What Self-Care for Men Actually Looks Like | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

In this episode of Friday Field Notes, Ryan Michler confronts the growing cultural hostility toward men and dismantles the superficial social media fluff around male "self-care." Instead of empty buzzwords, Ryan delivers ten actionable, non-negotiable daily habits every man must cultivate to lead himself, protect his household, and stand as a true ambassador for masculinity. From waking up with deliberate intention and physically conditioning the body to maintaining financial stewardship, living by a strict moral code, and embracing intentional hardship, this episode provides the exact framework men need to reclaim focus and master their lives. Pick two habits and start building today. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - Reclaiming Masculinity in a Hostile Culture 06:30 - Defining Real Self-Care for Men 08:30 - Rule 1: Wake Up With Intention 11:55 - Rule 2: Train Your Mind, Body, and Soul 14:40 - Rule 3: Read for Application, Not Status 18:40 - Rule 4: Join a Real Brotherhood 21:40 - Rule 5: Track Your Budget and Buy Back Time 25:40 - Rule 6: Be Present in Your Home 26:40 - Rule 7: Own Your Mistakes 27:20 - Rule 8: Accept and Process Your Emotions 29:40 - Rule 9: Live by an Unshakable Code 33:20 - Rule 10: Do Difficult Things With Purpose 35:20 - Pick Two Practices and Take Action Battle Planners: Pick yours up today! https://store.orderofman.com/products/order-of-man-annual-battle-planner Order Ryan's new book, The Masculinity Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/Masculinity-Manifesto-Establishes-Influence-Credibility/dp/1684513316/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1665048672&sr=8-1. For more information on the Iron Council brotherhood https://orderofman.link/iron-council. Want maximum health, wealth, relationships, and abundance in your life? Sign up for our free course, 30 Days to Battle Ready https://orderofman.link/battle-ready-0

• 0:00Speaker 00

  You didn't get lost in the moment. You got lost in a bunch of moments because you decided, or maybe not even decided, you just didn't have a code. Mike Pence years ago, Vice President Pence, got reamed for this. "Oh, I can't believe he would do..." Why? Because he's being respectful to his wife? Guys, have a code. Code for the way you show up with your wife, code for the way you show up with your kids, code for the way you show up for yourself, code for what you do when it gets hard, code for what you do when you're bored. Have a code.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  Hey, guys. Welcome back to another Friday Field Notes for the Order of Man podcast. If you're just joining us for the first time, this is one of three shows that we put out every single week, and my goal is to give you information that'll serve you. That's the bottom line. We've been doing this for a very long time. We've been doing it for almost 12 years now. Before it was cool, before it was in vogue to talk about masculinity and manliness, and I can't help but be excited about what we've been able to see in the movement to reclaim and restore masculinity, which is something I feel like with a level of humility that we've really spent a lot of time cultivating, building,

• 1:15Speaker 00

  and to see how popular it's become. And frankly, at times, a little misguided is interesting, to say the least. So my goal here is to give you, like I said, the tools and resources that you need to thrive and win. And specifically today, I wanted to talk about, in the wake of everything that we see going on in culture, I think there's a growing sentiment against men again. I was talking with my guest earlier this week, Ian Wendt. If you haven't listened, go back and listen. But we were talking about how, when I started this almost 12 years ago, I felt similar sentiments of just a general disdain,

• 1:56Speaker 00

  and not quite hostility, but dismissal and disdain towards men and masculinity. And then over the course of the preceding three, four, or five years, I really started to see that turn around. And unfortunately, what I've seen, and part of this, I think, is exacerbated by the conversations that men are having, that the manosphere has exacerbated, have created this new wave of not just dismissal and disdain for men, but downright hostility towards men, from the whole,

• 2:39Speaker 00

  "Would you rather meet a bear or a man in the woods?", which is completely ridiculous, obviously, on its face, to this whole thing with Lindsay Clancy about how her husband Patrick did it. And he's the villain when clearly she killed her three children. Now, we can debate whether or not she was criminally responsible based on her mental state, but he didn't do that. To even the big fiasco that we see with the Cornell case, from both men and women getting drunk, being promiscuous, engaging in moral depravity,

• 3:18Speaker 00

  changing stories, making false accusations, changing the whole act. It's crazy. It's wild. And, oh, and then you see this thing with Shane Gillis. You know, he was talking, he made a joke. And people say, "Well, it wasn't in good taste." Yeah, I know, because he's a comedian. And throughout history, we have given comedians a hall pass, if you will, to say, "You're allowed to say racist things. You're allowed to say controversial things. You're allowed to say sexist things," because we need a vent. We need a venting mechanism. And there's truth in every joke. If there's not truth in a joke, then it's not funny.

• 4:00Speaker 00

  So there's truth in every joke, but all of a sudden, because Shane Gillis makes a joke about how women are dressing much more immodestly, and I'm using a softer verbiage than he did, than they were in the past, that somehow he's wrong about that, or that somehow men are predators? This is rape culture? Like, this is the kind of stuff that's just insane. And I can't help but think that maybe, maybe, just maybe, we are not the greatest ambassadors for ourselves. I mean, that's the reality of it.

• 4:44Speaker 00

  Unfortunately, the men who are doing the best work, the ones who are engaged at home, the ones who are putting their head down and going to work, the ones that are loving on their wives and their kids, the ones that are living up to the ideals of our motto, "Protect, Provide, and Preside", are generally the ones who aren't speaking out. They're not on social media. They're not engaged in cultural debates and the debacles that we see all the time and some of these things that I mentioned to you. And so what it creates is assumptions. And what we generally do is we tend to, when we make assumptions... I've never had, I'll say it this way, I've never had an assumption made about me that was favorable.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  Anytime somebody makes an assumption about me or anybody else, it's always less than favorable. It's always less than what it actually is. So we need to do a better job being ambassadors for ourselves, on behalf of ourselves as men, and really talk about the real value that we provide to the world. People will often say, "Oh, if men didn't rule the world, it'd be a safer place", which of course is not true. "If men didn't rule the world, then we would live in..." "Everybody would be in blissful, you know, peace." That's not true. But these are the cases that people make against us, because what they see is, and I think it's perpetuated by the media, it's perpetuated by politicians who want to control

• 6:11Speaker 00

  and subjugate both men and women, will prop up and advocate for false narratives around how horrible men are. And we need to prove these people wrong. And the best way to prove those people wrong is to be an advocate for yourself, to lead yourself well, and then to, at that point, lead your family. It's all about the locus of control. So your first locus of control is yourself, and then it's the people in your house, and then it's the people in your community, and then it's your clients, and then it's your neighborhood, and then it's your state, and then it's your country. So we need to focus on the smallest or the lowest common denominator, as they'd say in math. And the lowest common denominator is you.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  But what we typically hear is from men on social media is like, "Oh, self-care, self-care, self-care, self-help, self-care. You've just got to do the work. Do the work." What does that even mean? Do the work. Do the work on yourself. What they're trying to do is they're trying to hide it behind a course or a program or an event or whatever else, and they're telling you to do the work, but they won't tell you what the work is. So today, I want to tell you what exactly the work is. And this is going to be a two-part Friday Field Note, so I'm going to tell you what self-care for men looks like, and then next week, I'm going to tell you what self-care for men does not look like. So I'm going to give you the solution first, and then I'll show you where you might see some problems

• 7:38Speaker 00

  in the lives of the men who are in your life and in yourself, hopefully, so you can focus on that lowest common denominator. And what I'd like you to do is to take one or two, not all of these things, but one or two of these things that I'm going to talk with you about today, and work on them every day, every day. And you might say, "Ryan, 10 things every day?" Yeah, 10 things every day, because I promise you, I can find 10 things that you're doing today that you can cut out and replace with these. I was joking with the guys in our brotherhood, I'm going to talk a little bit about that later today,

• 8:19Speaker 00

  about you turning a five-minute number two in the bathroom into a 30-minute doom scroll session on Instagram. Well, there you go. I just recouped 25 minutes of your time. Or running to the grocery store when you don't need to, or the convenience store, which I'm guilty of, just as much as anybody else, probably more so, to go get a water or Red Bull. It's like, "Okay, I don't need to do that. I don't need to waste that money. I don't need to waste that time. I have way more important things to worry about." So I promise you, I can find time in the day of doing, you doing 10 things that you're wasting time on, that you could be better appropriately applying that time and energy and resources towards these things.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  So let's get into it. Number one, the most important... Is it the most important? I don't know. I'm going to try to back up and use correct verbiage. I don't know if it's the most important thing. These aren't in any order, but one thing I would tell you is you have to wake up with intention. Okay, this is self-care at its core, waking up with intention. Because the things that you as a man care about, get your attention.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  Right? If you care about chasing a woman around that you're interested in, she will get your attention. If you're interested in building wealth and securing enough money to buy a new car, that will get your attention. If you want to get 20-inch biceps and a six-pack, that will get your attention. But if you're not deliberate about how you spend your time and your energy and your resources, then you're not actually giving yourself the attention that you deserve. And I, look, I'm not telling you that it should be at the expense of other people. It should be at the expense of other responsibilities and duties and obligations you have. Of course, it shouldn't.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  But again, I can carve out an hour, maybe even two or three hours a day that you're wasting that you could apply to these things. And if you're not waking up with intention, knowing, I'm going to accomplish this, I'm going to do these things, I'm going to achieve this, I'm going to knock out this to-do list, here's how my day is going, here's how my calendar will work, here's the things that are going to get my attention and energy, then what are you doing? That's not self-care. That's, that's the antithesis of it. So guys, every single day, wake up. And I don't care if you use a notepad. I, I use a lot of different systems. I use sticky notes. I use an app on my, or not, yeah, the notes app on my phone where I just, if I'm out and about, I'm like, write that down. We have a battle planning

• 10:59Speaker 00

  app that, that we created and developed that we use. I've got a battle planning log. I've got my Google Calendar. I mean, I've got so many different ways to track what I'm going to be doing on a daily basis that there really isn't a minute that goes by in my life where I don't know what I'm doing. That's self-care. Because again, the things you care about get your attention. So if you want to learn more about what you might be able to use, maybe I'll do a deeper dive into this. But if you go to orderofman.com/twbp, as in 12-week battle plan, orderofman.com/twbp, you can download some free resources. You can pick up a copy of our

• 11:42Speaker 00

  digital, excuse me, our analog, our written version of the battle planning tool, or our digital, our digital app as well. But guys, first thing, wake up with intention, know what you're going to do. Okay, number two, every day, you have to train your mind, body, and soul. So very simply, I'm not going to get really deep on this because I don't want to make it complicated. I was talking with my friend Ian the other day, and he said, you know, people complicate things so they have an excuse not to do it. So I'm not going to complicate anything. Train your mind, your body, and soul. So how do you do that? Okay, your mind, the, the best thing that you can do is read things and expose yourself to information that you don't have

• 12:26Speaker 00

  access to right now. And then critically think about it. So pick up a book you normally wouldn't pick up. Listen to a podcast you normally wouldn't listen to. Jump, jump online and follow an account that maybe is antithetical to what your current worldview is. And but embrace, not embrace it, but at least entertain it, right? What about this is true? What about it isn't true? Like, think about it deeply. Spend time researching, developing, coming up with ideas on things that are important to you. That's the mind. Next is the body. Just go move. I'm not going to tell you should do CrossFit, or strength training, or endurance running, or jujitsu. I have my own

• 13:06Speaker 00

  personal preferences. They're my preferences. A lot of guys resonate with it. I do strength training and I do jujitsu. That's, that's what I enjoy. And a lot of guys will be like, well, you need to really run and do cardio. Sure, whatever. Okay, fine. But I'm not going to do cardio. Or if I do it, I'm going to do it for two days and be bothered about it and never do it again. So what do I do instead? The things I enjoy that are going to make me healthier. This morning at the gym, had a good hour and 20-minute train. Did, uh, did a, did a pull movement day. So I'm doing pull-ups and rows and lat pull downs and things like this. And then I

• 13:47Speaker 00

  spent 15 minutes in the sauna. And I talked with a, with a guy there that I've met, uh, in, in the sauna, as weird as that sounds. And, you know, we talked about the local football team. And that was good. That was good for my soul, actually, but also good for my body. And how do you train your soul? Read the Bible. I mean, I, or, or whatever your book is. Again, I'm not going to tell you what it is, but just read the Bible, pray to God, or whoever your God is. Uh, my God's God, Jesus Christ. So I pray, I pray to God. I read the Bible every single day. In fact, I have a goal to finish the Bible by the end of the year. So I'm on track for that. Uh, and I, I try

• 14:30Speaker 00

  to embrace that, that faith element because it's good for my soul. It's been a while since I've been to church. I'm going to church this Sunday. I'm excited about that, looking forward to that and getting back into church. So that's it. Like, it's, again, it's not complicated.

• 14:46Speaker 00

  Okay, so the next thing, and I talked about, I talked about reading something, like reading, reading a book or gaining new information that you may not have access to. But what I would say is read for application. Okay, read for application. I've got books all over the place. Behind the camera over there, I've got 100 books. I've got books over there. I've got books upstairs. I used to wear books around like a badge of honor. Like, oh, I read 1,700 books this year. Cool, what did you do about it? Nothing. Who cares then? It's just, you're just killing trees. It's all you're doing. You're just killing trees. That's probably the best way to say it. If you

• 15:29Speaker 00

  buy a book and you either don't read it, or more important, importantly, don't apply it, you're just killing trees for no reason. So don't do that. I'm not saying that you shouldn't kill trees to build houses and, and have paper. Like, I'm not that kind of person. But

• 15:49Speaker 00

  if you're gonna buy a book, read it for application. You don't need to read 1,700 books this year. You probably need to read like five, five books, maybe even four, one per quarter. If you read one book per quarter and you decided, hey, you know what, I'm going to implement this to the nth degree, you would be light years ahead of the people who are like, I read 100 books per year. I don't care. I don't care about your 100 books per year. What I care about is, did you read three, four, five books and implement what you learned? That's the most important thing. Read for application. And I can teach you some other strategies on that. I always have a pen

• 16:29Speaker 00

  or a pencil. I always have a highlighter. I always have sticky notes, I dog ear books. Like, I really mess with books. There are some purists who say, oh, you should never do that to a book. Books are a dime a dozen. It's not like we're, we're dealing with the printing press from the 1800s anymore. I'll, I'll pick up a book and I'll tag it and I'll highlight it and I'll write notes in the margin and I'll put sticky notes on it. And so what I do is anytime that I see a passage or a sentence or a paragraph, or even an entire page that I like, I keep reading, but I highlight that and I dog ear it. And then I come back and maybe make a note or two in the

• 17:08Speaker 00

  margin. And then after the book is done, I go back and I just reread. So I actually read the book kind of twice in a way. I go back and I reread, uh, what, what is, what is dog-eared, what is, what is tagged, what is highlighted, what has notes. And then I figure out where I can apply that through systems. And, and I can talk more about that if you guys are interested. You just need to let me know. But that's how I read a book. And it's been way more beneficial than just trying to like burn through a thousand books at a time. And by the way, I think you should read a book. There, look, I, I'm an audiobook listener. If I'm at the gym, I'll have one earbud

• 17:49Speaker 00

  in typically because I want to hear and see what's going on around me. I might listen to an audiobook. I might listen, listen to a podcast. If I'm on, on the road, or if I'm in our Brotherhood and we have a book of the month, like, I'm going to listen to it primarily. But there's something about reading it. And listening does not count. I don't care what you say. Listening to it does not count as much as sitting in a chair, getting a physical book out, having a highlighter, and turning the page of an actual book. So that's what I do. Number four, join a Brotherhood. Guys, you got, you gotta be around other people, other men in particular. This is not a luxury,

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  it's a necessity. And the reason I say that is because the overwhelming majority of men who join our Brotherhood, it's called the Iron Council, they join when they're in despair.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  They join when there's hardship. They're going through a divorce, a bankruptcy, a loss of a job, some sort of hardship that they're dealing with. That's when they join.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  And they join because they're dealing with something difficult. I'm not discounting that. They're like, I need help now. I need to figure this out now. Well, I'm here to tell you that if you actually utilize a Brotherhood properly, you won't get to the now. Okay, you won't drift the way that most men drift. I mean, I've had so many conversations, half a dozen at least, over the past week, with very close friends who I met through the Iron Council, which is the program that we created. And I talk with these guys every couple of days. Had a conversation with a good friend. I was kind of dealing with a, a little bit of a moral dilemma. And I called

• 19:36Speaker 00

  him up and I said, hey, man, like, I've got this little dilemma that's going on. I'm pretty sure I want to do this. Like, I'm 99% sure I'm, I'm going in this direction, but I just, I want, I want either some support, or I want you to play devil's advocate. I want you to give me the antithetical argument. And we had a really good conversation. He's like, no, like, I don't have an argument. You, it sounds like you're doing the right thing. And I, I did that thing. And without getting into details, I did that thing and it's been good. It's been really good. But it's amazing how many men do not have even a single friend that they could call. I had another

• 20:15Speaker 00

  friend, really close friend, hunted with him for eight years now. He took me on one of my first hunts. He took my son, my oldest son, with me on my oldest son's first hunt, my second son on his first hunt, my third son on his first hunt. And unfortunately, he recently lost his wife to cancer.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  I mean, it breaks my heart because we're so close, but I called him half a dozen times every couple of days, two, three days, just checking in on him, see how he's doing, seeing what's going on. And he sent me a message when his, his beautiful bride passed and he said, hey, man, I just really appreciate you checking in on me as often as you did. I love you. I really care about you. I'm glad you did that. It means a lot to me. It's like simple stuff. And I messaged him back and I said, man, do you need me to come out? I'll be there in six hours. I could be there in six hours. He lives in the Midwest. I can be there in six hours. He said, no, I don't need you to come out. I got a lot of family and friends around here. I don't need you to come out, but I'm really glad that you said you would. I would do that for probably a dozen men.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  And there's probably a dozen men who would do that for me. Do you have that? Do you? If not, you're, you're heading towards the edge of the cliff and you might not even know it. All right. Number five, track your budget, guys. People say money, money isn't the most important thing. I, I agree. It's not the most important thing, but what money can afford you, if you handle it correctly, is, hear what, hear me when I say that. Money might not be the most important thing, but what money can afford you is, and I'm not talking about the newest boat. I'm not talking about the latest gadget and gizmo and technology.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  I'm not talking about the latest gaming console or the most state of the art bow or rifle. It's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is time. Money can buy you time and it can buy you experiences. The people in your life, your wife, your significant other, your kids, your friends, your colleagues, your coworkers, your clients, they want time, attention, energy, resources, experiences. And money can afford that to them. I, I spent a, a large part of my time last year in the spring, or this, I guess this year in the spring, uh, watching my oldest son play lacrosse. I bought a beautiful camera.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  It cost like a thousand bucks. Maybe not the best, but good. Uh, it was a used camera. A friend of mine offered it to us. So yeah, I got it on a discount, but it still is, is expensive. So I bought this camera and I would leave work early and I would go to his lacrosse games and I would take pictures. I'm not a photographer. It's not really all that appealing to me actually, but I went out there every single game and I took pictures because I wanted to see my son play lacrosse. That's it. Not even that. It's not even that I wanted to see him play lacrosse. It's that I just wanted to be close to him. My two oldest boys played that year, this year. I just wanted to be close.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  I wanted them to know that I cared about them. I took, uh, the afternoon off yesterday and most of the day, actually. And I spent time with a friend, Ian. I just did a podcast with him and it released a couple of days ago on Tuesday and we did a podcast and then we went and shot bows. We went and had lunch. We went and worked out together. And then later that evening, we went and had dinner together. And that was a full day of investing in a guy. I could have been spending time, I don't know, uh, working on sales funnels or, uh, answering email.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  I could have done a lot of other things, but I spent it with him because that was valuable to me. So that goes to point number four, but it also goes to point number five. If I don't have the financial means to do that, I'm going to miss out on all of those opportunities. And when I went to dinner last night, I went to dinner with him and he brought a friend and I met his friend and we connected and we're going to hang out later this week. It's awesome, but it takes money to do it. And if you don't know where your income is coming in, and if you don't know where all your money is going out, I promise you're getting raked over the coals. I mean, you probably have three, four, five, $600 worth of reoccurring spend, expenses every single month that you're using a fraction of, but you're paying $500 a month.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  Every single month, that's $6,000 a year. $6,000 a year. If you made 0% interest on that, you'd have $60,000 in 10 years, which would be uh, maybe a deposit on a home. Or, or, or buying a new vehicle because yours is, you know, defunct. But then you start adding interest to that. Now all of a sudden you're looking at 200,000, 300,000, four, if you do it correctly. That's significant, but you need to every single day, track where your money's coming in and where it's going out, limit what's going out on unnecessary things and figure out a way to make more money.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  All right. Number six, I kind of alluded to this, be present in the home. When you're home, be home. That's it, guys. I've, I've learned that lesson the hard way. You don't need to be on your phone. People are like, I need my phone. You didn't need your phone 15 years ago, 20 years ago. All of a sudden you need it today. Why? To communicate with people you don't like, to communicate with people you'd never talk with otherwise, to get all the gossip and the news and the nonsense about all of these trials I was talking about earlier, or the, or comedians, heaven forbid, making a distasteful joke. That, that's what you're going to spend your time on when you could actually spend your time playing catch with your son, watching your daughter rehearse her dance recital in front of you,

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  cuddling on the couch and watching hocus pocus because we're in, in October now. I, I, I never met or heard of somebody who at the end of their life said, I really wish I would have, uh, just, you know, worked a little harder. It doesn't happen. So be present in your home. Okay. Number, number, what am I on? Number seven, own your mistakes. Accept, accept it, embrace it. You know, like you mess up, you, you fall short, you, you, you do dumb things. It's okay. You like, you're going to make mistakes and in that case, just own the mistake that you made,

• 27:19Speaker 00

  live up to it, admit it, fix it, correct it quickly and move on with your life. Number eight is to accept and acknowledge your emotions. It's okay to be angry. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be fearful. It's okay to have grief. It's okay to have guilt and shame and sorrow. There's no bad emotion. There's no emotion that's bad. People say that, oh, you should never be angry. Why? I can think of a ton of things to be angry about right now. Or you should never, you should never have any guilt or shame about who you are. Why? I can think of all sorts of shameful behavior that I've, I've engaged in.

• 28:02Speaker 00

  Why should I not experience that? Now, what we do with it matters, right? So if I, if I use guilt and shame to self-destruct or I use it to be depressed or have suicidal ideation, or if I use my anger to go over to that wall and punch a hole in the wall, or worse, hit somebody else, abuse somebody else, yeah, that's an improper expression of anger. It's not that I should not have been angry. It's that I expressed it incorrectly. So sit with it, own it. Why am I mad? Why am I feeling guilt? Why am I feeling shame? Why am I feeling sorrow? This is the hardest work that so many men need to do that they just won't do. Like you'll go to the gym and you'll bust your tail at the gym, but you won't sit

• 28:47Speaker 00

  and just think about all the bad things that you've done with, with yourself. You, you'll go out and do a Spartan race. You'll go out and do jujitsu. You'll go out and, and, and talk about taking on the enemy, but you won't just sit there and think about how horrible you may have been to the people that you love most. That's the hardest thing that I've ever had to do. And it's something I wrestle with every day and it's something that you should wrestle with. You should wrestle with that. Not to beat yourself up, but to say, okay, like I'm human. This is the shadow work that Carl Jung talks about. People say, oh, just do shadow work. What does that mean? That's what it means. I'm an imperfect human being.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  Sometimes I get angry. Sometimes I get mad. Sometimes I get sad. Sometimes I'm impatient. Sometimes I beat myself up. Sometimes I'm too hard on the people I love. This is part of who I am. So how can I express that better in a more healthy way? So that people in my life know that I love them, that I want the best for them and that I might just be somewhat inadequate in teaching them that.

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  All right, I got two more for you today. Okay, so stick with me.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  Live by a standard. And you gotta have a standard now. And I talk with guys every, just about every day. That have been unfaithful, have stepped out on their wives. I'm using this as an example. And they'll say things like, "Well, I just got lost in the moment. I just got caught up in the moment." Uh, no. No, you didn't. You got caught up in a lot of moments. The secretary, or the colleague that you cheated on, your wife with. It wasn't like you, you saw her one night and then you just went in the closet and made out with her. Like, that's not how it happens. The way it happens is you flirt with her.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  And, and then there's a little, some touching going on, you know, casual, like, hard to read type touching. And then it becomes a little bit more overtly sexual. And then there's an opportunity where you're working late and she's working late. And low and behold, everybody's clothes come off and you know what happens then? You didn't get lost in the moment. You got lost in a bunch of moments because you decided. Or maybe not even decided, you just didn't have a code. I don't do this. I remember years ago, when I was doing a lot of networking in my financial planning practice. Uh, there was, there were, there were women that I would network with. They were real estate agents, attorneys, CPAs, financial advisors. I would network with them.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  And there were opportunities where I could go to lunch, or dinner with these, these ladies. And I just, I made a rule, I'm not, I'm not doing that. Like, I'll go to lunch with you, but there's gonna be somebody else there. I'm never going to lunch with somebody, a, a member of the opposite sex, one-on-one, in a professional setting. And Mike Pence, years ago, Vice President Pence, got reamed for this. "Oh, I can't believe he would..." Why? Because he's being respectful? To his wife? Because he's being respectful to the woman that he's networking with? And then now you have this thing where, you know, you talk about the Cornell case that we were talking about earlier. And how men are predators and horrible and everything else.

• 32:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, five years ago, you were talking about how evil Pence was and how misogynistic he was. Because he made the decision that I'm not gonna go on a, on a lunch date, a professional lunch date. With, with a woman who's not my wife. And all these people who are crying about this Cornell stuff. And who are crying about how predatory men are with this Shane Gillis stuff we're talking about. They were the same people who were wailing and gnashing their teeth. When Pence said, "I don't, I don't go on dates with women of the opposite sex, even if it's professional." Guys, have a code.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  Code for the way you show up with your wife, code for the way you show up with your kids, code for the way you show up for yourself. Code for what you do when it gets hard, code for what you do when you're bored. Have a code. And if you can make those decisions now and engrain and etch that into your soul, your psyche, your DNA. You're gonna be less likely to make dumb decisions and get quote-unquote "lost in the moment."

• 33:23Speaker 00

  And then the last thing I'm gonna share with you guys today. Is to do difficult things with purpose. I say with purpose because it would be difficult for me to go, there's a concrete wall behind me. It would be difficult for me to go bang my head against the wall a hundred times today on that concrete wall. That would be difficult. Uh, but there's no purpose to it, other than give myself a concussion. I'm not interested in doing that. But, when you wake up, number one, with intention, do it with, with, with purpose. "I'm gonna go bust my tail at the gym today. I spent like I said, an hour, fifteen, hour and twenty at the gym." It was hard. I sweat. I, I, I work hard. Uh, it, it wasn't like, comfortable.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  I was pushing myself. But it was with purpose. It makes me better and stronger.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Everything that you do should be do, done with purpose, and it should be difficult with purpose. Again, you cannot distinguish the two. You can't have purpose without difficulty. Purpose without difficulty does not exist. You're, if you, if you think it does, you're just, you're deluding yourself. It's just comfort disguised as purpose. If you really have purpose in your life, it's gonna be hard. And conversely. Difficulty does not come without purpose, otherwise you're just banging your head against the wall. That's stupid. Don't be stupid. Like, actually do something that means something.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  So that's my 10 list for how men can have self-care for themselves. Um, again, wake up with intention. Train your mind, your body, and your soul. Read. With, with application at heart, with the idea of implementing things. Join, uh, join a brotherhood.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Okay, um. What else? Oh, track your budget. Talked about tracking your expenses, your income. And the fact that money can afford you experiences and things that are important. Be present in the home. Own your mistakes when you make them. Process the emotions that you're dealing with. Live by a standard and a code, and do difficult things with purpose. I hope that helps. Part two next week will be what self-care does not look like. So what I want you to do is I just want you to pick two things. Two things out of that. Maybe it's training your body. Okay, I'm committed to the end of the year. That's what I'm challenging you right now. To the end of the year, I'm gonna train my body. Or I'm gonna be present in the home, at least until the end of the year, I'm gonna be fully present, or I'm gonna track my budget.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Whatever it is, pick two things, get after it, and make it happen. If you wanna have more conversations like this, guys, more training, more experiences, more conversations, more accountability. Uh, join our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council. I mean, we're doing big things over there. We're gonna talk, uh, tomorrow specifically about how to map out your day and make the most of your day. I'm actually dealing with one of the busiest days I've had in a very long time today. And it's going awesome, because I know how to plan the day and be effective and efficient. So check it out. Go to orderofman.com/ironcouncil. Make sure you subscribe. Please leave a rating and review.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  If you haven't done that yet, just go into Apple, or Spotify, or Pandora, or iHeartRadio, or YouTube, or whatever. And just leave a comment, leave a rating and review, let people know what you're doing. Um, the people who mostly leave comments. A lot of them are really good, because we've built a great community, but there's a lot of like nonsense. People like, "Your podcast studio looks stupid." "You're dumb." "I hate your beard." Those are the people who make comments. Let's instead have the people who make comments are like, "Hey, your studio looks great." "Hey, I appreciate that." "Oh, I tried what you said, it worked." "Oh, thank you for sharing this thing." "Thank you for introducing me to somebody else." That's the kind of comments that we should make when we rally behind a movement.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  And that's the kind of man of value that I think you want to become, because you're listening to this. And it's the kind of man of value I wanna become. Anyways, guys, we'll be back next week. I've got Andy Stumpf joining us on the podcast. So make sure you subscribe on YouTube, or Spotify, Twitter, Instagram. I don't, you can't even subscribe on those places, but wherever you're connected, just make sure you subscribe, whatever that means. Andy Stumpf's coming on next week to talk about his latest book, talk about jiu-jitsu, talk about his, his SEAL experience. And, uh, yeah, got a lot of good podcasts coming up, so check it out. Uh, until then, we'll be, uh, we'll be back on Tuesday. But go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. You ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be? We invite you to join the Order at orderofman.com.