What Men's Self-Care DOESN'T Look Like… | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

In this episode of Friday Field Notes, Ryan Michler exposes the trap of "mental masturbation" and breaks down ten ways men deceive themselves into thinking they are engaged in self-care and personal development when they are actually stalling. From buying unused courses and hoarding unread books to hiding behind fitness routines and blaming past trauma, Ryan highlights how noble distractions prevent real growth. Learn why true self-work requires action, accountability, and execution rather than endless planning or talking. Tune in to audit your habits, eliminate comfortable excuses, stop going at it alone, and build the frameworks and network needed to step up and become the man you were meant to be. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - Introduction & Recapping Real Self-Care 02:10 - 1. Buying Courses You Never Use 02:55 - 2. Doom Scrolling & Social Media Traps 04:20 - 3. Waiting Until You're "Ready" 05:35 - 4. Blaming Others & Making Excuses 07:45 - 5. Going At It Alone 09:55 - 6. Collecting Books You Never Read 12:00 - 7. Chasing Bright & Shiny Objects 14:25 - 8. Talking More Than Doing 17:00 - 9. Hiding in the Gym or Office 18:55 - 10. Quitting When Things Get Hard 21:35 - Self-Assessment Exercise & Scoring 23:30 - Frameworks, Networks & The Iron Council 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

  Hiding in the gym or at the office. The reason it's insidious is because it's very deceptive. You going to the gym is a good thing, but you can go to the gym and you can see guys who are just absolutely shredded, ripped, bulging muscles shredded. They look fit as they could possibly be. And then you might get to know some of those guys and realize, man, this guy's home life is a wreck. And what a lot of guys will do is they'll hide. And I don't know what your gym is, what your office is, but they'll hide behind something that is noble in order to not do the real work that needs to be done on themselves.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Hey, what's up, guys? Last week on the Friday Field Notes, I talked about 10 ways that self-care, self-work actually looks like for men. And I've got my phone pulled up here because I wanted to do a recap for you. But if you want more details on this, go to last week's Friday Field Notes and check it out. But let me just recap these because today I'm going to talk with you about 10 things or ways self-care does not look like. So we need to know both, but let's talk about what it looks like first. This is what I talked about last week. Waking up with intention, training your mind, body and soul, reading for application, joining a brotherhood of men, tracking your budget, being present in the house, owning

• 1:21Speaker 00

  your mistakes, processing your emotions properly, living by a standard and a code, and doing difficult things with purpose and intention. Today, like I said, I want to talk with you about what self-development, what self-care, what self-work does not look like. And I only want to bring that up not because I want to focus on the negative, but because it's important that we don't deceive ourselves as men into thinking that we're actually doing self-work when we're not really moving the needle at all. It's a little bit like the term I've heard and used is mental masturbation. Ultimately, you know, it feels good, but at the end of the day, it doesn't get the job done. So we have to avoid that. So let's just break it down.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  We'll get into it as fast as possible and write these things down. And also ask yourself if you're engaged in any of this behavior and it's no longer serving you, or if it's never served you. These are things to just be on the lookout for. So the first one that I often see is buying a course or a program that you don't use. I don't know what it is, but I've seen literally thousands of men buy programs, buy courses, go to events, go to conferences, joining brotherhoods, and they think that just because they join, all of their wildest dreams are going to come true. And I think we do that because it feels like we're checking something off the list. If you've listened to this podcast for any amount of time, you know how often I talk

• 2:50Speaker 00

  about joining a brotherhood, like our Iron Council. But it is interesting. It's fascinating to me how many men will join our brotherhood and think that just because they joined, they're going to see the benefits or the results. Of course, you won't. So I'd rather you save your money and not buy the next course, not buy the next program, not buy the next ticket to the conference that you're going to do nothing about. Save your money, pay off debt, invest, do something better with it. But if you are going to buy a course, then like I said last week, do it with intention. Be involved with intention. The money you spend on the investment of that course or that program is basically the ticket to entry.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  What you do inside the course is what matters. All right, number two, I see a lot of people do is either doom scrolling or posting on social media. And you might, you might think that these things are obvious, but they're not. I mean, how many of us, myself included, will get stuck in the rabbit hole of social media where we're just posting, posting, posting, telling everybody how great or wonderful or what the new exciting thing is for us? Or we'll follow all the right accounts, we'll follow all the accounts that we're supposed to be motivated by and inspired by and getting inspiration from. We're going to look at memes, we're going to post memes, we're going to look at clever quotes, and then again, do nothing with that information.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Guys, your self-work is not found on this device. Now, there might be some things that you can find that lead to inspiring action, but at the end of the day, if all you're doing is dinking around on your phone, looking for inspiration or giving inspiration hopefully to other people, you're not actually doing self-work. And in many ways, it could actually harm you because we start to fall into comparison trap and we get into the endless amount of time that we could spend on these devices that are engineered to keep us trapped and stuck on those devices. All right, next is waiting until you're ready. Look, if it were this simple or this easy, I should say, to identify what you're doing that's not serving you, we wouldn't do it.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  So there's something more at play here. We usually don't say, well, you know, I'm waiting till I'm ready. People don't usually say that. What they usually say is they say, well, I'm in, I'm in research phase. I'm in research mode. You know, I'm being thoughtful, I'm being articulate about it, I'm weighing my options. These are the things that people say, but really what they're doing is they're waiting until someday. They're procrastinating, they're waiting until they're ready. And look, sometimes, yeah, you need more information before you make a decision. I'm not saying we should all be rash and not make prudent choices, but if you're being honest with yourself, you can say hopefully that you are procrastinating.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  You don't need more research, you don't need more information, you don't need to compile or collect more data. What you need to do is do the thing you said you were going to do. And think about it with the gym even. How many, how many guys have you seen who will just research diet nutrition and research the best workouts and research the dynamics and the physiology of the muscles and bones and what's best and what's worse and why this is going to hurt, but why this is good for you? I mean, people do that all the time and then they never go to the gym or they never go to the grocery store and get better food. Stop doing that. Stop waiting until you're ready. Just be ready now and get involved in whatever it is you're going to get involved with.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Another thing that I often see, and again, it's not as blatant as I'm saying it right now, but I want you to understand and recognize your excuses for what they are, is that we often blame other people for our woes. The reason that I am this way is because of fill in the blank. A lot of guys will do this even with their parents. You know, they'll sit in therapy sessions and complain about how their parents ruined them and ruined their childhood, but these are 45, 50-year-old plus men who, yeah, sure, maybe there's some history there, maybe that's part of the equation, but you're a grown man and you now blaming how you're performing or underperforming on your parents or the

• 7:08Speaker 00

  reason that your finances are in a mess is because the economy or because your boss doesn't give you a promotion or, you know, fill in the blank with whatever excuse you come up with, is nothing more than that. It's just an excuse. The minute you start taking responsibility for your actions and for your circumstances is the minute you can start doing something about it. Now, the reason I think that we don't often look at ourselves as often as we look at other people for our problems is because if I can blame it on somebody else, then I don't have to do anything, right? I can simultaneously give myself a pass not to work.

• 7:49Speaker 00

  Because if it's, if my success or lack thereof is in the hands of somebody else, I just have to wait until they change. And as you know, people don't often change. Circumstances don't often change unless there's some force, the first law of physics, right? Unless some force is actively working against it, that should be you. You should be the force working on, working against, working for, working towards whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. But we don't do that. We don't take responsibility because if it's my responsibility, then that also means it's my responsibility to do something about it. And that's not as easy as saying it's someone else's responsibility. Another one that I often see is going out of the lone.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  This is a big ego flex I see in a lot of guys. You know, I don't, I don't need anybody else. I'm an alpha, even if they don't use that verbiage, which is a little bit ridiculous, but I'm an alpha, I don't, I don't need any help. I don't, I can't rely on anybody else. If I want it done, I have to do it right and I have to do it myself. Nobody can do it as good as me. I can't trust anybody. I can't rely on other people. I mean, what, what an inferior way to live. Now, look, I know that if you have relationships with others, that they are going to let you down and you are going to be disappointed and potentially in some cases, you're going to be hurt or you're going to be taken advantage of. Those things can all happen. I'm not saying they don't, but you can be prudent.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  You can be wise about the people that you bring into your life, but if you are a man and you're thinking to yourself, oh, I can do this better alone, you're, you're wrong. You can't do it better alone because you don't have all the information. You don't have the entirety of the skill set needed to survive. Sometimes you need another guy in your life who can give you a kick in the pants or a pat on the back or a word of encouragement or a cleverly crafted insult done in jest and done with trust and good intentions behind it. I mean, I've had so many conversations just over the past week or two with guys who needed to express some things to me that they're dealing with, that I was able to provide some feedback with.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  Others, I just listened and heard what they had to say and they felt better and walked away more atified and uplifted. And I've done the same thing. I've got a whole group of people, men, in my corner who are advocating for me, who are cheering me on, who are rooting for me, who are holding me accountable, who are telling me, hey, man, like you can do better. Like I see you slipping in these areas. You need to be, you need me better. You need to show up more fully. And, and I do because I trust these guys. But if I was just doing it alone, I'm leaving room on the table and I'm not really willing to do that. I need men in my corner. And I'll talk a little bit more about the Iron Council later because the guys that I have in my corner, a large percentage of them, I've met through the Iron Council.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  So I'm, I'm an advocate, of course, because it's our organization, but I'm also a beneficiary of what we do in the Iron Council.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  Uh, next one, this is similar to buying a course is collecting a library of books that you'll never read, never have read, never will read. Uh, I used to, I used to be so guilty of this. I mean, with the amount of men that we've had on the podcast for interviewing, I think I've done, gosh, over, maybe over 700, 800 interviews at this point and close to, if not right at 2,000 total podcasts over the past 12 years, almost 12 years. I mean, I have, I have a crazy library of books on my phone and I've got some books there behind the camera. I've got books upstairs. I've got books in my, my bedroom and they're literally everywhere. And I used to pride myself on being one of those guys like I read, I'm gonna

• 11:28Speaker 00

  read 50 books this year. Well, yeah, it sounds really good, but reading isn't really the work. The work is the work. Reading is just prepping you for the work. And if you're consuming all of your self-development time towards reading, when are you actually applying any of that information? And if you're reading 50 books and applying even just a little bit, which is probably not likely, but a little bit from every book, you're not really doing anything significant in one area. Uh, you're, you're, you're just dabbling in a thousand different areas that may or may not be relevant to what you're trying to accomplish in life. So I'm not against books by any means. I love to read. I love to listen to books. I love to

• 12:12Speaker 00

  read books. We do a book of the month inside the iron council. So we, we do all of that, but I'm more interested in application than I am just reading. So read a book a little slower. Take a little more time. If it's not serving you, put it away. You don't have to finish a book. I used to think that too. If I open a book, if I crack open a book, then I have to finish it. No, you don't. If it's not serving you, if it's not applicable in your life in that moment of time, put it down. There's a million other books that you could read that might be more applicable to you. But ultimately the ratio has to be greater and heavily weighted towards doing what the book says to do than reading about what the book says to do. And this leads me to my next point, which is just chasing

• 12:56Speaker 00

  the next bright and shiny object, the next workout, the next course, the next program, the next book, the next podcast, uh, the next project, the next woman, the next, fill in the blank. I mean, the amount of time that, that we spend just chasing random things all over the place is asinine. I do it. I'm actually really guilty of this one. And it's something I have to be very aware of. How do I maintain diligence towards one course of action? Uh, the gym is a great example. How many people jump from fitness diet, uh, fitness fad diet to exercise routines that have no relevancy in what you're trying to accomplish with your physical health, but their buddy said it was good. And so they go do this program and they do it for two weeks. They're like, yeah, I'm bored. I'm

• 13:41Speaker 00

  gonna go do this other program. And they do that for two weeks and then I'm gonna go do this program. And they look in the mirror, three, four, five years later, they look the exact same and wonder why. Well, you didn't commit yourself to anything. You committed yourself loosely, lightly to a lot of different things, none of which served you. If it's a good thing, whether it's a gym routine, a nutrition plan, a business plan, uh, relational strategies, if it's a good thing, it's worth pursuing indefinitely. And by the way, it takes time to see the results of your efforts. Most of the time, the prudent decisions that

• 14:19Speaker 00

  we make are going to yield results eventually, but it takes time. It takes time. It takes time for the process to develop. It takes time for you to become efficient with the process. It takes time for the muscles to start showing. If we're talking about fitness or losing weight, if we're talking about nutrition, or for you to get customers and clients and build your social media, if we're talking about business. But if you're always chasing the next thing around, you never give the thing up, an opportunity to develop and mature and grow and become efficient and be a force of good in your life. So we need to avoid chasing the next thing. Make prudent decisions, projects, tasks, assignments,

• 14:59Speaker 00

  relationships, um, business ventures, and then stick with it to the end. Let it work. And then there's another point on that. And I kind of alluded this when, when I was talking about the, um, the reading is if you're talking more than you're doing, that's a problem. That's not self-development. That's not self-work. This is one of the problems I have with therapy and not to say that therapy is wrong, or guys shouldn't be involved in therapy, but at some point it could actually become a hindrance. If all you're doing is sitting there talking about your issues and you're never working towards resolution, or you're never applying what you're learning, or you're never thinking more critically about where

• 15:43Speaker 00

  your thoughts and ideas originated from and which ones are helpful and, uh, which ones are, are toxic, then you're just flapping your gums and you're not really doing anything. So ask yourself, what is the ratio of me talking about my problems, talking about, or even thinking about my issues, uh, relative to the time spent on solving the problem? That's the real work. And I talked about that last week when I talked about what self-work actually looks like. It's taking action, excuse me, it's taking action. I've got right here, I carry this around with me. This is our 12 week battle planner. And this is the, the, um, this is what I use to plan out and map my day and my week. And when I'm doing

• 16:28Speaker 00

  that, I'm not actually doing anything. I'm not solving any problems. I'm not moving the needle. All I'm doing is prepping to move the needle. But I know guys who have plans like this and others, and they're beautiful. They look amazing. They're so deliberate. They're so intentional. They're so well thought out. But then you look at their life and it's like, wait, what's the disconnect here? You have this beautifully crafted plan and your life is in shambles. You're a wreck. Why? Because you never translated from the doing or the talking in this case to the, to the acting. You just planned, but you didn't do it. You just talked, but you didn't take action. So figure out what that ratio

• 17:09Speaker 00

  is and ask yourself, man, if I'm an over planner, maybe I ought to be moving into the realm of acting. Now, look, some guys, and I don't think this is the majority of men, tend to be over actors. That's me. Where I, I, I run the risk, not of over planning, but I run the risk of, of taking action too quickly, which can also be expensive. I mean, I've made some dumb financial decisions because, uh, I acted too quickly. Now for a personality, personality like me, it makes sense that I take a step back and I plan a little more. But for most guys, they're not at risk for acting too much. They're

• 17:50Speaker 00

  at risk for acting too little. Stop talking, start doing. The next one, and this one I think is particularly insidious. It's very hard to see. That's what, uh, I've heard and referred to it as a noble obstacle. And that is hiding in the gym or at the office. The reason it's insidious is because it's very deceptive. You going to the gym is a good thing. I mean, we talk about that all the time. Getting in shape, getting fit, getting healthy. Those are good things. But you can go to the gym and you can see guys who are just absolutely shredded, ripped, bulging muscles shredded. They look fit as they could possibly be. And then you might get to know some of those guys and realize, man, this

• 18:33Speaker 00

  guy's home life is a wreck. This guy's business is suffering. You know, you often hear the thing of the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. I don't think so. Not in every case. I know guys, again, who are fit and strong, but they're struggling with their mental health and life. I know guys that have incredible businesses, thriving, successful, money-making businesses, but their wife and their kids hate them. So clearly the way you do one thing is not the way you do everything. And what a lot of guys will do is they'll hide. And I don't know what your gym is, what your office is, but they'll hide behind something that is noble in order to not do the real work that needs to be

• 19:15Speaker 00

  done on themselves. So stop hiding and ask yourself, am I doing this wisely? Am I engaged in this behavior because it's helpful? Or am I trying to avoid doing the real work that I need, which is usually the work that we're running away from, not moving towards? And guys, the last point, the 10th that I wanted to talk about is just quitting when things get hard. Again, if, if we told ourselves that, we wouldn't have any problem identifying it. What, we don't say that. What we say is, I'm no longer interested. Or we might say, hey, um, this isn't the path that I'm, I meant to follow anymore. And while that might be true, more often than not, I think it just got hard and you're using the, hey,

• 19:56Speaker 00

  I'm no longer interested as an excuse to back away and give yourself an out. That sounds better than saying, I'm a quitter. We gotta stop quitting. We gotta go all in on the things that are important. And look, if they're not important and you true, and only you could answer this, but you truly know it's not important or it's not a, a thing of yours anymore. Yeah, sure. Pivot. I've made pivots in my life. One of them, a notable one is that I had a previous podcast called Wealth Anatomy. It was geared towards helping finance, um, medical professionals understand their finances. That's my background, financial management. Uh, I did about 20 episodes and I realized very quickly that I love the medium of podcasting, but I didn't want to have that conversation anymore. So

• 20:41Speaker 00

  technically I quit. I choose to look at it as pivoting because that was no longer what I wanted to do. It wasn't that it was hard. It was that I just wasn't interested in that discussion and pivoted to order of man. And here we are almost 12 years later. So there's a difference between pivoting and quitting. And if you're quitting because things are hard, then you're not really doing self-work and you're not actually even giving yourself a chance to grow.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  Just like muscles, it requires pressure, it requires strain, it requires time under tension to break down those old habits, to break down the muscle, if we're talking about the gym, to break down your ego even, so that you can grow and thrive and build yourself into something new. But that requires pressure and stress and strain. So guys, that's the list. Ask yourself, maybe even, maybe even rank yourself. Take that list, and I'll read it here and again shortly. But rank yourself, one to 10, on each of those, with 10 being the highest. And maybe you're a, maybe you have 70 points, let's say, seven in each. And now your goal is to move, move to, move to an 80, right? Like, I'm not doing these

• 21:51Speaker 00

  things. Or maybe when it comes to the, to the, what self-care doesn't look like, the lowest score is better. The one last week, the highest score is better. So rank yourself on both, and try to reduce your score for the things not to be doing, and increase your score for the things from last week to be doing. So let's go through them again, write them down if you want, and give yourself a score. So number one, buying a course or program that you just don't use, save your money. Number two, posting or endless scrolling on social media feels good, not really getting the job done. Number three, waiting until you're ready to move forward. Next is blaming other people or circumstances for your circumstances

• 22:35Speaker 00

  and your situation. Next is going at it alone. Next is collecting a library that you've never read, or that you will never read. It looks cool, it looks awesome, but you're not going to do anything with it. Next is chasing what's always around the corner, the next project, the next program, the next woman, the next business, the next this, the next that. Stop doing that. Next is talking more than you're actually doing. Also, hiding at the gym, or hiding at the office. And then the last is quitting when things get difficult. Again, one thing to consider is that you're not saying it that way, which is why it's easy to fool ourselves. I know exactly what to tell myself to get out of

• 23:18Speaker 00

  or into exactly what I've always wanted to get into or out of. I can talk myself into anything, because I know myself better than anyone. So ask yourself, what verbiage are you using? For example, waiting until you're ready? You're not going to say that. You're saying, well, I'm in the developmental stage. We talked about that earlier. Figure out what you say to yourself to fool yourself into thinking you're doing something, moving the needle, when you're not moving it at all. In fact, it's probably slipping further behind. Guys, if you want some more help on this, especially the going at it alone, join us in the Iron Council. We are open until the end of October. So as of the release of this podcast, we'll be open for another six or seven days, another week, and then

• 24:01Speaker 00

  we close it down for the rest of the year. We want you inside. We want to teach you the systems and give you the tools that you need to improve your confidence, to improve your communication with the people that you love, and ultimately to achieve better results in your life. What is that for you? Is it losing weight? Is it getting promoted? Is it starting a business? Is it creating more connection and intimacy with your wife? Is it deepening the relationship you have with your children? What is, is it making more money, paying off debt? What is it for you? Because ultimately, with, for men and women, what we need in our lives is two things to accomplish those goals. We need a network,

• 24:44Speaker 00

  and we need a framework. The framework is the systems developed to achieve that, and they're proven, and they work. So you need a framework, and then the network is people that are rallying around you, behind you, for you, advocating for you, mentoring you, coaching you, offering insight, being a sounding board. If you're missing one of those two things, a network or a framework, you're leaving room on the table. And that's why we invite you to join the Iron Council. You'll get both, the frameworks for success, and the network and brotherhood of men who are going to help you accomplish big things as we roll into the end of this year and beginning of 2027. Check it out. Go to orderofman.com/ironcouncil. Again, we close in about a week, as of the release of this podcast, the end of October.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  So check it out. Again, orderofman.com/ironcouncil. All right, guys, that's my message for you today. Have a great day. Have a great weekend. Keep it going. Keep charging forward. Keep doing the work. Keep getting better. And until we get back next week with David Diadas on the podcast on Tuesday, so make sure you subscribe. Leave a rating and review if you would to. Check out the Iron Council. But until then, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

• 25:54Speaker 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.