5 Wounds Every Man Must Heal | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

Most men live their lives actively ignoring the pain and suffering they have experienced, leading to destructive behavior, self-sabotage, and sedation. In this solo episode of Friday Field Notes, Ryan Michler breaks down the five core wounds every man must address to build healthy relationships with himself and his family. Ryan details the unblessed, betrayal, humiliation, abandonment, and failure wounds, explaining exactly how they manifest in our daily lives. Moving beyond theory, he provides simple, highly tactical fixes for each wound so you can begin the healing process immediately. Whether you need to practice delegating a task to build trust or making amends for a past mistake, these steps will help you take back responsibility. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - The Five Wounds Men Ignore 02:05 - The Unblessed Wound 04:26 - The Betrayal Wound 09:06 - The Humiliation Wound 14:26 - The Abandonment Wound 19:10 - The Failure Wound 25:11 - Implementing the Five Fixes 27:37 - The Iron Council and New Studio 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

  If I know somebody's gonna leave, I'm not gonna fully invest in that opportunity. And then what we end up having is a self fulfilling prophecy. Because I'm not investing fully in that relationship. For example, they pick up on that. They acknowledge and see that I'm not investing fully. And so they start pulling back. And when they start pulling back, that's my opportunity to say, see, everybody always leaves. But it was you who created it. Because you were afraid they were gonna leave. And so you hedged. That's what fear of abandonment leads to, hedging.

• 0:36Speaker 00

  Look, guys, today I want to talk with you about something that all men need to address. But very few of us actually take the time to even consider what I'm gonna share with you. It's the five wounds that I believe every man needs to address in his life. If he has any hope of having a good relationship with himself, a good relationship with other people, whether it's his wife and partner, or his kids, or colleagues, coworkers, clients, business partners, etc. Like I said, it's something that a lot of men don't address because it takes time. It's not always the most enjoyable to address our wounds. And so for the most part, we live lives trying to ignore the pain

• 1:20Speaker 00

  and the suffering that we've experienced. We hide it, we put it aside, and then we avoid it. And it only comes out usually in destructive ways. You know, we lash out at somebody we care about and love. We sabotage a potential relationship. And we slip into sedation methods because we haven't taken any time to really consider what the wounds that we are experiencing are. So today I'm gonna share with you five wounds that I think every man, including myself, has to do work on. And we're also gonna talk about the five fixes, very tactical fixes. Because I hate talking about these types of things without getting into the practical application of what you can do to improve in your life as well.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  I think that's one of the things that sets our podcast apart. Is not only that we're just talking about men's issues, but we're actually addressing how we can deal with them and confront them. So without any further ado, let's get into it. The first thing I want to talk about is the wound of being un-blessed. And when I say un-blessed, I'm talking about typically a father wound or some authority, maybe even a mother wound, an authority figure in your life. And it is typically the father wound, where you never heard what you needed to hear. You never heard that you were good enough. Or that you were talented. Or that you were loved. You never got the validation

• 2:47Speaker 00

  as a young, impressionable young man got. And because of that, regardless of what you do, it never seems like it's enough. And you're always trying to fill this hole or heal this wound by seeking validation. And the problem with seeking validation is that you can't control what another person does, or says, or thinks about you. So if you're out busting your tail, you're serving, you're helping, you're growing your business, you're providing well for your family, you're showing up, you're coaching Little League, like you're doing all the things correctly. If you have the wound, the un-blessed wound, it won't feel like enough. And so you're just constantly chasing, what's next, what's next, what's next, what's next?

• 3:32Speaker 00

  And you're waiting for somebody else to give you the validation that you should have for yourself. And so what I would suggest is a fix is to say the words to yourself that you needed to hear as a young man. And you should say them to yourself. But you should also say those words to someone else. So if you've got children, for example, it might be difficult for you at times to express how you feel about your kids. It might be hard for you to say, I love you. It might be hard for you to say, I care about you. Or, great performance today. Or, I love that you like this thing. And maybe that thing has nothing to do with anything you like.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  That might be a real challenge for you if you never healed the un-blessed wound. But the fix is to tell yourself what you need to hear. That you are enough. That you are loved. That there are people in your life who care about you. And even the people, again, primarily potentially your father, who were supposed to say that, odds are that they still did love you, but they struggled with it themselves. And you have to break that chain. So again, the fix for you, and I want you to write down these five fixes. But the fix for the un-blessed wound is to say the words to yourself that you needed to hear as a young man. And say those words to somebody else. Share those words with somebody else. Don't let your son, or your daughter, or your wife, or a friend go without hearing the words

• 5:02Speaker 00

  that you wish you would have heard. These aren't profound in any way necessarily, but they're very simple. But I feel like the more that you do this, the more likely it is that you're gonna heal each of these five wounds, including the un-blessed wound. Okay, the second wound that most men need to deal with is the betrayal wound. Okay, and the betrayal wound is that somewhere along the way, you had an experience. And you interpret it as somebody hurting you. Somebody backstabbing you. Somebody taking advantage of you. Somebody not honoring their commitment. Usually with an underlying tone of maliciousness.

• 5:47Speaker 00

  That they didn't do this thing because they wanted to get you. And so what happens, and the way this manifests, is a lack of trust in people. Right, you no longer take on business partners. You sabotage potential romantic relationships. You keep distance between yourself and your children because you, even subconsciously, are trying to keep yourself safe from being betrayed in the future. And if this is the case, it's very difficult for us as men to give people two things. To give them, number one, responsibility, and number two, access. Right, if we feel like we're gonna be betrayed, we're not gonna give anybody any sort of delegation

• 6:30Speaker 00

  or responsibility of anything important in our lives. And we're certainly not gonna give them access to ourselves. Because eventually what they're going to do is backstab us, hurt us, etc., etc. So the fix for overcoming the betrayal wound, and again, I'm not trying to be dismissive or make light of the work that it takes to do this. But the fix is very simple. We want you to start handing off one simple task. And don't even check in on that until the deadline. You know, if you ask your son to clean his room, trust that they're gonna clean their room. If you ask your wife to handle some business, or handle a bill, or take care of something, or run an errand,

• 7:13Speaker 00

  trust that she's gonna take care of that errand. I would also say part of the fix is opening yourself up to the possibility of being hurt. Share something that's really on your mind. Communicate, hey babe, you know, when you talk to me like this, it's very frustrating. And I feel disrespected when you say those things. And I would like for you to communicate with me in this way. I mean, even just the act of you saying and expressing how you feel helps you overcome the betrayal wound. Because you're going to see and re-code, reprogram this neural plasticity that we have in our minds about the way that people communicate and the way people show up. Usually what happens is we have a bad experience.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Right, somebody betrays you. Maybe your wife stepped out on you. Maybe a business partner screws you. Maybe your father left when you were younger and you took that as a personal indictment. We're gonna talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Those are not universal experiences. Those are isolated experiences. But what we do, just humans in general, is we take that one negative, isolated experience, and then we apply it broadly. And we categorize everybody into those wounds. Like, everybody's gonna betray. Oh, everybody at some point leaves. Nobody ever gives me the validation that I need. It's black and white thinking. It's overgeneralization. And it's typically not true.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  So we need you, and me, I have to work on these things myself, to re-code the way that we look at betrayal. Yeah, that person may have betrayed you. That person may have taken advantage of you. That person may have undermined their trust and respect with you. But that doesn't mean everybody will. And so the fix is, again, hand off one task, one duty, one responsibility. And don't check in on that until the deadline. And also, the other task is to just express how you feel. And just see how people respond. Hey babe, when you do this, I feel this. Hey kids, when you don't do this, I feel this.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Hey business partner, when you don't show up, this is how I feel. And you're gonna find out that if you learn to communicate, most people are willing to acquiesce to what you need. As long as they're good people in your life. All right, the third wound is the wound of humiliation. Maybe somebody embarrassed you. Maybe somebody made fun of you in public. I have all of these wounds, by the way. I think most men do. But I remember circumstances and situations where, even in school, you know, I made up, or I came up with an idea or a concept. And one of the kids in class made fun of the idea or the concept. And so instead of just saying, oh, that guy's being a jerk,

• 10:10Speaker 00

  again, we associate one bad experience and apply it broadly is, I've just learned to be quiet. Right? I just learned to, to shut up. I just learned not to share my opinion. Uh, I learned not to put myself out there. I remember when I was, let's see, 17, 18 years old, um, I was just about to go to basic training and some of the guys that I trained with, within, within the National Guard gave me this advice. And I, I think it was actually pretty good advice for me going through basic training. Uh, but they said, don't stand out. You don't want to be in the back. You don't want to be in the front. You want to be right in the middle. For basic training, pretty good. For life, horrible, horrible

• 10:53Speaker 00

  advice. But the idea was that if you don't put yourself out there and you don't take risks and you don't put yourself in front of the pack and you don't fall behind either, that there's nothing that anybody can cling on to, to use against you. Again, maybe pretty decent advice in basic training, but in life, is that the kind of life that you want to live? Do you want to live the type of life where you just sit and you let other people have all the, all the ideas? Other people have the benefit of moving forward. Um, other people sharing and being influential in people's lives? Or is that something that, that you want to do, that you want to participate in? And the reason that you don't currently might be because at some point along the way, somebody made you feel stupid for expressing

• 11:37Speaker 00

  an idea, for having an opinion, for sharing some insight, maybe even for, for doing something as, you know, as benign as, you know, skipping down the road, or, or the way you run, or the way you talk, or whatever. I mean, kids are brutal. Uh, it's horrible. And you know, you see this in the public school system. Kids can be the nastiest, meanest people on the planet. And then we as men adopt the way that we were treated in our everyday life. I'll give you a silly example. When I was a kid, uh, we, we grew up and, and we were lower middle class. We weren't broke. You know, I'm not here to give you a sob story, or woe is me, or dirt poor. No, we were a lower middle class family. And my

• 12:19Speaker 00

  mom, bless her heart, was very prudent with the financial resources because she had to be. And so I never got designer shoes. Like I never got Nikes. I, I never got Reeboks. I wasn't wearing the designer clothes. It was, it was Walmart clothes. It was Payless shoes is where we got our shoes. And I remember that, uh, it was, it was coming back to school and I must've been in maybe fifth or sixth grade. And my mom took me to the store, as she always did. And we, we got some athletic, white athletic shoes and they were called cheetahs. And I was so excited about my cheetah shoes. Uh, and I got to school and there was a kid there and his name was Tim. I remember his name. This is how, this is how crazy

• 13:03Speaker 00

  this was. So I must've been 11 years old. So what's that? 35 years ago? 34 years ago? And I get to school and I remember vividly what he said. He said, everybody hates cheetahs about my shoes. I remember that 35 years later. Now, as men, we're like, that's stupid. Get over it. We don't, we don't get over it unless we actually think about it. And that's what I'm encouraging you to do is to think about where in your life you said something, um, or you did something and somebody ridiculed you for it, or made fun of you for it, because you were the one who dared to express yourself in a way that maybe didn't match what they thought you ought to be doing. So the fix for this is

• 13:45Speaker 00

  to do something this week where you could potentially look foolish. That's the only way to address this wound is to say, hey, I'm going to go look stupid by design. Now look, I'm not telling you to do stupid things, but I'm saying, go engage in something where you might look a little silly to begin with. Maybe it is going into that conference instead of just sitting back in the back row and not expressing your opinion. Maybe, maybe this time you actually say what's on your mind. And then you see how it goes. You know, maybe it is going to that jujitsu class that you've been thinking about, but you hadn't wanted to go because you don't want to look stupid. I remember years ago when I was 50 or 50 pounds heavier than I weigh today. And I, I wanted to get in shape, but I was

• 14:30Speaker 00

  terrified to go into the gym. In fact, I have a picture of me on the first or second day at the gym. I look horrible. But I remember being afraid, not because I couldn't do the work or wasn't capable of it, but because I thought I would look stupid. And I did look stupid, but I went in anyways. And I lost weight and I got stronger. And I've maintained that with some ebbs and flows over the past 20 years at this point. But in order to address the wounds that we deal with, we have to be willing to confront them head on. So the humiliation wound is actually going out and doing something where you actually might look foolish. All right. Number four is the abandonment wound. Obviously this

• 15:12Speaker 00

  is somebody who left you. You know, your mom. And, and it, and it, and it may not even be malicious. Like it, it could be that she abandoned the family. That's true. Or it could be that she just, she died. Heaven forbid, but she just died. And now she's no longer in your life. And so you, you have this abandonment wound. You, you believe you've associated with the idea that every time there's something important that you really love, that everyone leaves. I have this one quite a bit. I had multiple father figures coming in my life, including my biological father, who, who has unfortunately passed away. And I've even caught myself at times, even now, saying, well, everybody

• 15:55Speaker 00

  at some point leaves. That's an abandonment wound. If you've ever said anything like that to yourself, or out loud, you have an abandonment issue. You believe that anything good that comes into your life will eventually leave. And the problem with believing that is you won't ever fully invest in it. Right? Imagine you dating, dating a, a woman and you, you love her, you care about her, you spend time with her, you're, you're infatuated to a degree with her and you just want to be with this woman. But you have this wound, whether conscious or subconscious, that says, at some point she's going to leave. At some point, this is going to be over. Don't you think if that's the way that you're

• 16:37Speaker 00

  operating in reality, don't you believe that you will be less vested in it? Because why would you ever invest fully into something that you know will end here shortly? You, you won't. Even if, again, if it's subconscious. If I know somebody's going to leave, I'm not going to fully invest in that opportunity. And then what we end up having is self fulfilling prophecy, because I'm not investing fully in that relationship. For example, they pick up on that. They acknowledge and see that I'm not investing fully. And so they start pulling back. And when they start pulling back, that's my opportunity to say, see, everybody already always leaves. But it was you who created it because you were afraid

• 17:22Speaker 00

  they were going to leave. And so you hedged. That's what fear of abandonment leads to. Hedging. Now hedging is a good strategy if we're talking about risk prevention and, uh, you know, shoring up potential loss, but it's not a great strategy for investing fully in a business, for example, or fully in a relationship. Uh, you, you want to go all in. Now, I'm not saying be reckless or stupid. I mean, be aware of red flags, sure. But you want to go all in on the relationships and experiences you're having. So the fix for overcoming the abandonment wound. And again, I'm not telling you that if you just do this one thing, you'll be fixed. It's, it's a lifelong journey. But the fix is to

• 18:02Speaker 00

  stay in the room, to stay in the conversation, to stay in the thing when the next hard thing comes up, whether it's a hard conversation or a hard aspect of your business. I want you to sit and just sit with it, be with it. You don't run off. You don't abandon whatever's going on. You have the courage and the, and the audacity and the balls to stay in the conversation. Because if you can do that, then you'll start to believe, maybe even uh, realize that other people have the capacity for that too. And you'll also, you will not create a self fulfilling prophecy. Right? If you're in that relationship and you feel

• 18:45Speaker 00

  like in your head, oh, she's just going to leave at some point, you're going to back off. But if you say, hey, you know, she might leave at some point and, and she certainly has the autonomy to do that. But I'm going to stay in the fight. I'm going to stay in this. So if you and her are having a difficult conversation, you're not going to run away from it. You're going to stay there and you're going to breathe and you're going to focus and you're going to contribute to the conversation. And you're not going to abandon it because you're waiting for somebody else to abandon it. It's, it's like, it's like being an employee and a boss comes to you and says, hey, you know what, Ryan? You've been a hard worker for all these years, but you're fired. And you're like, well, you can't fire me. I quit.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  It's the same thing. Okay. We do this all the time in relationships, business partnerships, everything else is, is we think, oh, this person's going to leave. So I'm just going to push them out before they leave. When in reality, that person maybe would have never left. Maybe they were fully committed to the relationship, business, platonic, romantic. And you just blew it up because you were too afraid. You had this wound that was just festering in you and created the very thing that you're afraid of. All right. And the last wound, guys, is the failure wound. Um, this one's tough because we've all done things in our lives, past relationships, past business ventures, you know, past, past

• 20:10Speaker 00

  experiences, stories, conversations we've had where we feel like we failed, where we've just come up short. And for whatever reason, the thing didn't work out, the thing didn't pan out, the relationship died, or the business failed. And so now we have this fear of failure. And it's like, well, if, if in order for me not to fail, I'm just not going to try. Right? Because you can't fail at something you don't try. According to the traditional definition of the word, it means that you actually tried to do something and you fell short. Well, if you don't try to do it, then you can't fail at it. And so again, you hedge, uh, you pretend like you didn't know what to do. Um, you might make up the excuse of

• 20:54Speaker 00

  complexity. Oh, this is, see how, how complex and difficult this is. And you might even say, oh, this is just not that easy. You might even say that about this podcast right now. Well, it's, Ryan, it's not that easy. Look, I realize me mumbling some words is significantly easier than you doing the work I'm suggesting that all of us do. But if you're using that phrase, it's not that easy. Easier said than done. As an excuse to do nothing, then you might have a complexity issue, which is driven by a failure wound.

• 21:28Speaker 00

  Guys, it's okay. I want you to redefine how you look at failure. Failure to me is not, yeah, well, technically, yes, it is that I tried something and I fell short. That is technically failure, and I'm okay admitting that. But the greater risk for me, at least the way that I view it, is that

• 21:46Speaker 00

  it's worse, even morally worse, to have an idea, to have something I want to pursue, to have a hobby or an activity or an interest or a venture or whatever, and not pursue it than it is to pursue it and fail. I would much rather fail than not try the thing at all. So the fix, the way I would tell you to start addressing this failure wound, is to begin to just make some amends.

• 22:17Speaker 00

  Maybe you did have a business partnership that failed, or a business that failed, and maybe you owe somebody some money. Pay them back.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  You know, maybe you had a relationship and the relationship failed, and maybe what you need to do is accept responsibility and tell the person, "Hey, I'm sorry about the way that I showed up."

• 22:39Speaker 00

  This is how we make amends for failure, and at the end of the day, what you're doing, a friend of mine, Alan Placer, often says this, is you're completing the failure. And you have to complete it, because if you don't complete it, then you're just stuck in it forever. And the way you complete a failure is by making amends, right? Paying somebody back, making a heartfelt apology, and then learning from it. I've thought a lot about that with my marriage, you know, and I've talked with my ex and I've apologized for a lot of the ways I was showing up. I don't do it profusely. I don't do it every time I see her, because I made a genuine apology that I meant.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  And then I've also analyzed and spent a lot of time thinking about, you know, what I learned,

• 23:26Speaker 00

  and what I'm going to do different as I move into a different relationship. So as a fix, again, for failure is making your amends, and then just deciding I'm going to take back one responsibility of my life.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Doing that report, completing those assignments, taking care of taxes, going to the gym,

• 23:49Speaker 00

  doing something that maybe your wife has asked you that you agreed to do. But make amends and start taking responsibility back. Now, look, guys, again, I know that it's easy for me to sit in this leather chair and tell you these are easy solutions. I don't think they're easy. I think they're simple. But I also don't believe that simple is that bad. Again, a lot of people will just complicate issues to have an excuse not to do the thing they set out to do. But what if the things that you need to do and the things you know you ought to do were simple?

• 24:28Speaker 00

  What if you just embrace that? "Oh, this is simple. I can say sorry.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  I can take back responsibility.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  I can do one thing where I run the risk of looking silly.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  I can hand off and delegate one task and let somebody else be responsible of that." Simple. And the more you do these things over and over again, because this is not a one-time thing, the more you do these things over and over and over and over again, the more quickly you heal the wounds that you may not have known even existed, that they're no longer festering under the surface, waiting for the next tear, the next rupture, to come spilling out and ruin your day, to say the least.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  So I want you to think about what your wounds are. Maybe there's one or two, or maybe all five resonated with you deeply. Or maybe there's something else that is on your mind. Some other wound that you've been dealing with, some other conversation or experience that you've had, PTSD, trauma, et cetera, that you need to resolve. And I would get out a piece of paper, and I would write down whatever you believe that experience to be, whatever that wound might be, and then start writing out one or two or three solutions to that. And the third step is to implement.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Man, our people need us to be healthy. Yes, obviously physically healthy, but also mentally and emotionally and spiritually healthy.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  So let's recap real quick. Okay, so the first wound we talked about is this un-blessed wound. Nobody ever told you you were good enough. The fix for that is say what needed to be said to you, to yourself and to other people. Break that chain. Number two is we have the betrayal wound. And I want you to hand off one task, and don't check in on that task until the deadline, or until they say they're done with it. Number three is the humiliation wound. Do something that you think you might look foolish at today. Just do it. Yep, and realize and own the fact that, yes, I might look foolish doing this, and so what? I'm still going to do it. Number four, the abandonment wound, somebody leaving you, and the fix is to stay there, stay present in the moment,

• 26:33Speaker 00

  stay present in the conversation, buckle down, don't run away, be there. Otherwise, you run into self-fulfilling prophecy. And the last is the failure wound, that you did set up to do something that was meaningful and significant and important to you. Because if it weren't important to you, it wouldn't really feel like a failure. But it does because it's important to you. And guys, the fix is to make the amends. Pay somebody back, send a heartfelt apology, have a deep conversation that needs to be had, and then take back some of the responsibility for your behavior and actions. I hope this helps. It's a deep topic, and we're kind of skimming the surface, but we are going deeper into this with each individual inside the Iron Council

• 27:15Speaker 00

  and talking about what wounds specifically that they're dealing with. We're also, in the month of October, talking about five fears that will really, really mess up your future. So we're going to be doing a deep dive into the emotional and mental well-being of the men inside the Iron Council. And we're also going to be talking about how most men don't think they're a big issue until they become a big issue. Your boss does a, you have a negative performance review at work, and you miss a promotion or a job opportunity or a raise. Or your wife comes to you and says, "Hey, I'm ready for a divorce." Or your kid's no longer talking to you because they hate how you've been showing up.

• 28:00Speaker 00

  Most men wait for that. I don't want that to happen, and so we need to be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually healthy. And we do that by addressing these wounds, and we do a deep dive in the Iron Council on each types of these wounds, and what specifically we can do to begin to work through what we're facing. So if you're interested, join us, orderofman.com/ironcouncil. That's orderofman.com/ironcouncil, and I hope to see you inside. We will be back next week. If you're watching this video, not just listening, but watching this on YouTube, you can see we've got a new podcast studio. It's about 80 to 90% done. On Tuesday, I released the first interview that I've done in this studio

• 28:43Speaker 00

  with, his name is Casey Loft House, an incredible, incredible human being and a good friend of mine. And yeah, we talked deeply about how to show up powerfully for yourself, for your family, and your community. So if you're not subscribed, please subscribe, leave a rating and review, connect with me on the socials, @RyanMickler, and ultimately, come spend time with us in the Iron Council. I'm very active in there. Hundreds of other men are very active. If you go to orderofman.com/ironcouncil, that's where you can find that, orderofman.com/ironcouncil. All right, guys, we will be back next week. Until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

• 29:26Speaker 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.