Latest / The WARRBuilt Podcast / EP002 - The Lie Of The Lone Wolf
Transcript
- Dan: January first, you meant it. New gym membership, new plan, you're up at five, meal prepped, fired up, full of piss and vinegar. This is the year you become a different man. By March, the membership's still hitting your account, but you haven't walked through that door in six weeks. Or maybe it wasn't the gym. Maybe it was the budget you built in January and stopped opening by February, or the book you were gonna read your kids every night, the conversation with your wife you swore you'd finally have. Same dog, different leg. All failures. So what happened? You didn't get weaker between January and March. You didn't lose the plan. So what actually happened? I'll tell you exactly what happened. And I'll tell you the lie that let it happen, because it's the same lie quietly running most men into the ground and almost nobody wants to own it. Welcome back to the War Built Podcast. I'm Dan. I told you why we built this thing in episode one, and I left you with one little line. The lone wolf dies, the pack endures. Today, I want to jump straight at that line because the lone wolf isn't just a sad ending. It's a story a lot of us are telling ourselves right now on purpose and wrongfully calling it strength. So in the opening I said I'd tell you the lie that let all of that happen. The lie is that a real man grits it out alone. The lie is that if you want it bad enough and white knuckle life long enough, you'll be the man you're supposed to be. The lie is that willpower is the fuel and if you run out, the problem is you. Let's be honest, that lie didn't appear in our lives serendipitously. Most of us learned it from good men, men we thought were doing the right things, our fathers and our grandfathers, guys who sat at the dinner table and ate their stress with their dinners all the while thinking that this is how I provide for my family. We grew up on terms like walk it off, rub some dirt in it, are you hurt or injured, and pull yourself up by the bootstraps. We idolized the self-made man and embraced the idea that help was a four-letter word. Calling that concept a lie is not calling those men weak. They did what they were taught and they didn't know any better. What nobody told them or us is that willpower was never built to carry the weight we're putting on it. And let me show you why. Think about willpower like the gas tank in your truck. On January 1st, it's full. Motivation is at its peak. You feel incredible. Nothing's gonna stop you. Then the hard days start. The 5 a.m. a.m. alarm gets a little harder to answer. The desserts get harder to skip. You find yourself snapping at your kids a little more often. All that effort is coming out of the tank, and and there's nothing going back in. You stretch it to March, but by then you're just running off fumes. And to top it off, you blame yourself. You tell yourself you're weak and you don't have what it takes, and you're wrong. You failed. Because you're trying to run a whole new life on a tank that was always gonna run dry. The problem isn't you, it's how you're managing your tank. That's an important point. So let's make sure it really hits home, right? It's not that you lack willpower, you lack discipline. I know, I know. They sound the same, but they're very, very different things. Believe me. Willpower is something you feel, right? It inspires you. You can fire it up. It's the same as motivation and it's something that can ebb and flow. One day you have it, but the next day you don't. Discipline, on the other hand, well, she's a cold hearted bitch that doesn't take any prisoners. It's there long after willpower or motivation has left the party. Discipline is what makes you show up in March when every part of you wants to quit. Discipline is what makes something a requirement, not an option. And this is where most podcasts would stop, right? Be more disciplined, rely less on motivation. Yeah, that that's real helpful. And my guess is that you already knew that. The real question nobody answers is how? How do you develop discipline? How do you ensure that you're still standing on march? The answer involves two main elements. Your environment and time. First, we need to address your environment. Think about it this way. There are certain things you can't outwillpower 100% of the time. I don't care if it's a kitchen full of junk food at 9 PM, your little cell phones that are designed with the sole job of stealing your attention, an empty calendar that leaves you to your own devices and maybe not doing the things you're supposed to. If you're relying on willpower, Then all you're gonna get from it is the try harder signal. How well does that work for you? Because I know it doesn't work that well for me. The flip side of willpower, discipline, causes you to change the room. You throw out the junk food so that it can't tempt you late at night. Your gym clothes are laid out the night before, so you're ready to go in the morning. Your workouts are scheduled on your calendar and you treat them with the respect they deserve, just like a work appointment. In essence, you build systems so that the right move Becomes the easy move. Now we've addressed environment. Now we need to address time. We've already talked about how willpower is that one tank of gas, it's not going to get you that far. But those things you want the solid marriage, the functionality, strong body, being the man your kids brag about, those are all long term goals. None of them happen overnight. You need that long haul. So the combination of environment and time builds the discipline you need to conquer your goals. It's a pretty simple concept. It just doesn't mean it's easy. Another thing to realize is that discipline is not a solo sport. The lie tells you discipline is you alone, destroying your own weaknesses by just keeping your nose to the grindstone. That's not discipline. That's just willpower in disguise. And it doesn't make the tank empty any less quickly. Real discipline gets built and held in the open with other men watching. It's the guy who texts you at 5 a.m., you up, and now you're swinging your feet onto the floor, not because you feel like it. Because he's up and you'll be damned if you're not you're gonna be the one who folded. It's knowing that on your weekly call, somebody's gonna look you directly in the eye and ask you the simple question of, Did you do the thing you said you'd do? It won't be a therapy session discussion, it's gonna be something simple like, all right, last week you said you'd hit the gym three times and have the money talk with your wife. What happened? And you'll either get to say, I got it all handled, and feel how that makes you sit up a little taller. And stick your chest out a little bit. Or you have to say out loud in front of men you respect and trust, I didn't get it done. And I can guarantee that you will move mountains that next week so you don't have to say, I didn't get it done again. That's not a hack. It's how men have always done hard things. Nobody storms a hill alone. Nobody alone will sit on the football field by themselves. We have always put men next to each other and collectively we can carry far more weight. Than any one individual can even fathom carrying by themselves. We built war built on this exact idea: weekly check-ins, a brotherhood who knows your goals, men who not only check in on you, but care because they genuinely want to see you succeed. I've got a little personal experience I can share with you about this kind of approach, right? My wife and I were having some issues. The exact details don't matter, but needless to state, we were not on solid ground. I knew. I had to address it with her. And to use a term that Brad often uses, I was catastrophizing the entire situation like crazy. All the possible negative outcomes were raging through my mind and I kept putting it off. I made a comment about it on a tribe call one night, and one of the guys, I can't remember who, looked at me and just said, So you're gonna tell us about how the conversation went next week, right? Shit, there it was. I was being held accountable. And it didn't end there. I got a few texts during the week from different guys, not only asking me if I got it done. But also supporting me and giving me encouragement. So that weekend, I sat down with my wife and we had the conversation. And while it didn't go great, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. But that next week, being able to go back and tell those guys about it, man, that was a weight lifted off of me. They helped carry that weight with me through simple accountability. Now I guarantee you, there's more than a few of you out there rolling your eyes and calling bullshit on this approach. I'm sure you're saying something like, Isn't that just outsourcing your willpower or aren't you just leaning on other men like a crutch? I get where you're coming from. I had those thoughts at first too. But hear me out on this. You lean on a crutch because you're broken and you can't stand without it. Accountability, it's more like a like a load-bearing wall. It's not there because you're weak. It's there because that's what holds the house up. The strongest men I've ever known didn't get that way, white knuckling through life by themselves. They got stronger by bringing other men into the equation and building a tribe. Strength isn't doing it alone. Strength is being smart enough to know you never should have tried doing it alone. So we've talked about how to build discipline, what accountability can do for you, and why it's not a crutch. But why is it so important? When you think about your long-term plans, there's gonna be a stretch and you'll usually find it somewhere between weeks two and six where the motivation or the willpower is long gone and the results haven't shown up yet. Right? You're you're doing the work in the gym, but the mirror isn't changing, right? You're you're following the budget, but the bank account really hasn't budged. Nobody's clapping, essentially. That's the lull in the process where the lone wolf dies every freaking time. The start, you know. That's the exciting time. We're implementing change. The future is bright. We're gonna make it. But then the dip comes. The road gets hard and the people who are initially singing your praises, they've moved on. You're in the deep dark woods in the middle of the night right here. And the dip is the exact spot where the pack carries you. That guy who's a little further down the road, he looks back and says, Keep coming, keep coming. It's gonna break in about week seven. I've been where you are. Keep coming. You can't do it alone. It's something that comes from running with a tribe of men you're you're accountable to. So what does all this look like in reality? Because I know right now it's just a nice idea on a podcast. So in reality, what it is, is a handful of men who know exactly what you said you'd do with your marriage, your fitness, your money, your mind, and who love you enough. Yes, I said love you, not to let you slide, not to shame you, but to hold the line with you. When you're gassed, they're gonna help carry the pace. And when you're lying to yourself, that pack, they're gonna call it out on you. When you're off the rails, they're not gonna film you crashing and post it later. They're gonna grab the wheel and save you. But when you win, when you win, they're gonna be right there celebrating alongside you because they've been in the trenches right with you. That is a tribe. You're never running on your own tank alone. You're running on the collective. And on the days you've got extra, you get to fill somebody else's as well. And I know which some of you are feeling right now because I felt it too. The idea of saying this stuff out loud to another man, it makes your skin crawl, right? Telling him that the marriage is hard, telling him that you're scared about money, or telling him that you've been phoning it in as a dad, that feels like showing another man all your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. And we've been trained our whole lives that the second you show another man a crack, you lose. So what do we do? We armor up and we carry that stuff deep down inside, completely alone. But that's not what happens on these calls, right? In the calls, you say the hard thing, the thing that you were sure would get you laughed off of it. And the man across from you, he doesn't flinch. Instead, he nods with an understanding look, and then he looks at you and he says, Yeah, me too. No shame, no judgment. And then suddenly you're free of that feeling and you're the that you're the only one failing. You were never the only one. You were just the only one not talking about it. And that's the secret, right? That armor that you thought was protecting you. is really just slowly drowning you. But by removing it, you can breathe again. So if there's one thing you walk away from this podcast episode with, I want it to be this. A strong man isn't a man who never wants to quit. He's a man surrounded by brothers who won't let him. You don't lack willpower, you lack a pack. The lone wolf doesn't die because he's weak. He dies because he's alone. Being alone is never the strong choice. So here's what I want you to do this week with all this information. And it's just one thing. I want you to find one man, one, and tell him the actual truth about something you keep starting and quitting. I don't care if it's about your workout or your budget or your drinking or the conversation you keep dodging with your wife. It doesn't matter. Say it out loud to him and ask him to check on you during the week. That's it. That's the first brick in the wall. And if your first thought is I don't have anyone I can say that to, I want you to know that is not a character flaw on your part. That is just a gap. And that is exactly the gap we built Warbuilt to fill. If you need to find men who will listen, come to warbuilt.com and find your tribe. We will get you in a room with men who will hold the line with you. So that is all for this episode. I appreciate you listening. Next time, we're gonna bring it all the way home. Literally. We're talking to talk family and what it actually means to be the man the people in your house need, not just the man you keep promising them you'll become. Remember, you are never meant to run unempty alone. Together we rise, together we are war built.