You're Trading Your Life Away | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

Every single day, you wake up with a finite bank account of time, energy, integrity, and focus. But without realizing it, most men trade away their potential in thousands of unnoticed, micro-decisions. In this episode of Friday Field Notes, Ryan Michler breaks down the four dangerous trades men make every day on autopilot - from trading real progress for temporary fake peace, to sacrificing long-term character just to look good to others. If you're ready to stop bleeding your potential through a thousand small cuts and start living with deliberate intentionality, this episode is your wake-up call. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - The Finite Account: What Are You Trading Daily? 02:17 - Death by a Thousand Unintentional Cuts 03:40 - Trade 1: Fake Peace vs. Real Progress 06:27 - Stop Calling Cowardice "Patience" 08:14 - Trade 2: Doom Scrolling vs. Building Your Legacy 12:15 - When the Bill Comes Due: Facing the Receipt 13:00 - Trade 3: Quick Hits of Dopamine vs. Long-Term Satisfaction 15:21 - Trade 4: Outward Appearance vs. Personal Integrity 17:37 - The Cost of Owning Your Reality 19:54 - How to Reclaim Intentionality Today 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

  I haven't met a man who looks back on his life and says, I'm proud of how much I doom scrolled on social media, but we will trade years of potential progress for a decade of forgettable nights. You just traded four hours potentially of your life for content that you won't even remember by Sunday afternoon. And the bill comes due in the form of your body failing you, or the business going bankrupt, you having a financial hardship, or your wife telling you she wants a divorce. And then that's when you get the receipt. Man, you made a trade this morning, and you probably don't even acknowledge or remember that you made it.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  Maybe you traded the hard conversation that you should have had for simply being liked or approved by someone. Maybe you traded 20 minutes of real work for doom scrolling on your phone. I might be guilty of that as well. Maybe you traded the story that's true, the reality, objective truth versus the version that makes you look a little better than you are. And you didn't really sit down and decide to do that. You just, you just did it without any intention. And by the time you're listening to this podcast,

• 1:24Speaker 00

  you've probably made a dozen more trades today without ever even acknowledging or even calling them trades. There's a cost to everything. And here's the thing that I really, really want you to know today, that I found out in my life, that every single day, I wake up with a finite account. It's my time. It's my attention. It's my integrity, my credibility, my energy. And by the time that I go to sleep, I've probably spent it all on something. And the question is not whether or not you did or did not spend it on something. The

• 2:04Speaker 00

  question is, what did you spend it on? And was making the trade worth it in the long run? I think a lot of guys believe that their life is the result of big decisions that they make. It's the job that they took, or the woman they married, the city that they moved to. But that's not where a life actually gets built, or even abandoned, or lost. A life gets built, or again, lost, in the, in the thousands, literally thousands of trades that we make every single day without noticing. The ones that are so small, death by a thousand

• 2:45Speaker 00

  cuts, that we didn't even feel like were decisions. They feel like just defaults. And I want to share with you and walk through four trades that I think every man, myself included, to some degree, is making right now, whether he knows it or not. As the conversations I've had over the past 10 years with the men that I've had, I can tell you with 100% certainty that all of them are making trades. And the men who are successful are the ones who know they're making trades. And once you start to see the cost of what you're doing, you really can't unsee it. And once you can't unsee it, then I think, for the

• 3:26Speaker 00

  most part, we start making our trades more deliberate, more intentional, more on purpose. And that's what I want for you. I want intentionality of the conversations that we're having today. I don't want you to make these trades without knowing you're ever making them. I don't want you to be ignorant to the fact that there's a cost for everything, even good, that we do in our lives. And the first trade that I've often seen is this idea of peace

• 3:56Speaker 00

  for progress. You know, there, there's, there's a conversation that we have always been avoiding. Maybe your wife is doing something that bothers you, and you've never talked about it. Maybe you've got a colleague or a coworker who isn't pulling their weight. Maybe your children are doing something, as Jordan Peterson might say, that is making you dislike them. Okay, you know exactly which one it is. I don't need you to guess on this stuff. Again, it's with your business partner. It's with your wife. It's with your dad. It's with your kid. It's with your employee. We had a guy who asked a question on the Ask Me Anything last week, and he said, you know, I want to reach out to my brother, my estranged

• 4:41Speaker 00

  brother, for the past couple of years, because we got into an argument. And how do I reach out to him when I'm not the one who's wrong? Who said you need to be wrong in order for you to reach out and have a difficult conversation? You might be exactly right, and still the conversation is worth having. You might have even rehearsed that conversation in the shower, or before you close your eyes at bed, a dozen times, over and over again. And then you just never actually had it, because you were acting cowardly. And I get it. I've been there too. The reason you have not had that conversation is very simple. Having

• 5:22Speaker 00

  it will actually cost you something. It's gonna be, it's gonna be uncomfortable. It might cost you being liked by the people that you like, for at least maybe a little while. It might cost you this illusion that you've created and concocted around you as a shell, that everything is fine. So instead, you trade progress for peace. You know, you keep the peace. You don't rock the boat. You don't ruffle any feathers. It's fake. It's brittle. It's temporary peace, if you could even call it that, because you're not peaceful.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Maybe other people are, but you're not. You don't have peace when you know there's something that needs to be shared, and everybody else gets to live as if nothing's wrong. But you, in your heart of hearts, knows there's something deeply wrong. And in exchange, you give up that, that incredible version of your relationship. The business that you've always dreamed of, your, your leadership that only exists on the other side of that conversation. I've had some deep and meaningful conversations that have not been comfortable over the past several weeks, and I just couldn't keep my fat mouth shut. And you know what? I'm so glad that I had the conversation. Because that was the cathartic moment for growth

• 6:47Speaker 00

  in our lives, both me and the other parties. When I actually started to vocalize what I was thinking, not to shame, not to mock, not to dismiss, not to ridicule, not to poke fun at, but just to explain my position. Now, look, you guys will tell yourself, because a lot of you are nice guys, that you're being patient. But you're not being patient. You're, you're being cowardly. You're being paid in, this is an interesting way to look at it, paid in a currency that doesn't hold any value. It's depreciating. The peace that you feel like you have in your life, if it's bought by silence, it has an expiration

• 7:32Speaker 00

  date. And when it expires, and it will, it doesn't do it quietly. Leadership, guys, is not about being liked. Leadership is the art of being trusted, to say the true thing when it matters, even when it's difficult. Every time you trade away that for a little more comfort for yourself today, what you're doing is you're actually borrowing from the bank account against a version of yourself who's, guess what, going to have to pay it back. And it's usually at a worst interest rate. When we incur debt, it's not like we

• 8:16Speaker 00

  get access to 20, or 50, or $100,000. We do, but it comes at a price. It usually results in a more difficult conversation, usually results in, in more damage than has already been done. So we're not going to avoid difficult conversations. We're going to confront them head on. The second trade that you make is tuning out for, for building something. All right, you've got the thing. Everybody's got their thing. I've never met a man who doesn't have some sort of version about what he wants his life to look like. For me, when I started this movement, it was creating Order of Man. That was the version I saw

• 8:58Speaker 00

  of myself. When I buy property, or invest into businesses, it's something that I see that I could actually invest in and be proud of. Something I want to build. It's the body that you want to build, the side business that you keep telling yourself, I'm gonna start this someday. Or the skill you know would change the trajectory of your life if you actually put the hours in. And every single day, you have a window where that thing could actually get built. You could actually start moving the needle in the right direction. Maybe it's an hour before your wife and your kids wake up. Maybe it's 20

• 9:38Speaker 00

  minutes at lunch. Maybe it's like me today, where I was making, God, I made half a dozen, seven, eight, nine different calls to people as I was on a commute. Maybe it's an hour after the kids went down. When I started Order of Man, I woke up early. I did it. Then I did my family stuff. Then I went into my real job and did that. During my lunch break, I was doing Order of Man. I'd come home, I'd hang out with my wife and kids. I'd go back to work after they went to bed, and I'd spend another hour or two on Order of Man.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  And most days, the window closes with, with that phone in your hand, instead of, of the weight of it.

• 10:23Speaker 00

  You trade the thing that would still matter in five years, or 10 years, or retirement, for the thing that stops mattering the second you just put that dang phone down. I can actually hear my phone. I can feel it vibrating in my pocket. I've got alert after alert after alert on here. And I can feel it vibrating in my pocket. And I'm considering looking at my phone and trading that time for the time that I have with you here.

• 10:53Speaker 00

  I haven't met a man who looks back on his life and says, I'm proud of how much I doom scrolled on social media.

• 11:01Speaker 00

  But we will trade years of potential progress for a decade of forgettable nights. Doom scrolling on social media, checking emails, buying shit we don't need. It's one night, one hour, 10 minutes at a time, feels like the trade that matters. And what's really brutal for me about that, as I look back, is that the market doesn't really send you a receipt for the way that you've spent your time. You don't get a notification that said, you just traded four hours of your time for a deep conversation with your wife. Wouldn't that be wild?

• 11:43Speaker 00

  Like if you're, if you picked up your phone, it's like, because I know it'll say, you spent three hours and 79, 69 minutes, 59 minutes, excuse me, three hours and 59 minutes on your phone today. And what you could have been doing instead is coaching your son. What you could have been doing instead is having a conversation with your wife. What you could have been doing instead is going, being at the gym. It won't tell you that, because it doesn't want to tell you that, because they don't want you doing that.

• 12:17Speaker 00

  You just traded four hours potentially of your life for content that you won't even remember by, by Sunday afternoon, maybe even Saturday. It just happens quietly. And the bill comes due in the form of your body failing you, or the business going bankrupt, or you having a financial hardship, or your wife telling you she wants a divorce. And then that's when you get the receipt. And guys will say, well, I was blindsided. Yeah, maybe, but that's because you weren't paying attention. That's the rest of the equation. Well, I was blindsided. I agree. You might have been blindsided, just as I felt like I was in

• 13:02Speaker 00

  my divorce, when I went through it.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  And looking back on it now, I'm like, mm, yeah, I should have been aware of what was going on. I could have been aware. I should have been aware. Now, guys, the third trade is just a quick hit of dopamine

• 13:24Speaker 00

  in exchange for long-term satisfaction.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  And this one's kind of a, I don't know, it's kind of a close cousin to the last one. But it's not about time, it's about the payoff. There, there, there's the win that you'd still be proud of five years from now. It's, it's the hard project that you finished. It's the business that you grew. It's the discipline with your body that you had when nobody was watching. It's the thing that built slow and steady, and that you built well, a solid foundation. And then, guys, there's the win that feels good for an afternoon. Maybe you decide, hey, I'm going to look at pornography, and I'm going to feel really good about myself, because I'm looking at fake women.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  Maybe it's getting drunk, and you feel really good about yourself, because all of your senses are numbed, and you don't have to think about the real world. You know, maybe it's flirting with that cute secretary that you have, and it feels good because she's paying attention to you.

• 14:27Speaker 00

  That's what you need to pay attention to, not her. What you need to pay attention to is that the impulses that, that you act on, the meaningless argument that you, you know, I won this argument, or the shortcut that you got the result without character. You know, men are wired for the second one. It's faster, it's easier, it's more simple. It fires the, the same reward circuitry as the real thing, without costing what the real thing costs. And it does. Doing the real thing over time costs you a lot of time, attention, energy, resources. But a life just made on quick hits on this little stupid device that we have, which is

• 15:11Speaker 00

  incredible, but also stupid.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  It, it hits like a life with a lot of highlights. You've got a good highlight reel, but there's no substance behind it.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  You can choose dopamine for 40 years and end up with that, that highlight reel and no foundation. No men you actually respect, no friendships you actually have, no love you care about deeply, no relationships that are vested in you as much as you are on them.

• 15:46Speaker 00

  They, they, these, these, these guys who chased dopamine got there because they kept trading the easy win for, for the real one. Or I should say vice versa. The guys who actually achieve big things in life traded the easy win for the, for the real one. For the long haul, over and over, over and over, over and over. And even after it stopped being fun, or even after motivation was gone. And guys, the fourth trade that I think you're making on a daily basis is your appearance, your outward appearance for your integrity. And this is the one that I think costs most of us the most. And it gets talked about probably the least. It's, it's the lie, or

• 16:27Speaker 00

  maybe it's an almost lie. The version of the story that's maybe technically you could defend, and you can make a case for, but it's designed to make you look a little better than what actually happened. It's that exaggeration on the sales call. It's, it's the credit that you let people assume was yours.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  It's the mistake you let someone else absorb, or take more fault in, or more blame of, because correcting it would be embarrassing to you.

• 17:00Speaker 00

  And every time you take that trade, you're not just risking getting caught, and you will, you definitely will. You're making a deposit into a version of yourself, a caricature, almost of yourself, even if nobody else finds out. That when it mattered, you chose how you looked over how you actually are. You see this all the time. I did it, guys. Like, I was going through a divorce and dealing with alcohol abuse. I did it. That's why I can talk about it.

• 17:32Speaker 00

  Because I wanted to look good, instead of address the reality. I chose how I looked over how I actually was. And that knowledge doesn't stay quiet forever. It certainly doesn't stay quiet in our hearts. It shows up as this, this like, low frequency of distrust that follows us into every room. Because a part of us knows that we can't fully trust ourselves either. It's not that other people can't trust us, it's that you can't trust yourself. Integrity isn't a personality trait.

• 18:10Speaker 00

  It's a balance. It's a, it's a ledger.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  And you can't build a reputation, or a marriage, or a business, or a bank account on something that you just keep overdrafting.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  And here's the challenge that I want you guys to know. You're going to make trades today.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  That part is not really optional. You don't get to opt out of the market. And you are in a market. You know, we talk about stocks, or day trading, or crypto, or the stock market. You don't get to opt out of it. The only thing that you can control is whether you make those trades awake or asleep. So today, I just want you to catch yourself once, just once. Catch the, the little moment that you're about to trade for the hard conversation, or the comfort. Or the hour of the quick scroll, and do something better with it. The real win over the quick win. Your integrity at your core, your character, versus how you look. And when

• 19:12Speaker 00

  you catch it, just make the other trade. Decide that if you're going to wake up, and you said you're going to go work out, then go work out. Don't hit the snooze button. When you said, I'm going to talk with my wife about X, Y, and Z, don't bail out and take the cowardly route, and talk about something else. When you tell, tell yourself you're going to talk with your employee, or your boss, don't chicken out and actually go talk with them where appropriate.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  It's that one thing that cost you something today, that pays you back in five, or 10, or 20, or 50 years from now. That's the whole practice. That's what it means to be a man. This is not a life overhaul, it's not a life hack.

• 19:55Speaker 00

  But one trade made on purpose, instead of a dozen that you just make on autopilot, is significantly better than the alternative.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  You guys are trading, just as I am, every single day, every day, whether I notice it or not. The men worth becoming the type of men they have a desire to be, aren't the ones who stops, stop trading. They're the ones who started paying attention to what they were spending. It's about intentionality.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  If I'm doom scrolling on my phone for an hour, what am I giving up?

• 20:32Speaker 00

  If I'm talking with a bunch of other women, but I should be talking with one, what relational opportunity am I giving up?

• 20:41Speaker 00

  If I'm investing in all this nonsense, and noise, and chaos, and clutter, and distraction, what am I giving up if I invested in my business? What are you giving up? Identify it. What is the cost of your indecision? What is the cost of your trade? What is the cost of your weakness? What is the cost of the natural man you're trying to be? Think about it. Deeply think about it. Not just gloss over it. Deeply think about it. What does it cost you to not do what you said you're going to do? If you know what it's going to cost, you might realize you're not as willing to pay the price.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Guys, that's it for this week's Friday Field Notes. If something hit here, something resonated with you, share it with a man who needs to hear it. If you see a guy making bad decision after bad decision after bad decision, talk to him about it. Have that difficult conversation. And if you want to go deeper with this, with men who are actually doing the work, that's what the Iron Council is for. But even before that, we're doing what I call a war room. We're actually talking about integrating real systems, real processes, real structure into your life for development of yourself. You can check that out. We're doing one August 19th. It's Wednesday, August 19th. If you head to orderofman.com/warroom, you can check it out and get registered.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  Guys, I've got a couple of really powerful conversations, and some in-house conversations, some in-person interviews coming up. So make sure you subscribe. Make sure you check us out on YouTube, and make sure you connect with us. Let us know what you thought about the episode. And also, let us know where you're doing well, and where you might be struggling in making good or bad trades.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  Guys, I really appreciate you being on board with what we're doing, and I'm glad you're tuning in. Make sure to check us out. Again, orderofman.com. Check out the war room at orderofman.com/warroom. And we will plan on seeing you next week for another interview, and ask me anything. Until then, guys, go out there, take action, and become the man you are meant to be.

• 22:50Speaker 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 are meant to be? We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.