to a boss.

Give it to a spouse. Give it to a colleague. Give it to a friend. I can't handle it. Well, I like the idea of taking responsibility. But I think also that a lot of us are afraid to make changes in our lives, not just when it comes to responsibility. I think men or men and women in general, we're afraid to change because we might lose friends. People might make fun of us if we start doing this.

It might make other people uncomfortable. But I think in the end, what we're really afraid of is making ourselves uncomfortable. So how do we get over that hump if we're thinking like, all right, I'm going to draw the line and be responsible for myself and for other people for that matter? Where do we begin with that? Because that's kind of intimidating. It is intimidating. And you're right about change. I mean, change represents a level of uncertainty.

And even if you're in a difficult situation, let's say you're in some level of poverty or an abusive relationship, even though you know, deep. down inside, you know that's not the best place for you. It's certain, right? There's, certainty in it. Now, if you leave that relationship or you leave that job and, and you risk potential financial income into your household to go do something else that you know has potential, it still represents this level of uncertainty. So I think as human beings, what are we constantly trying to do? Look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? We constantly strive after these things to make sure that we're in a position where we'll get by. It's the survival of the human race, if you want to call it that. And then we can worry about prosperity and abundance

after we have the necessities taken care of. So that uncertainty is a challenge. I think when it comes to recognizing this, I think there's certainly a bit of faith, but I don't want to use that as the cop-out answer, because that's easy to say. But you've got to have some sort of ambition. Like, there's got to be some sort of worthy and worthwhile goal and thing that you want. And to obtain John Eldridge. He's the author of Wild at Heart. He says, deep in his heart, every man longs for a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. And so if you think about that, that's all the pursuit of something new. And if you genuinely have a goal, an objective, a desire, then in order to achieve that, I don't want to put that in anybody

else's hands. I don't want to subject myself to, is their objective in line with my objective? I want that to be as much within my hands as possible. And we can talk about how to recapture that. But the very first step to your question is starting to articulate what exactly you want. And these have to be objective goals and ambitions. They cannot be subjective because what a lot of people will say is they'll say, well, Ryan, I just want to make more money. Okay.

That's great. Making more money is great. That's worthwhile. But that's subjective, right? Or I want to be rich. or I want to lose weight or I want to be healthy or I want to have a good relationship. Great. Subjective because it's not measurable or something.

Is that what you mean by that? That's exactly right. You have to be able to articulate those ambitions in a very measurable way. Otherwise, you'll never know if you are achieving what you say you want. What does it mean to be a good father or husband? It's like a compass that just continually turns in a circle. You're like, well, I think I'm going north, but I don't really know. Exactly.

You know, I just keep walking around in circles. I think, maybe. I don't know. So you have to have a battle plan. And that's what you call it in the book as well. In Sovereignty, you say create your own battle plan. Can you take us through a brief example of what this might look like? And we'll throw this in the worksheet.

Of course, we make worksheets for every episode. It'll be in the show notes. But you have this battle plan. You have a battle plan plan plan. That's right. A plan for a battle plan. That's right. And it is.

It's so important that you have some. And we talk about this all the time. I mean, everybody. You've had podcast guests. I've had podcast guests. Oh, you have to have a plan. Good. What do you do?

Well, just think about what you want. It's a little bit more in depth than that. I hope so. So here's what I would suggest first and foremost is we break this down into four very distinct categories. And I think it's easy to look and just kind of throw it out there like spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks. I don't think that's a very tangible way to approach this.

So what we do is we measure four key components of our lives. And granted, it can be split down further from this, but these are the four main components. So the first one is calibration. And calibration is getting right with yourself. It's your, it's your mind, it's your soul, it's your spirituality. We'll talk about that last because that's kind of the hardest one. The next one is connection. And connection is about the relationships you have. That could be a relationship with a spouse, relationships with colleagues, employees, employers, maybe having a group of people that you band together with on a weekly or monthly basis. Connections is next. Third is condition and condition is your physical health.

So your stamina, your strength, your sleep, your conditioning. And then the fourth is contribution. And contribution is showing up as a person of value. Sometimes we'll be compensated directly for showing up and being valuable. For example, work. You add value and you're compensated for it through clients or advertisers or whatever it may be. Sometimes it's not. You're not compensated for it.

We might my son and I, just a couple of days ago, mowed the neighbor's on. Well, we didn't get directly compensated for that, but we're trying to be men of value in the community. So the first thing that you have to do is you have to figure out what categories that you're going to start benchmarking and measuring your results and your progress in your life. So that's where I start, having those four key components. I like that. So you set down and you write these out in some sort of journal or something like this. I don't, I don't use a journal for these. I actually use a battle plan. So I do this on a quarterly basis.

So they're 90 day objectives. So some people will say, and they'll tell me, they'll say, Ryan, what's your five year goal? I'm like, dude, I don't even know what I'm going to eat for dinner, let alone what I'm going to do in five years. I know. I'm in the same way, man. Yeah.

Even in one year, it's like, it's very big picture, 30,000 foot. I might have one or two things in there. And I have an idea of like which direction I want to move. like I know generally like who I want to be and how I want to live and what kind of abundance I want to have in my life in a year. But very tactically, yeah, that's that's pretty hard to measure out because who knows what's going to happen. Well, think about in your life. What's happened in the last 12 months that you couldn't have anticipated happening? It's very hard to plan for.

So what we do is we look at 90 day objectives. So what we ask people to do is to choose one, not 10, not seven, not. not three, one simple, measurable objective in each of those categories that they can start tracking and working towards. And of course, we can articulate this even further. But you've got to have something in place before you move from there. So what about you, man? I mean, you grew up is it safe to see you grew up without a dad? Is that entirely accurate? Maybe not really. Yeah. That's how I say it. I mean, my dad was out of the picture by the time I was three years old. unfortunately got into drugs and alcohol and him and my mom split.

I had a stepfather coming to my life when I was nine. And I remember like glimpses of a good relationship. I remember and in fact I still have two Pinewood Derby cars that him and I worked on together. And I and I remember going to sprint car races. Have you ever been to a sprint car race? No, I don't even know what that is. They're these little buggies essentially and they have these huge fins on them and they race around in a dirt track. It's absolutely amazing.

It's so fun. And we would go to those races and just have a blast. But at the end of the day, he was an alcoholic. So he just wasn't there and available. He's never abusive, but just not present and available as a father, I think, should be. And then by the time I was 14 years old, I had another stepfather coming to my life who was verbally and emotionally abusive. And most of that was not directed at me. It was directed mostly at my mom.

He was extremely successful, charismatic, really, successful in business, but he used his talents and his abilities and gifts to push people down as a way to lift himself up rather than lifting people up. And so, yeah, to say that I didn't have a father in the home. And when I did, I had a less than stellar example of what it meant to be a man. That stuff started pouring out when I got married and when I started having kids and I became the same kind of guy that I was raised by. Oh, man. So how did you start to change to shift that? because there's probably guys right now that are listening, or men and women for that matter, they're like, I had really crappy examples and now they're starting to show up in my life.

How did you start to shake those influences? I wish I could say that we as human beings could simply make a pivot. And we're fully capable of doing it because we are human beings. We're fully capable of consciousness and projecting ourselves out in the future and recognizing ourselves objectively. But it's infinitely harder than going through a painful experience. And that's what happened to me. I got kicked in the teeth, man. When I had my son, let's see, that was about 10 years ago, and he was six months old. My wife and I got into an argument one evening. And I can't remember what the argument was about. But I remember saying the words vividly. And it breaks my heart that I even said this and I can still think about it, that I don't even want to be married anymore. And she said, good, me neither. And then. The next morning she left and she took my six month old son with me.

And that next morning, I remember going on a drive. I was, I was heading north for some training, four hours north. And I got about an hour north and I thought to myself, what the hell are you doing? You know, your, your marriage is falling apart. She's taking your kid. So I actually turned around and I came home and she was still there. And I tried to convince her to stay, but she was having none of it. She's like, no, I'm out of here.

And my, my natural response to that was defense mechanism, put up the walls, put up the barriers, make the excuses. So I started blaming her. Like, how could she do this? Why was she disloyal? Why couldn't she see all the sacrifices I was making? How could she take my son away from me? You know, she did this to us.

And it was all blaming her. And I'll tell you what changed for me. And this is the realization that I hope other people don't have to get. to, but quite honestly, sometimes going through an experience like this is exactly what it takes. I wish that weren't the case, but it is. And you can either learn from it and grow or you can let it destroy you, which is what a lot of people do. But I was driving down the road. I remember the road I was on. I remember the cross street I was on. And I had this thought come over me and it was not a pleasant thought. And the thought was four years into our separation that our marriage was over.

And as much as I didn't want to admit that and as painful as that thought was, that one thought was the most liberating thought that I've ever had. And it's completely changed and revolutionized my life. Because at that moment, what I said was this marriage may be over. So you need to stop focusing on her. And that's what I was doing. I was doing everything I could to change her, to manipulate her, to strong her. her to try to get her to change so she would see the error of her ways and then come back to me. And when I resigned that relationship and instead I said, and I remember vividly, this is my thought, you know what, man, this marriage is over, but you're going to be a damn good catch for the next woman to come into your life. Yeah, come hell or high water, right? Like, I'm going to figure this out. I'm going to figure this out because I didn't, it was dark, man. Anybody who's been through a divorce or separation can attest to that. They know exactly what that's like. It was the darkest time of my life. And I thought to myself, I don't want to experience this. So I need to do

something that I can do in order to change this. And we can talk specifically about what that is. But that was the moment and the catalyst for change in my life. Yeah, I would love to talk a little bit more about this because I think a lot of us, especially younger guys, I went through this as well, we want to accept all the glory, but we never really want to accept the consequences if we do something wrong, right? So if something goes right, we're all about it. But if something goes wrong, it's always somebody else to the economy. Yeah, that's exactly right. But it's so liberating to say, yeah, maybe the economy had something to do with it. But then objectively, if you look around in 2008, 2009, I had two high producing financial advisors in our office. And regardless of what the market was doing, they were consistently. producing big, big numbers. And so knowing that, knowing that somebody is having success where I'm not tells me that it's not a universal truth that the reason I'm struggling is because of the market. The only common denominator or the only denominator here is me. Like I'm the variable,

not the economy. And so when I started to figure out that I needed a change and I wanted to change, the very first thing I did is I started thinking about what do I want. And at the time for me, it was a thriving financial planning practice and it was to lose a little bit of weight. Like that was my ultimate objective, two things. And with regards to the business, I about washed out. I was really close to throwing in the towel because I wasn't having success like I wanted. And I didn't have a backup plan, which was good. It worked out in this case because I needed to make it work. And so I said, well, before I quit this financial planning business, let me just go talk to these two producing agents and just see if they'll share some insights with me. And that was really, really humbling.

Because up into that point, everything that I'd ever done and tried, I'd been relatively successful in. And it was this one thing that seemed to get the better of me. So I went to these two agents and I said, hey, you know, I'm fairly new in the business. I'm struggling here a little bit. It seems like, regardless of what's going on in the outside world, you are always, always producing. Would you mind if I just took you to lunch? And both of them said, yeah, absolutely. And what I ended up doing is I started working with these guys and they started going on appointments with me and they would rescue me a little bit when I needed rescuing in an appointment and didn't know what direction to go. And I started splitting it. They wanted to split cases with me, which was a challenge because I wasn't

making any money. I'm like, well, I'm not making any money. Like, I can't split business with you. Half of zero is still zero, guys. Exactly. I've done the math on this. Yes. So I figured that out and through their help. And it was amazing how much growth I saw in a very, very short period of time. And just through asking for some help and some guidance and direction and looking at people who

were having success, it completely revolutionized the way I run my business. And eventually I went on to start my own financial planning practice that's been very, very successful. And now our organization. And I'm actually looking to sell the financial. planning practice this year, simply because I had the willingness and the humility at that point to reach out and ask for some help. Interesting.

I didn't even know that about you at all. I just had no clue that you'd ever gone through that. I just thought you're getting bored of the financial management game, which of that, I understood, being a former financial guy myself. I think a lot of guys, and this sort of dovetails of what we were just discussing, a lot of guys will suppress our emotions. For example, when you're, when you were splitting up with your wife, you write a lot in the book about, well, okay, you know, this, I don't want to feel this. I don't want to experience this.

And I think you even just said, I don't want to experience this again. But you, the difference is that you leaned into it that time instead of just avoiding it. But I know a lot of guys, we suppress our emotions. And you explain that this is damaging. You want to speak to that a little bit? Damaging to withhold or to express those emotions. Oh, sorry, to suppress. I don't know if I said suppress or express.

But what I mean is it's damaging to suppress your emotions. I think it's actually, and I'm a little counterintuitive on this. I think it's actually damaging to do both depending on the circumstances. I think there's certainly a time and a place where you should suppress your emotions. You know, as people who are trying to achieve, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if that wasn't you. There's a time and a place where, frankly, we just can't be emotional and we have to put our head down. We have to do the work and we have to get after it. But then there's other times where if we suppress those emotions,

and we don't allow ourselves an outlet to deal with those emotions, then that's going to backfire. You know, it's going to bottle up and pent up. And over time, you're going to explode or do something stupid based on those emotions. But what I think a lot of people have a misunderstanding with regarding emotions, especially men, men are guilty of this, I think more than women. I know I certainly have been in the past that emotions are something to be hidden and something to be quote unquote controlled. But I don't believe that anymore.

I think emotions, even what we would consider negative. emotions like anger, jealousy, greed, resentment. I think emotions are simply a metric. They're an indicator of what's working and what isn't working in our lives. And if we as men and women learn to listen to those emotions and look at those indicators, I think we'd have a lot more success. The analogy I use is if you look at the gauges on your vehicle and you're driving down the road and you run out of gas. Well, you're not going to be pissed off at your car for running out of gas. You're simply going to use that metric and say, well, I guess I ought to fill up next time or I guess I ought to fill up right now before I run out of gas. It's the same thing with emotions.

You don't need to be mad at the indicator. You need to figure out what it's telling you. So if you're angry, which sometimes is the appropriate emotion, great. Figure out why you're angry and what you're actually going to do about it. If you're sad, well, that's an indicator that something's off in your life. So figure out what it is, address it accordingly, and then deal with that emotion. That's the more constructive way to deal with emotions rather than pent them up. In sovereignty, you explain that there's a service component of this.

And this was great because I was really, I was getting a little bit nervous. I mean, I know you personally, so I wasn't that nervous. But I was getting a little nervous. I was like, oh, man, is this just going to be about shooting things and eating them or something like that? I don't even think I talked about hunting in the book. Maybe I did. No, there's not a shred of that in there from memory. Or is it like, you know, is this going to be this, I actually notice a lot of the book was counter to the narrative of being some sort of unfeeling hard ass.

And I was pleased to see that. You know, this is the book I wish I had in my 20s. Of course, then I would have been way too stubborn and arrogant to listen to any of your advice. Of course. Which is, I mean, that's how it goes. That's the cruel irony here. But the service component, this really is at odds with a lot of other men's stuff out there that I think is unhounsel. healthy. Like there's this, it's men going their own way, which I don't want to slam a whole movement,

because I don't know everything about it. But your sovereign man movement, if I can call it that, I don't even know if you use that terminology. I like it. I should start using it. That might be something else, though. Google it because I know there's sovereign citizen stuff and they're like, you know, kind of crazy. But the sort of men going their own way thing, these are like the guys that say, zero folks given bro. Anytime they do something rude, like they'll, you know, drink somebody else's drink and then they're like, don't give a fuck. And it's like, nah, you're just a really insecure prick who acts like an a-hole because you don't have proper behavior and you're used to being bullied.

So now instead of being bullied, you just turned into a bully instead. And I think that this can be really problematic. And so you really lean into the mindset and skills to serve and you lean into the importance of that. Speak to that a little bit. I don't want to let you go without explaining that because I think that's really one of the keys in the book is the service of others. Yeah, I was actually really concerned when I used the word sovereignty.

because I thought it would be looked at and in exactly that, men going their own way and like, who cares about what anybody else thinks, like, you do you and all that kind of movement, which I completely disagree, not completely, but I disagree with a lot of it. It's a little cattle ranchers holding off the federal government kind of thing. That's exactly right. And then the other side of it, too, quite honestly, if you look at me and my lifestyle, I think it'd be very easy to jump to the conclusion that that's how I am from the things that I do, hunting and woodworking and working out and the adventures that I try to participate in to the

beard that I have. I mean, yeah, well, I'll be honest, man. Some of your Facebook posts, when we became friends, I was like, I don't know, man, his kids holding in a like a machine gun type looking thing. But I was like, you know, I know him in person, so I'm going to give him a right. And the more, the more I decided to view you as not just another crazy gun guy, the more I was like, oh, okay, I actually, you and I have a lot of common ground. And I don't think you're a crazy gun guy. I actually understand your viewpoint in a lot of different ways. And I think you and I had a conversation years ago where I said, hey, if you're going to run a business online, you've got to be very careful with your political stuff.

And to some degree you listened and to another degree you didn't. And I'm still fine with that. And we're still friends, even though we disagree on some of this stuff. But I think this is important because you've really leaned into the idea that you have to be. And I'm sort of romanticizing this a little bit. But a mentor and you have to serve other people. And I do agree that that is one of the cornerstones of masculinity or of humanity in general. And I think it's neglected in the other movements that try to address the same thing.

100%. I told you before we started this podcast that my boys are walking home from school. In fact, they should be walking in here in the next 20 minutes or so. Well, I knew I was going to be down here. And I just put a little note on the door. And I said, hey, boys, I'm downstairs. I'm recording. Just peek your heading quietly. Tell me your home.

And then run back upstairs. You guys can watch a show until I come upstairs. and I signed it with, I hope you had a good day. I love you boys. And as I wrote it, I got thinking about that where society is like, I think with men a lot is like, don't express that. That's weird. That's, but that's not how I want to be. Like, I want to be loving.

I want to be kind. I want to be empathetic. I want to serve other people. I want to see somebody who's in need and be able to recognize that they're struggling. If there's one thing that we're supposed to do is human beings, like you said, it's to help other people. The reason that we go through our experience is the podcast. positive ones and the negative experiences is so we as individuals can learn from those things. And then also that we can help other people learn the lesson to be learned as well.

So they don't have to struggle. You know, when I have a guy who reaches out to me and he says, hey, man, like my wife last night told me she wants a divorce and she's been cheating on me for a year. Oh, gosh. That literally stings, man. Like it hurts me because I know not the cheating part, but I know exactly what that individual's feeling. And if I have some information or some capacity to be able to serve, then I have a moral obligation to do that. And if you look at part of the book is our mission.

And if you look and I've identified as at three main points specifically for men, but I think women can also take these these mantles as well, is to protect, provide, and preside. So it's protection, provision, and preside is synonymous with leadership. Well, if you look at those three components, every single one of those has an element of service. You're protecting other people. You're providing for other people. You're leading other people. And so it is at the root of what it means to be a human being to be able to serve and give service. And I do it from a position of strength, which is why people look at me and think and maybe jump to the conclusion that I am a hard ass or that I don't care. But that's the furthest thing from the

truth. I truly do. I may just come at it a little differently than somebody who may take a softer approach to it. I agree with you in that the mindset and the skill set to serve is important because otherwise we end up, at least for me, if I don't work serving other people, I tend to isolate myself. And I think that's not just because I grew up as an only child or whatever. I think this is a men, I think men do this. And we end up depressed, right? Oh, yeah.

A great way to not do that is to focus on serving other people. and ironically by focusing on serving other people, at least for me, I end up maintaining a little bit more sanity than I otherwise would because otherwise I would just be focused on myself, beating myself up all the time about not getting everything perfect, et cetera, et cetera. So focusing on other people being able to serve. And I think having that strong why and having other people relying on us like your kids is a powerful motivator to serve and do the right thing. Well, I think so much of society, and I think this is a relatively common or recent movement, is to buck responsibility, right? Like, don't, don't give me the burden. That's like we use those words synonymously, responsibility and burden.

I don't find that to be the case. I find that every time I take on a new responsibility, whether it's in business, one of the things that I really, really enjoy is coaching my boys, sports teams, baseball, football, and basketball. We're in the middle of baseball season right now. And yeah, I can be looked at as a responsibility where I'm coaching his team and I'm literally gone four nights a week. So yeah, that's hard on the family and the business and things like that. But I get so much joy and satisfaction from watching a kid who's never hit a baseball before,

hit the very first ball and run to first base and see that huge smile on his face and know that I had a small part to play in that. And you hit on depression, which I think is really, really important specifically for men. It's important for everybody. but there's a study out there that suggests that suicide rates are five times higher for men than they are for women. And I think part of that is because we do isolate. I know I certainly have in my life. And one thing I've recognized is that I've never, never been down or depressed when I'm anxiously engaged in meaningful work and or serving other people. The only time I get down on myself is when I'm in here in what I've dubbed the dungeon by myself working on my.

stuff and so if you want to overcome the the feeling of of hopelessness or depression or anxiety outside of medical illness and things like that I would say just get your butt up and go help other people you'll feel a lot better yeah I agree with that in fact whenever people tell me that they're depressed my first recommendation is of course see a doctor and a therapist because you never know what the causes exactly it's just a lull in the cycle then volunteer it's so cliche but volunteering to read to kids or go to a homeless shelter or something like that, if we're not talking about actual medical depression

caused by hormone levels or something else or big life event. If we're just thinking like, oh, I just got out of a relationship or I'm in a job I don't like. I'm a little bit depressed and demotivated. That can be, quote, unquote, cured by going to a library, taking care of some animals, taking care of some homeless people.

I mean, it's like a miracle drug when it comes to that. But of course, there's also real medical causes for depression. So I don't want to, I don't want to. Right, we don't want to overlook that. Exactly. Yeah, I don't want to paint it like, oh, you just, you just need to volunteer more. Just volunteer or get tough. Like, I don't think it has to move.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, there was a little cartoon I saw a long time ago, a little comic strip. And it was like if you treated depression like you treated any other disease, and they show this guy laying in the hospital with all these broken bones. And people are like, have you tried just not being, like, not having cancer or something like that. Yeah. And then they're like, maybe you just need to be more positive.

It's like you would never say that about any other disease, but with depression, it's, we're kind of still, we have a stigma around it because we think people can just shake it off because we all think, oh, I've been sad before. Right. And it's different. There's varying degrees of it, right? So, yeah, there's one thing to be down because, you know, you lost a client or something and then clinically depressed, right? There's varying degrees. Exactly. I just want to throw that little caveat in there.

All right. So for each of the 13 virtues that you have in the book, and we don't, I don't time, no, nor desire to go over each of those here on the show because people can pick up sovereignty and have a look. You have these two skill sets that you can develop for each of the 13 virtues, which I think are useful. And a couple of things that stood out to me were you essentially give yourself a pull. When have you been the most satisfied and when have you been the most content? Can you take us through that? I think that's a useful exercise for a lot of people who are thinking, I don't know what I'm doing.

Am I on the right path? Sort of surveying yourself in this way. It could be really helpful. And that's the beauty. And I talked about it a little bit ago. That's the beauty of being a human being is we have this ability to look back at our life and, and, and draw upon those positive memories and then also learn from our mistakes. And then we also have this amazing ability to project ourselves out in the future. So one of the questions I get all the time is something along the lines of this. Ryan, I'm working with a job that I hate, but I'm making decent money.

and I have this opportunity to go do something I love, I absolutely love, but I won't be making as much money doing it. What should I do? And I'm never going to answer that question for somebody because that's not a question I can answer. But what I do suggest somebody do is very simply project yourselves out 20 to 30 years from now and look back at your life and ask yourself which decision you will have been happy to have made. And it's pretty amazing when you just. just sit with yourself and you wonder about when I was the happiest and and what was I doing and what was I enjoying and what was life like and what was the scenery and what was the activity and who I was with because those are the little clues that help us identify what it is that

we should be doing moving forward. So it's cool because we can do this in a timeline backwards what happened in the past and we can do it forward. What do I want life to look like moving forward? It's a pretty cool exercise. Okay. I dig that. And the reason we have to do this on paper is because otherwise we try to go, if you're anything like me, you just sort of think about it in your head totally doesn't work at all. Well, I mean, how many times have you had this like really like the next quote unquote million dollar idea and you're laying in bed at night and you have this idea and you're like, I'll just write it down in the morning? And you wake up in the morning. You're like, how could I have forgot that? I can't think of it.

And you literally cannot think of what you had thought about just six hours ago. So it's really important that you start. Because it's great to visualize, you know, and we have, and I don't want this to be woo-woo. It's great to visualize and all of that. But you have to be able to bridge the gap between vision and implementation. And I think that's the biggest gap that people have or the biggest problem people have. I've never met a human being who didn't have some sort of idea or vision or thought about what they wanted their future to be. But I've met plenty who haven't been able to bridge the gap.

And the first step is writing it down because you start to make it a little bit more tangible when you start writing. these things down. Last but not least, I love this exercise. I've done this at some workshops as well and had other people do it back when I was teaching the boot camps. Write your own eulogy. Not exactly the most warm and fuzzy exercise, but extremely useful because of the realization that a lot, well, frankly, the realization a lot of us come to is, holy crap, I'm not doing the important stuff at all. How does this exercise work? Well, so for me, this is a really big exercise in legacy, And I think this comes back to service. But then at the end of the day, what you're doing, again, we're talking about projecting.

You're projecting yourself to your death, which is morbid. But it's also a really fascinating idea. It's this idea, the stoic idea of memento mori, you know, recognizing and knowing that you are going to have to die. We've, I think, heard, heard that idea. When you can do it that way, now you can use that as a benchmark for the decisions that you make. And that's exactly what this is.

This becomes a barometer or a metric for the way that you engage. your life. So if you write your eulogy and who's going to be at your funeral and what they're going to say about you and what your legacy was and what you left behind, now you have this very clear, concise document when you're struggling with a decision or you're running against some issue that you're dealing with. It's very easy then at that point to go look at this eulogy and think, this is what I want to do. This is what I want to be remembered for. So part of my eulogy is that my children will be there and recognize, and this is very specific for me, that if they said one thing about dad, it's that he always did what he said he was going to do and always implemented

his ideas. He was always willing to take that risk. Now I know that I can see in my mind, I can see vividly my four children talking about me that way. And then when I come to a crossroads where I have this decision to make or this idea I want to implement or the opportunity to get out of a commitment, I can now look at that and say, nope, this is what I envisioned for myself. This is what I see people saying about me. And I now know what I need to do moving forward. It just paints the road a little bit clearer for people. Yes, I dig that. That will also be in the worksheets for this episode. Those are always in the show notes. Ryan, thanks so much, man. Is there anything that you want to leave us with that I have

not dragged out of you quite yet? You know, I think we talked a lot here and we really went into detail. Anytime somebody gives me the opportunity to say anything else, I always go back to what are you going to do now? You know, it's really easy to listen, Jordan, to you. It's really easy to listen to me and the thousands of other podcasts that we could potentially listen to and buy and read the books that we could buy and read. But at the end of the day, if you can't implement any of that stuff, Don't even waste your time and money and energy consuming it. Go out, do something, download the worksheets, get to work, implement this stuff in your life. That's the only way it's going to improve.

Ryan, thank you very much, man. The book is called Sovereignty, The Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Men. With that will be linked up in the show notes, as always. Thanks so much for coming on today, man. Hey, I appreciate you. I appreciate our friendship. And you're somebody I remember specifically, must have been three or four years ago. and I was driving home from Salt Lake, which is about four hours north of where I live,

and listening to an interview of you, and I thought, man, this guy, like, I need to get to know this guy. I really want to know this guy because I was so impressed. And so it's really cool to be talking with you and call you a friend, man. I really appreciate the opportunities. Likewise, man, I always enjoy these conversations and I'm looking forward to seeing you again. This will go down great. And I know that a lot of the women are thinking, what about me?

I think this stuff applies equally to men and women. And sure, some of this is very specific to men. But I really think there's a lot of takeaways in here for everybody. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, well, there wasn't much in here for me as a lady, I would disagree. I think there's a lot in here for anybody who's leading, especially in a family setting. I don't think it's limited to just guys. Let's be honest here. I mean, most of the principles that we talk about is for everyone.

I mean, from a standpoint of the way that I communicate it, it might be differently than the way I communicate between men and women because we receive information differently, generally speaking. But at the end of the day, the principles apply across the board. You just have to consume it and take it for what it is, which is actionable human life advice. Thank you very much, Ryan. Yeah, good show, Jason. I was a little worried initially like, okay, this is a book. It's for guys in their 20s, kind of. What are we going to get out of this?

Does this fit what we're doing? But I, you know, I like Ryan. I know he's a smart guy. He's been through a lot of stuff. And this really is the book I wish I had in my 20s. But I kind of know that I would have read half of this and been like, this is dumb. I already understand everything that's in here. Well, you were an idiot in your 20s as are most men like myself as well.

But it's funny because we had Ryan on the show, the old show, a couple years ago. And we said, yeah, this isn't really working out. Why don't you go write a book and come back to us when you're done with the book and then we'll have you on the show? And he did it. It's amazing. Yeah. Usually when we say go write a book and clear your thoughts and then come back, people don't actually go. He's the first one that actually did it.

And it's funny because on the road trip that I just made from Chicago to L.A., I had Bob our show notes guy with me. my, you know, my oldest best friend in the car, and we listened to this on the road trip, and we're like, that's a damn good book. And Ryan read it himself. So as a first time author and audiobook reader, I thought he did, I thought he knocked it out of the park. Yeah, I actually wrote him a text when I was reading it. And I went, oh, this is really good. Who ghost wrote this for you? And he's like, I'm going to try to take that as a compliment. Yeah. And I was like, oh, yeah, that really sounded rude, because it was like, I know you didn't write this. It's too good. Yeah. Who wrote this for you? you. Whoops. Yeah, smooth move, ex-lats. All right. Great big thank you to Ryan Mickler. The book title is

Sovereignty, the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of Men. And if you enjoyed this, don't forget to thank Ryan on Twitter. That'll all be linked up in the show notes for this episode, which can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. Tweet me your number one takeaway from Ryan Mickler. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Instagram and Twitter. And don't forget, if you want to learn how to apply everything you actually heard today from Ryan, make sure you go grab the worksheets, also in the show notes at Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. We've got an Alexa skill. If you've got an Amazon Echo, go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash Alexa from your computer,

and you can install it from there, or you can poke around in the Alexa app and just search for my name. And it'll give you your flash briefing in the morning with clips from the show, so you can figure out which episodes you want to listen to that day, or just get some of the latest little tips, or even refresh your memory on an episode you've already heard. That's Jordan Harbinger.com slash Alexa, or poke around in the Alexa app on your phone and install it by searching for my name. It's really easy. This episode was produced and edited by Jason DePhilippo.

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