How to Make Men Great Again | Adam Allred

24:02Like, we were just getting by. Like, it was everybody. I remember walking through that town going, I gotta get the fuck out of here. Like, this can't be my life. Like, I gotta get out of here. At 12, right? And to me, that can only be, that's only, God put that thought into my brain, because plenty of my buddies that grew up in that town did not make it out. Some of them aren't with us anymore, some of them are in jail, right? So like that was got to, I always had this, this, like, I don't give a fuck mentality because I had to, to get out of that situation. If I did what those guys did, I was screwed.

24:35But, but I, to your point in getting neutered, like when I, when I hit, when I got out of high school, hit college and got into the professional world, I started believing all this shit that you're talking about, right? That like, you got to be nice all the time and you have to be put together and you got to have the nice stuff and you, and you know, you, you know, you don't want to be too aggressive. You don't want to be too intense. And I completely lost myself. And then in the process of getting after that deadlifting goal, I got myself back because now I'm, you know, like I'm in my, when I first started, I was in my early forties.

25:12And, um, you know, it took me, like I said, three years to get there. I, I like, I'm lifting more than 24 year old college kids at the gym. And I'm like walking around and my shoulders are back now. I'm like watching women eyeball me, you know, like young, I'm like, wow, this is, this is fun. Like, this is different. Like, you know, I've never achieved on my wife, but like, um, it was just, it was like, how did that change the energy between you and your wife? Well, we ultimately ended up getting divorced, I think over it because she liked the neutered version. That's sometimes what happens, man.

25:47That's what you have to be prepared for. I think that's really important. It can go either way in that it's either going to drive you to the punchline, which you just were too afraid to get to. You're just going through this process of like, you know, we're supposed to stay together and do all this stuff and I'm supposed to be neutered and I'm supposed to be weak. Either get you to the punchline, like this is not where you're supposed to be, or it brings that relationship back together in a really powerful way. Yeah. Both are the right outcomes. Yes. Dude, I'm so glad you said that. I think that's such an important point, right?

26:17Like, I think a lot of times guys who would love to go on a journey like this, right? In their head, they fantasize about a journey, taking on a hard challenge, whether it's a marathon or whatever your thing is, right? I think they project out all the potential outcomes and they assume some of them are right and some of them are wrong. And I think that what you just said is one of the most powerful points that you can make on this topic, which is whatever outcome comes out of the journey is the right outcome. That's a very hard idea, I think, for people to catalyze in their brain. I think it's very difficult for them to do that.

26:55Sorry to interject. I want to interject on this. I think this is so important. It's only hard if you don't know what your purpose is as a man. that's only hard if you don't understand what your purpose is. If you're confused with all these other side quests and all this program you've gotten from society, it's really hard. And going through divorce is hard no matter what, like I'm not taking away. I went through a divorce six years ago. It was the hardest thing I've ever gone through my entire life. And yet it led to the greatest, happiest, most fulfilled place I'm at now in my entire life. So it was the catalyst for so many things after the fact, but I, I really, I really fundamentally believe this, uh, that a man, Every man has the exact same primary purpose on this planet.

27:35And that purpose is to be the most powerful, best, authentic, vibrant version of yourself. It's to know that your purpose is to level up. That's your purpose. Primary numeral one. That's how you're orienting yourself towards this world of entropy, where every day we walk out our front doors, it's storming our own beaches of Normandy. And the resistance is there and everything's going to be attacking us and trying to tear us down. If you don't understand your role is to level up in that adversity, and that adversity is good for you. and adversity is what makes you stronger and better. And it's the only way you can learn.

28:03It's the only way you can grow that the world of entropy is designed for our benefit and it's happening for us, not to us. And when you understand that's what your purpose, everything else will start to make sense. You'll start to see it really clearly. But so many men have been conditioned that a woman is their purpose. They've been conditioned by a single mom or by, you know, a school system where the women were the authority figures. They roll into adulthood. They're told women have basically arrived and we're supposed to catch up with men because we're really dropping in the ball. We're weak.

28:27We're stupid. We're bumbling. And a woman's going to help us like, you know, find ourselves. And so they start to make a woman or they start to make these external things, their purpose and their priority. And then everything gets fucked up at that point. Everything's off the rails. Look at the way men are portrayed in every fucking sitcom or show that happens outside of like John Wick. It's the guy's a bumbling doofus who can barely keep it together. And if it wasn't for the wife, the house would be on fire and the kids would be, you know, animals running around like Lord of the Flies. And it's insane because that's not the household that I was raised in or that I saw.

29:07Right. I mean, my parents got divorced early, but in both cases, both my dad's, you know, him and his new wife and my mom and her new husband over time in both cases, like while alcoholic, drug addict criminals, uh, in both scenarios, the men, the man ran the house. And I was blessed that even though they were fuck ups in their normal life, I got a lot of love. So I do understand that I was blessed in that capacity. And not a lot of people come out of situations like mine with love. They, it's obviously absent of love, which is probably how I was able to make it out. But, um, this idea that, that we're the bumbling ones.

29:40And if it wasn't for these put together women now, granted, I believe it's, it's like, and I've heard you say that it's a symbiotic relationship, right? It's meant to be this relationship where the woman is as important as the man, but her role is different, right? Our role is different than hers, but not necessarily better or worse, right? Not more important or less important, but wholly different. And that is the lie that I think is killing us, is that somehow we're just these dumb animals who need to be pointed in the right direction. And, you know, if it wasn't for women, we wouldn't know what we're doing.

30:16And it's like, I've actually watched my career, my self-worth, my physical strength, my relationship with God, my relationship with kids. Since I extracted myself from that marriage three years ago to today, I am as close to the best version of myself as I have ever been. Once I took my power back and started saying, this is who I am, take it or leave it. You don't have to like the way that I am, But this is exactly who I am and who I believe I'm supposed to be. But going back to the thing you said, like, I would never have chosen that. I would have just stayed that neutered version of myself if she had a midlife crisis, essentially, and kind of, you know, chose a different path.

31:02But, you know, it just, I would never have chosen that. I would have been unhappy for another decade of my life if I hadn't been able to extract myself from that situation. Scary, difficult, challenging. I mean, dude, I know you went through a tough thing, right? You feel low. You feel dark. You question every decision you made. You're depressed. You don't even understand half the feelings that you go through. How did you pull yourself out of that dark moment, right? Like you, you, you, you, not necessarily how you got into it, but how did you, how did you start to pull yourself out of that spot?

31:40That's a great question. So I, when I, when I, I did what so many men did in my first marriage, which is that I've always, I've always considered myself a fairly masculine man, fairly driven, fairly ambitious. But I really bought into this bullshit that when you get married, happy wife, happy life, you pedestal, you pedestalize her, you kind of worship her a little bit and you, and, and she can't really be wrong because she's a woman. And so, and the responsibility was on me to kind of just constantly try to conform to what she wanted. And it didn't make either one of us happy. It was a terrible frame of, and I inherited this largely from my religious programming, to be honest with you.

32:18Society does it, but I was really religious since I was conditioned to think this way. So one of the things I'd done tragically that so many men have done before is I gave up my friendship group because my wife didn't like them. And my wife didn't like them because she wanted to control me. I don't think this was a conscious thing in her part. I think it's just baked in there. You know, they do these shit tests and they see what they can control. Self-preservation for her. Yeah. They start having kids. They're vulnerable. And so what they're going to do is try and neuter the man to make him safe for her.

32:44And essentially she's doing the opposite of that. She's creating a man she doesn't respect and then ultimately doesn't feel safe with and then it's a whole thing. So I did that. I gave up my tribe of friends. And when I got started going through the divorce process, which she instigated by the way. So she was the one pushing for it at the end. I was in this, no, you just go down with the ship. You just stay neutered. We have kids now. It's all about the kids. And she really started pushing it. What's ironic is as soon as I accepted that, as soon as like, yeah, this is what we're doing, she flipped.

33:11And then she was like, I don't want to get divorced anymore, but she'd already pushed it to the breaking point. She'd already got me to agree with her and get there finally. And then she tried to play the uno reverse card. And, uh, I had broken out of that fog that I had been in for so long. And I was like, I can't, I can't go back. And then it's just kind of funny how the story changes women. Uh, so many modern women nowadays, not all, uh, refuse to take any kind of accountability. So then the narrative that she told everybody was that I was abandoning the family and I cheated on her. Neither one of them was true.

33:38I fought like hell for custody with my kids. I have 50, 50 custody with my kids. My kids are sunrises and sets on them. I never cheated on her. I never even flirted with a girl when I was in a marriage with her, but that became the narrative of why the marriage was coming to an end. So one of the first things that happened and just a credit to my homies is that, uh, they just showed up. My buddy showed up when I was going through, some of them were going through divorces at the same time. So we could kind of share that journey together. But even the ones that weren't, they were just like, bro, we're here for you.

34:07So I started hanging out with my friends again. that was hugely therapeutic for the process. But the truth is, is at the end of the day, you have to bear your own cross. You have to realize you're going to take a lot of hits in life and that's okay. And what happens so often for most of us is we get really resistant to the learning. We just are going through shit. And instead of trying to learn and say, what am I, what am I being taught here? What is this adversity designed to teach me? We either just try and white knuckle our way through it or worse. We start to become a victim by it. We start to feel sorry for ourselves.

34:42We think we've got the short end of the stick. We feel like we're screwed somehow. And we start playing this victim card, which is it's just the worst possible way that you can orient yourself towards life is that you've been shortchanged somehow. So I, you know, I, but I was in that state. I was going through this divorce. I was mad at God. I was like, fuck you, God. What the hell was that about? I tried my best to make that work. I did everything that was right. I did all the right things in it, you know, and it didn't work. What was that all about? I turned to you. I prayed to you. I asked you constantly why, you know, how to change me, to help me be better, to make my marriage work.

35:17And none of that worked. And now I'm going through divorce and I'm mad at you. I'm mad at my set. My whole identity is being shredded apart. All the things that I thought I knew about myself, my confidence, my money's being taken from me, all my resources. And worst of all, probably in all that, it was my kids. I'm losing 50 % of the custody have with my kids. I love my kids. So I'm in that state. And I was for a little while feeling like a victim. Now I showed up every day. I put one foot in front of the other. I had responsibilities. I didn't quit, but I was in this state of being angry and bitter about it.

35:44And I went into a, a, a constant state of depression. Every single day I woke up, not wanting to live every night I went to bed, hoping I would die. I would fantasize about dying every day. I wasn't about to kill myself. I had kids. I had responsibilities. Uh, I wasn't like having suicidal ideations. Uh, but I fantasized about it just being released from the pain that I was going through. And every single day there was no breaks. And I remember praying to God, just having these conversations. I was, it was breaking down even my anger at him. I was just getting so blasted by this. And I was just like, God, can you just take this away for 20 minutes, trying to negotiate with God on this?

36:21Like, just give me 20 minutes where I don't feel like shit. Give me 10 minutes, whatever I can get just some break from this. And I had this really profound spiritual experience in the midst of that. And I got this voice that came into my head, uh, where God was like, son, if I take away the pain, I take away the learning. I can't take it away from you. You got to eat your broccoli. This is your broccoli. You got to eat it. And when that epiphany hit my head, there was a catalyst of other domino effects internally that started transpiring. And when I realized that, and I believed that I heard that voice and I was like, okay, ah, that's what's going on.

36:51I have to eat my broccoli. I stopped begrudging the pain, even though I was still depressed, even though it was every day I woke up feeling like my backpack was full of bricks. I stopped like feeling sorry for myself. And then, you know, I like, you know what? I got a, I got a lot of bricks in my backpack today. It may take me a long ass time to take care of my responsibilities day, but I'm not going to quit. I'm going to carry my bricks and I'm not going to complain about it. And then that started to translate into a state of gratitude. And I started really kind of had to fake it at first a little bit, but I really started trying to tell God in my prayers and my meditations, thank you for this, God.

37:24This is teaching me to be a better person. This is deepening my humanity. It's giving me context. It's giving me resistance and adversity that I know fundamentally is how I progress and learn. I really started leaning into that. And within a couple of weeks, my prayers of gratitude for this pain and suffering that I was going through went from being faking it to really authentically believing that and feeling that and having a real profound gratitude. And then it was like overnight, the pain went away. The depression was gone. As soon as I took the lesson out of that, as soon as I leaned into it, opened myself up to it, stopped trying to resist it, stopped trying to feel sorry for myself.

38:00As soon as I started leaning into that and accepting that and embracing this world of entropy and taking it for what it's worth, that this is the catalyst for growth, then it, once I got that lesson, I didn't, I didn't have that pain anymore. and so it's really kind of those two things my buddy showing up for me like having my back knowing I wasn't alone and and then having this recognition that my cross was mine to bear and that I needed to appreciate the fact that I had even a cross to bear to begin with and that that was important for me on a fundamental level and then it really just I don't know man it was just like it was like the launch pad yeah off after that you know it we have a saying in my house that i use with my kids everything is your fault everything you strike out and you think the ump made a bad call it's your fault you got a bad grade on a test because you think the teacher didn't teach it right or doesn't like you and overmarked it's your fault right you didn't get this done it's your fault everything is your girlfriend dumped you everything is your fault right everything and and whether that is technically true or not doesn't matter, you know, and this is something that I kind of, I just had to develop through all my own beats because I did the same thing, man.

39:16You know, I would look at it and I'd be like, God, I don't understand. Like I'm a good person. I'd never cheated on my wife. I feel like I give everything I have to my kids, everything I have to my friends. I do this pod. AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed, But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes. So you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubrik.com. That's R-U-B-R-I-K dot com.

39:56I write this newsletter. 98 % of it is free. I just share everything I have. I just want people to be successful and I want to be, you know, I live in abundance. And what the fuck? Like, come on, man. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you're talking, you just don't understand. And, you know, the voice you got is exactly what you needed to hear. What I needed to hear was everything is your fault. Stop being a fucking victim, right? Like, if it didn't work out the way that you thought it should, understand that it worked out exactly the way it was supposed to because everything is your fault. and when you embrace that, you stop looking at the world as like, oh, Adam said this shit that made me feel bad and then I needed a drink to cope with it and then that drink turned into five and now I'm hungover and I'm not doing well on this sales call and it's like, no, all of that is your fault.

40:46Adam did nothing to you, right? You know what I mean? He made a statement that he thought was true. You took it a certain way. You're the one that decided to have the drink. You're the one that decided to have five. You're the one that woke up hungover. You're the one that's sucking on the sales call. Those were all your decisions, not Adam's decision. And that idea, you know, that idea came to me, like after reading The Obstacle is the Way, which I thought was a really, you know, I don't always agree with Ryan's politics, but I do think his writing is phenomenal. And that concept of like, God put that shit in front of you because he needed more out of you than you were giving.

41:22So he needed to put some hard shit into your life so that you could ascend so that you could be a better version of yourself. He needed you, right? Like, obviously, you have been called to talk about this idea of masculinity and helping men better understand how to retake. Like, does that happen if you're the neutered version of yourself, grinding it through a loveless marriage or a marriage that, you know, isn't working the way that you'd like it to? Does that ever happen? Do you ever become that guy that you are today? Most likely not. No, pain and suffering is a catalyst. It is a catalyst for all growth.

41:52and I actually agree with everything you're saying. I take it a little bit of a different angle on it's all your fault. I say it's all your responsibility because there are things that happen in your life that aren't your fault. Somebody does something you have zero control over, influence over, but affects you in a certain way that you had no control over. That doesn't mean it's not your responsibility. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, right? We're saying the same thing. It doesn't matter whether it's somebody else's fault or your fault. The reality is it doesn't matter. It's your responsibility.

42:20What are you going to do with this? and the thing in life is that you get to manifest your reality. Everything that we see in the external is a reflection of the internal percent. The external is the internal. And the hard thing with this is that they're really like two truths. In every scenario, there's two truths. You can put on a spectrum, but I just say for easy polarity, there's two truths. There's a negative truth and a positive truth. Both are equally true. That's the crazy thing about this. The negative truth is true. Oh, it's hard today. Oh, this happened. Oh, this happened. You can come up with a long list of things about why life was hard, why it wasn't fair, whatever the, whatever you want to come up with.

42:55And it's true. Those things that you're saying in your head are probably true. There's a lot of good reasons to not show up today. And the opposite is true. There's a lot of good reasons to show up today. The positive truth, it's just as equally true. And that's why it's, it's so hard to rationalize someone out of a negative truth into a positive truth, because in their mind, they're rationally right. This is true. This is true. This true. I can, hang my hat on this. This is why I'm getting screwed. It wasn't my fault. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That could be true. But the other truth is that all this stuff is happening for you.

43:27It's designed for you to level up and grow and be better. That's also equally true. And you can find all the reasons why you should succeed. And so you really just get to pick what truth that you want to lean into. Do you want to lean into the negative truth or do you want to lean into the positive truth? Do you want to lean into being more, uh, you know, submissive and compliant and broken, or do you want to start becoming more authentic, more powerful and more vibrant? You get to pick that truth in this life and nobody can pick it for you. But what helps enormously in that process, going back to something we've already been jamming on, is who you surround yourself with.

43:57When you surround yourself with men that are picking the positive truth, men that are taking their hits on the chin like men and still getting up every day and taking care of their shit and leveling up and getting better, whether that's in immediate proximity or whether that's guys you're listening to, you know, a phenomenal book that just had a profound impact on me was Jocko Willink's Extreme Ownership. Like, and it's exactly what you're saying. That book was just so good for me. It taught me things I already knew, but it just in a more powerful, vibrant way, but I'm surrounding myself by those types of influences.

44:24That's the stuff that I'm programming my brain with. When I start hearing people complain about how hard their lives is, no matter how true it is. When I start feeling that victim energy coming off from people, I can't be around them. I'm like, dude, go away. Like, or I'll go away. Like I cannot be around that stuff. It's so corrosive and it's infectious because you surround yourself by victims. You'll start thinking like a victim. You surround yourself yourself by a bunch of people who think life's out to get them and it's that person's fault and it's capitalism's fault and it's whatever else, everything's fault, not my fault.

44:52You will start to think and inherit that negative truth and it will become your truth and it will become your reality. But you get to choose. You get to choose. They're both equally true. Which one are you going to choose? Which one's going to have the better outcome? I mean, it's a rash. It's an easy decision when you pull yourself out of the emotional turmoil and you start to look at it from a macro level. It's like, well, obviously if I choose to see things positively and optimistically, my life is going to start reflecting positivity and optimism. If I see things negatively, it's going to start reflecting that.

45:18So you get a pick, man. Which one do you want? So you're in this dark place and you start to pull yourself out. And like all humans, you have setbacks. How do you, a lot of guys that I know who've started on a journey, gotten three months, six months, a year, sometimes multiple years into a, into a journey of finding who they are, becoming a more powerful connected version of themselves. And then something happens. a relapse. They go on vacation and maybe they have issues with alcohol and they drink too much and now they're kind of back into their old ways. Or they feel like they're fixed and they start hanging out with that group of buddies who is toxic, who is victim.

45:57How do you recalibrate yourself when you find yourself stepping off the path? What is your mechanism for reorienting yourself back in the direction that you want to be going in when you find yourself in a place where it isn't that. That's another great question. So progress isn't like this. It's like the stock market. It's going to go like this. And so you have to just know that you're going to take three steps back forward, two steps back. You're going to take two steps forward. Some days you're going to take three steps back. It's going to do that. That's the world of entropy. When you step out your front door, you're getting attacked.

46:34It's just how it is. The world is against you. And it's not against you because the world is bad or evil. It's against you because that's the only way you learn how to grow. Like God designed this perfectly for our development and our progress. And so suffering really is a catalyst for everything. And so you have to recognize that like, and so one, just accepting life on its terms, instead of trying to get life to fit my terms, this is what I think it should be using words like should or shouldn't, this shouldn't have happened to me instead of like, this is what happened to me. And this is how it works.

47:02This is working or it isn't working. It's not whether it should be working or shouldn't be working. It is or isn't. And so I'm going to just accept life on its terms. Like life is resistance. Life is hard. I'm going to get my ass kicked every day. I step out the front door. Some days it's going to be harder. Some days it's going to be easier, but either way it's coming at me. That's the first thing is just accepting that in my opinion. And then the other thing for me was really just learning to talk to myself. Like I was somebody that I liked instead of that voice inside that was so much of it.

47:28So many of us men are programmed with that shame voice that just talks shit on us. You're a failure. You're a loser. Oh, look, you can't do that. You thought you had gotten better, but you're really not better. Look how bad you are. You know, this internal voice that just is so destructive and corrosive inside our heads. I got that from Jordan Peterson. I really started changing the way that I spoke to myself. I started talking to myself like it was somebody I was coaching. I wasn't trying to make everything look like it was coming through rose colored lenses, right? Own the fact when you fail, treat it like it's constructive opportunity to learn and grow instead of like it's game over and you can't do this.

48:03And I wanted one personal story on this is another kind of spiritual and I hope that's okay. I'm kind of waxing spiritual on there on our podcast, but wax away my friend. When I was, you know, like, even as I got out of this depression state in the early stages of my divorce, you're still you never arrive. So first off, you never arrive, you never get there. And then it's like, you know, it's not like a video game where you get to save your progress and you're good. It's not how it works. Every day is this refiner's fire. And so you just you go through that. So there's no arrival. There's no getting to a point where I'm good now.

48:35It's everything is a struggle and that's okay. Um, you know, I, I, my kids, um, unfortunately they, they go through the divorce too. And as much as I try to insulate them and their mother to her credit, wasn't trying to bring this to the kids either. We both tried to do best that we could buy the kids, which made, made the divorce infinitely better than it could have been. A lot of my friends went through different experiences. a lot of the shit that you're going through as a man gets poured out on your kids, unfortunately. And I was taking my son to school one time and he said something or did something and I just snapped at him and he didn't deserve it.

49:14He didn't do anything wrong. He was just being a kid. I'm driving him to school and all the shit I'm dealing with comes out on him and he didn't deserve it. And I drop him off at school. I was yelling at him just being a shitty dad in that moment. I dropped him off at school. I watched him walk into school with his shoulders slumped, you know, and that's what I'd given him for today was a bunch of bricks in his backpack that he had to carry. Now that I gave him, wasn't his fault. It was my fault. I unloaded this stuff on them. And I sat there in front of the school for probably like 10 or 15 minutes, just, I'm a piece of shit.

49:49I'm a failure. I'm not doing this right. I just, you know, just beating myself up and, and a voice came into my head again. I get these occasionally and it was like, Hey, just skip this part. You don't need to do this. Just, just get to the good part where you start to change and you learn from this. And I stopped and I actually listened to it. And I was like, okay, I've never thought like that before, but I'm going to check myself right now. And I'm not going to say another negative thing to myself, even though there's a lot of good reasons to talk shit to myself. I really screwed up. I'm not going to do that.

50:19I'm just going to get to the good part, which is where I make changes and I get better. And so I went through the rest of my day. Went off to work, went through the rest of my day, got everything done. Didn't carry all the shame and guilt, which, which makes it impossible to progress when you're shamed. When your guilt, shame is attached to addiction. For example, like they can scientifically show the psychology of a lot of the same neurons. It keeps you entrenched in one place. So we think shame is good for us because it'll get us to change. It does the opposite of that. Shame keeps you entrenched right where you're at.

50:48So I skipped the shame part and I went right into work, got my stuff done, went and picked up my son from school that day. And I just had a real heart to heart conversation with him. And I said, son, I'm a kid too. I'm responsible for you as your dad, but I'm going through a lot of stuff. You didn't deserve what happened to you. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. That wasn't your fault. That was my fault. And this is why it happened. And it's not a justification, but I want you to understand it wasn't, you know, it's coming from a place of me really struggling. And I, I took that out on you and I'm sorry.

51:16And then I took my son to go do his favorite thing. I bought him some ice cream. We went home, had a great night, you know, great evening. And I've never done that since to him. I've never talked to him like that since. And I was able to skip the entire part of just beating myself up and talking shit and just get right to the good part of like, and I had to do that by changing the voice in my head. I had to, you know, this voice came into my head that I don't feel like was mine. I feel like it was something that came an endowment, you know, a divine endowment. But then I had to, I had to like hold it together where no, no, I'm not going to talk shit.

51:44That voice started coming back in. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I'm only saying positive things. Adam, you're working on this, dude. You're doing good. You got a lot on your plate. You're going to fuck up. That's okay. That's part of the process, but you're going to get better. You're going to level up. This is all part of learning. And I just had to force that positive constructive coaching voice into my head. And I was able to skip all of the nonsense and just get to what really matters, which is that we learn from the trials and tribulation we're going through and we get better. And that's, that's what I was able to do with that epiphany that I got.

52:13I get a little, I got a little teary eyed there. I, you know, I've been through the same thing. I actually, a couple of weeks ago, you know, I, you know, I tell my kids all the time, especially when it comes to sports, I literally don't care about the outcome attitude and effort. That's all I care about. That's what, if I can teach you anything, it's attitude and effort. Right. And I, and I saw my, my son not delivering the effort that I would expect to see out of him. and we get in the car after the game and similar situation. I kind of unload on him a little bit, right? And I realize like two or three minutes into this diatribe, I'm not even fucking talking to my kid.

52:56Yeah. I'm talking to me. Oh, this is good. I'm talking to me. Yep. I'm literally, I'm not even talking to him. I'm literally, I'm in my head, I'm manifesting all the things that I'm not doing, the bad decisions that I'm making, the places where I'm procrastinating instead of taking action, right? And like, and in general, you know, I would like to believe that I'm a pretty intense, hardworking person, but like, I still have these things inside of me and even things from my past that I haven't dealt with, right? Like I played college baseball, which is great, but I probably never gave it more than 90 % effort.

53:29So I have this thing inside me of like, you never got to see how good you could be because you never gave a hundred percent. Now I'm putting that shit on my kid, right? Who knows if he wants my life? He don't want my life. You know what I mean? He's got his own life. And I stopped and I just said, I'm sorry, bro. I said, his name's Duke. I said, Duke, dude, bro, fucking it's one game, man. Who cares? I was like, you know, you work so hard. It's a long season. You're 11 years old. You play a massive amount of sports versus what we played back then. Like, dude, you're good. I'm sorry. Right? And I'm fucking crying.

54:06He's looking at me. He's like, dad, are you all right? And I'm like crying in the car because I realized that like, oh my God, I was just willing to give my kid all this. I love this idea that you said bricks in his book bag or whatever, right? Bricks that he had to carry. I'm giving him these bricks that he didn't deserve. He didn't ask for them. And frankly, at 11 years old, I mean, you have one game that you're a little off and whatever. It's not like he didn't make any plays or whatever. Like, holy shit, like pump the brakes and maybe, you know, you just found some shit you got to deal with, right?

54:37And it's, man, it really wakes you up when you can be self-aware like that. I, yeah, I feel that, dude. I feel that a lot, you know. And talking to my dad, I've learned a little bit about that, too, that some shit he gave me was stuff that he didn't deal with, you know, and I think we do that. And breaking that cycle, though, breaking that cycle, I think, is very, very important for us. And then it allows, again, it gives us a target. Now I know, hey, I got some shit that I got to deal with around my relationship with effort and this and stuff. And, you know, I want to go back to one point, and I know we're getting close to the number here, but I just have to touch on this.

55:13I want to get your take. So when I coach, I coach mostly entrepreneurs. And when I coach those entrepreneurs, I walk them through what I call reality OS, reality operating system. And you spoke about this a minute ago, and it's why I want to bring it up. I feel like so much of this conversation, the ideas that bring the actual toxicity into what we're talking about are either cultural, societal expectations, ideas, concepts, etc. that are placed upon us that have no basis in reality. There's no receipts for why those ideas are pushed on us as true. And yet we accept them. And when you remove that veil, kind of you were referencing this before, different words, like when you just operate strictly by what reality provides you, so much of this nonsense goes away.

56:05Because it's like, it's not how it works in real life, right? In real life, the beta, soft, weak man who their female does not believe could protect them, can provide for them, can have an original thought, can be that driving force of the household, whether she needs you to be or not, once she doesn't believe it, that relationship is toast from the standpoint of any true connection of relationship, right? So, okay. So that's reality. So we can say everything we want about feminism and women's power and toxic masculinity. But at the end of the day, we are seeing more divorces. We're seeing liberal women are the most unhappy and depressed constituency of any that you can find in the United States.

56:56Right? These postmodern liberal women who live by this feminist mentality, they are the most depressed. Right? If you're living in reality, how can you maintain that vision, that idea that this is correct when there's no receipts on the back end to show you that this actually produces a positive societal progress? I just can't get past it. So I guess my last question for you is taking everything we've talked about into account. When guys are sitting here, they're listening to this. Hopefully they're on a walk or at the gym or they're just driving or whatever they're doing. They're listening. to this and they're saying, shit, I want to be that strong guy, right?

57:39What is the core concept in reality? What's the one concept that they can grab onto to use as that initial light to pull themselves out of this place, right? If you could just give them one concept to say, you know, again, we're broad stroking, I know individual, but you could just give them one. You can hand them one and say, hey, you start here, good chance you're going to pull yourself out. What would that be? I'm going to break the rule that you just gave me and I'm going to give you two. there's no rules. There's no rules. Do whatever you want, man. The first concept is that you can get better.

58:12You have to believe that. Like it's, it, you, too many people are in the victim mindset, man, where it's like, God just cursed me. It's just how I am. It's just how it is or whatever. And they, they don't think that they can make any real changes because maybe they've tried in the past. They've tried to discipline themselves. They've tried to do things differently and it didn't work. And so they just feel like this is their, this is their journey to just be that guy that goes down with the ship and life is just misery. And it's just checking off boxes of responsibilities and, and being unsatisfied.

58:44And they, and you have to believe and not just believe, but know that you can be better than you are. And here's one way, you know, that's true. This isn't like a pep talk. It's not just something to try and get guys to feel more positive. If you can look out around you, whether that's in immediate proximity or stories you've heard people you've seen on social media or on the internet or whatever. If you see somebody that's been given less than you and done more than you, you don't have an excuse. You can do better. And everybody can find somebody that got a lot less handed to them and did better than them.

59:21All of us can see that around us every single day. Guys that turned up, changed their life, made it happen. So you don't have an excuse. You can be better. And then the second thing is just like what we've been talking about. Too many people myself included in my first marriage when when I was coming out of it shaking my fists at god is things I've done everything right. Why isn't life working out? We think we've done everything right We think we've paid the price tag that needed to be paid for whatever that is we wanted out of life And the truth is you haven't You just haven't it it the the world of entropy doesn't care about your feelings and it doesn't care about your perspective It's just the hard cold truth either.

59:57It is working or it isn't working And so when you say to yourself, I'm doing everything right and it's not working, you're not doing everything right. Just start there. And that's not to beat yourself up. That's to start being constructive and saying, okay, what is it that I can start to do that I can make tomorrow just 1 % better? It's like kind of what you were jamming on earlier, just picking one thing, you know, to just start improving your life on. 1 % better every single day for an entire year isn't 365 % better. It's 37 times percent better. You can start in a single year in six months, drastically change your outlook on the world and therefore change, you know, when you change the internal, the external changes, everything in the external starts to change.

1:00:38And so you have to take a ruthless approach to your own self development and progression. And one that doesn't sugarcoat anything or doesn't give you an out, doesn't give you an excuse. You get the excuse because you didn't get what that person had or whatever else. Nope. This is your life. This is your one life you got. There's no reset button. So own it. Be the best version that you can be every single day. And that doesn't mean you have to hit the ball out of the park tomorrow. That means you got to be a little bit better tomorrow. Go be a little bit better tomorrow than you were today. What does that look like?

1:01:08Well, there's so many different ways to be better, so many different avenues, but it's going to start by who you surround yourself with, what type of influences you're putting in your head. And you'll start to see those things that you need to improve on. And you'll start making small changes. Jordan Peterson talks about this. Get up and make your bed every day. Start with that. Organize your life a little bit. You don't have to go and be like, uh, the John Wick tomorrow, but start today, just making your bed. And then maybe tomorrow it's like getting up 30 minutes earlier than you did the day before.

1:01:33So you can execute a little bit better and start to take some accountability for your life in the morning. And, you know, you just start finding little things that you can tweak and adjust and, and then it kind of starts working and then you keep doing it. And then pretty soon. Like you said, you pull your head up and you're like, dude, I'm deadlifting 465 pounds. I feel like I've got this energy and this drive. And yes, my marriage is falling apart now, but this is the catalyst now for the rebirth, the Phoenix of being reborn from the ashes into something better. God gives us pain and suffering so that he can strip away our own bullshit and our own self-deception, our own lies, and build us into something much more authentic and powerful than we were before.

1:02:07So just making those changes, knowing that you can make changes, It's possible other people are doing it. You can do it. And then start to look at your life really critically. Not, I don't mean shamefully. I mean like really analyze what you're doing every day, but what's working, what isn't working. Start making some of those changes. Don't stop. Don't quit. Don't give up on yourself. Keep making those changes. You know, what do you listen to at the gym? What do you listen to? Are you driving to work? Are you just listening to music or you listen to some podcasts about people talking about what we're talking about right here?

1:02:35What are you putting into your head? Start making those small changes. And suddenly your world just turns into a completely different place. Dude, I wish you didn't have to go to the darkness to be where you are today, but I'm so glad that you're here today sharing this message. I love it. This has been phenomenal. I know you have a program for guys that they can get in. Maybe just tell them where they can go if they're digging on this and they want to get deeper into your world. Where can they go to do that? How do they get deeper connected to you? How can they learn more from the work you're doing?

1:03:04Social media platforms, all social media platforms, Adam, all read official. And then, yeah, we, we haven't officially fully launched the, we have a whole, it's, it's more of a community. It is a coaching program, but it's more of a community for men to gather where we have weekly firesides that I host. We have curriculum and, uh, material that we cover, but it's more of conversation brothers sitting around the virtual fireside, sharing our journeys with each other. And we have a chat group and we have a whole bunch of things. We've got like 40 members right now. So there's like hardly anybody there, but we haven't even started marketing it yet.

1:03:34We're working on some software for some accountability. Got this daily log book. We have guys that are starting to, they're testing it right now. We're working out the little kinks. And once we have that, we're going to fully launch it. But if you're interested in coming and being part of the party, I'd love to have you there. The only thing we ask, it doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter who you are, as long as you show up authentically and you're coming here to be, you know, part of the process of leveling up together. All characters are welcome. We've had really profound success stories already.

1:04:01One of our, it's called Doughboy. Doughboy is a spectrum for me on masculinity. On one end of the spectrum. You have the Pillsbury Doughboy that was harmless. You poked him in the stomach. He giggled. On the other end of that spectrum, you have the Doughboys of World War I that were willing to fight and die in the worst conditions for love of God and country. Where are you at on that masculinity spectrum? That's why it's called Doughboy. We have a masculinity assessment test, which isn't like giving you a score on how much of a man you are. It's giving you a viewpoint of how you process the world through the seven different articles of masculinity, which hat do you put on the most?

1:04:30And then we do a lot of training and discussion about how to put on hats for different occasions, how to adjust so that you can be the best, most effective, competent version of yourself in whatever set of circumstances that you have in your life. So if you want to become a part of it, the price point is really, really cheap. This is about mission over money. We do have a monthly membership fee, but it is to keep the lights on and keep the content made and keep everything working. But it's accessible to anybody who wants to start making changes in their life. So love to see you there. Appreciate the hell out of you, man.

1:04:59Thank you so much. Likewise, Ryan. Thanks for having me on the show. Great discussion, man. Let's go. Yeah, make it look, make it look, make it look easy. Thank you for listening to The Ryan Hanley Show. Be sure to subscribe and leave us a comment or review wherever you listen to podcasts. Ain't anything for me. I never switched to no change in me. The only thing changing is... If you're an HVAC technician and a call comes in, Grainger knows that you need a partner that helps you find the right product, fast and hassle-free. And you know that when the first problem of the day is a clanking blower motor, there's no need to break a sweat.

1:05:38With Grainger's easy-to-use website and product details, you're confident you'll soon have everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. If you like the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.