by Ryan Michler
On the other hand, I am not a great communicator when it comes to writing. I’m realistic about that. Because I acknowledge that I’m not a great writer, I ask questions, I seek guidance, and I ask for help. Viewing my current skill set through a realistic lens, I give myself the foundation for improvement in my life.
Showing humility is not an opportunity to beat yourself up. In fact, I believe humility and confidence go hand in hand. Both are required to thrive.
With regard to my writing abilities, humility allows me to see my shortcomings. It’s confidence, however, that allows me to do something about it. If I didn’t have some level of confidence—not in my writing ability itself, but in my ability to learn how to get better at writing—I might never give myself the opportunity to try my hand.
This is why confidence is essential. Most would have you believe that confidence is something to be shunned or put away. I believe confidence is something to be embraced. How many poor souls have never attempted anything great because they’re not even confident enough to give it a try?
My oldest son has a hard time with this. This year, he started his third year of football. After the first practice, he came to me with tears in his eyes and said, “Dad, I’m not good at football. I don’t know how to throw the ball, I’m not very fast, and I don’t understand the rules.”
I said, “Son, how many practices have we had this year?”
“One,” he said.
I said, “How many games have you played this season?”
“None.”
“You haven’t earned the right to be as good as you’d like yet,” I shared. “But do you remember what you said to me at the beginning of baseball season last year?”
He said, “Yes, I told you I didn’t want to play because I wasn’t very good at it.”
“Right. And how did you feel about the season after it was over?”
“I loved it!” he exclaimed.
“Exactly! Because you learned the game and you got better. Don’t you think it’s safe to assume you’ll experience the same thing in football?”
Of course, this is exactly what happened. He went on to have an incredible year of football and can’t wait to play again next year.
You don’t need confidence in the skill you’re trying to master in order to master it. You need confidence that you can learn the skill you’re trying to master. And you do that by drawing on past experiences where you’ve succeeded.
Humility alone is reserved for those who are too timid, scared, and weak to try anything new. Humility coupled with confidence is a powerful combination for growth, expansion, and sovereignty.
THE MINDSET—I AM OPEN-MINDED AND ALWAYS WILLING TO LEARN
At the end of the day, arrogance, pride, and overconfidence keep you from learning what you need to in order to succeed at home, at work, and in your life in general. You may be deploying an unhealthy level of confidence to display some sort of misguided and perceived power, but when you do, you accomplish the exact opposite.
When you walk around with the attitude that you know it all and that you can’t learn anything new, you put yourself in a position of weakness, not a position of strength. You hinder growth, limit expansion, and set yourself up for failure.
To combat the natural tendency we all have to allow our egos to get the better of us, it’s imperative we adopt the mindset, “I am a learner.” The idea that we are all students in this life gives us the necessary framework and reminder that we aren’t required to know it all in any given scenario. If we are to make something of ourselves and more fully serve those we care about, all we have an obligation to do is learn.
When I think about the power of humility and a mind open to new information, I can’t help but think about my children. Children are great askers of questions. It’s the reason the “Quiet Game” even exists.
Dad, why is the sky blue? Why does he look like that? What is she doing? How fast can a car go? What is your desk made of? Why is carpet soft? Where do babies come from? How old are you? Why does poop stink? The list of questions is endless.
It’s fascinating that children have no concern for others’ opinion of them. This freedom of judgment from others gives them the leeway to ask any question that could possibly come to mind. In many ways, sovereignty requires the child’s mindset: if you don’t know, ask.
THE SKILL SET
Be Curious. The foundational skill set to becoming humbler is to be more curious. Falling prey to the trap of arrogance is a dead end. As I’ve said before, it crushes growth and expansion.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in my evolution as a podcaster. For the first year of podcasting, I would take meticulous notes, write out scripts, and prepare advanced questions. Not that this process isn’t helpful, but my objective was merely to appear that I knew what I was doing—that I was a professional.
Unfortunately, the result was interviews that lacked fluidity, passion, and flexibility as I had given no room for the conversation to expand. In many ways, the interviews fell flat because I was more concerned about looking the part than being the part.
Fortunately, I realized this and have since taken an entirely new approach to the way I interview my guests. Now, I come from the perspective of curiosity. I genuinely want to know what my guests are doing, what they’re thinking, and how they’re producing results in their lives. My questions are much more fluid, the interviews are much more conversational, and both my audience and I gain significantly more value on our own journey to become the men we are meant to be.
You can pretend you know what you’re talking about, or you can take the time to learn something new. The former leads to a stalemate; the latter leads to expansion.
Include Others. Humble people include others. Those men who are overly prideful and arrogant have a tendency to believe that they’re an island and that they are above anyone else who may simply be along for the ride.
Whether you know it or not, you have not achieved any level of success in your life without the help of someone else. Never overlook that. There are countless men and women who have helped me get to where I am.
When I neglect that fact and fail to remember that most of us are here to accomplish a lot of the same things, I spit in the face of anyone who has helped me along the way. And I’m less likely to have those people and others rally around me in the future.
It is not noble to sit atop the throne by yourself. We live in a time where access to information and amazing people is readily available. Use a team.
CHAPTER 14
INTEGRITY
“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”
-C. S. Lewis
Let’s get something straight, if you can’t live your life with integrity, you haven’t earned the right to call yourself a man. There’s no other way to put it.
Boys lie. Boys don’t admit when they are wrong. Boys refuse to fix their mistakes. Boys cover their tracks. Men, however, strive to live their lives with a moral compass. When they mess up, they recognize it quickly and correct it. When they say they’ll do something, they do it. Plain and simple. This is what it means to live with integrity.
Any man who lives his life habitually without integrity does great damage to his heart, mind, and soul. Although a man may never be caught in his indiscretion, the consequences of a guilty conscience and a heavy heart are equally, if not more, damaging to a man’s freedom and liberty.
I have friends, for example, who have cheated on their spouses. Rather than fess up to their infidelity, they carry the burden of guilt, sorrow, and remorse for years—in some cases, decades—before the weight of that burden becomes unbearable. I can see the torment and fear in these men’s eyes as they spend their waking hours consumed with the darkness that festers inside them. The cancer they carry then spreads into their relationship. It enters the heart of a spouse who feels neglected, and it destroys the connect
ion they once had. Their children also feel the effects of their father’s guilt as they get pushed to the back burner while their father wrestles with his conscience. In many cases, the feelings of bitterness, animosity, and resentment on both sides of the aisle lead to separation and divorce and further hardens the hearts and minds of the people who once loved each other.
What a shame it takes so long for these men to finally admit their offense. How quickly could the marriage have been salvaged? How much sooner could hearts have been healed? How many resources could have been preserved for more meaningful work? How much good could otherwise have been done?
I realize this may be an extreme example, but regardless of the severity of a man’s wrongdoing, the result is always the same: bondage to the dark emotions that consume a man when he’s out of alignment with who he wants to be.
That said, we all mess up. It’s normal. We are human after all. I’ve failed to follow my moral compass more than I’d like to admit. But that’s not the point. The point is to recognize that we have faltered, do it quickly, and get back our integrity with what we know to be true.
RIGHT AND WRONG
Many people will argue that not all people know what’s right or wrong. I call bullshit. Everyone (who’s sane) knows what is right and what is wrong. It’s the reason the most innocent human beings—children—lie. It’s also the reason my two-year-old hides in the corner when he poops his pants. I recognize that may not be a great example, but it highlights the fact that we all know the difference between right and wrong.
If we truly didn’t know, we wouldn’t try to justify our behavior. My son wouldn’t hide in the corner and I wouldn’t lie. If we truly didn’t know, we’d simply state the facts and drive on. We might even wonder why people were so upset. Consider psychopaths, for example. These are human beings who have little or no conscience. In many cases, when they’re caught, there is a complete lack of empathy, sorrow, or remorse for committing what most would consider some horrible atrocities.
Barring an extreme mental disorder, it is safe to assume that we know what’s right and wrong. When we know we are about to do something that goes against our moral compass, our hearts start to race, we start to sweat, and a thousand thoughts run through our minds about how we might justify what we’re about to do. Those symptoms are indicators that we should not proceed with what we’re about to do. I know it’s difficult in the moment, considering we might be emotional or desperate, but it’s much easier to reevaluate our actions than live with the pain they might cause.
When you willingly proceed with something you know is wrong, you might as well slap the proverbial handcuffs on yourself, because you’re about to make yourself a prisoner—a prisoner to another and a prisoner to the destructive power of the mind when you live out of integrity with yourself.
RECTIFY PAST MISTAKES
You may have already submitted yourself to the bondage that comes with your deceit. If that’s the case, it isn’t too late to do something about it. As I said before, we all mess up. It’s in our nature. We fall short. We lie. We cheat. We steal. We take advantage of a situation. We do those things and worse.
The key to unlocking the shackles that keep you bound comes in the form of rectifying the situation—correcting your behavior and making things right. It isn’t convenient. It isn’t comfortable. It isn’t easy.
But then again, neither is living with the pain you’ve created for yourself. In other words, you can choose your hard. You can place yourself in a difficult situation temporarily and relieve yourself of the burden of your shame. Or you can live with that shame, guilt, and remorse indefinitely. If you choose the path to alleviate your guilt and set the record straight, you’ll need to first, own your mistake; second, right the wrong; and third, learn the lesson moving forward.
OWN YOUR MISTAKE
You can never fully liberate yourself from your sorrow if you never fully recognize what you’ve done wrong and take responsibility for your actions. One without the other isn’t adequate. Recognition without responsibility is indifference. Responsibility without recognition is remorselessness.
We’ve all seen celebrities and athletes who’ve been caught in scandals. It’s painfully obvious that their scripted apologies are a weak attempt at maintaining their status and nothing more. They recognize what they’ve done is wrong but have not taken responsibility for it.
RIGHT THE WRONG
You cannot fully rectify past mistakes if you aren’t willing to right the situation. If you steal from someone, you owe them the cost of what you stole. If you’ve slandered someone, you need to correct your statements and apologize. If you’ve taken credit for another man’s work, you need to give credit where credit is due.
This may be the most difficult part of making a situation right because it requires you to face the victim of your dishonesty. As challenging as it may be, it’s an integral part of the process.
LEARN THE LESSON
If you keep making the same mistake over and over, how remorseful can you be? A man who refuses to learn from his mistakes hasn’t fully expressed remorse and/or accepted responsibility. If he did, he wouldn’t continue to make the same mistakes again and again.
This is a critical part of the healing process as well. Learning the lesson allows you the opportunity to forgive yourself and become a better man through what would otherwise be only a negative experience. Looking at everything as a lesson is the framework required to make better choices moving forward.
BE A MAN OF YOUR WORD
Equally important to owning up to your mistakes and fixing them is being a man of your word. We all understand this. If you become a man who can’t be counted on to do what he says he will, you lose credibility, influence, and ultimately power in your life.
The challenge arises not when we make grand promises and commitments but when we make the seemingly insignificant ones. I’ve told my oldest son I’ll play football with him after work only to “conveniently” forget. I’ve told my wife I’d walk the dog when I had no intention of ever walking the dog. I’ve told people I’d show up to help them move when I knew full well I wasn’t going to.
Whether we’d like to admit it or not, making a commitment and not living up to that commitment makes liars of men. It doesn’t matter what came up. It doesn’t matter what excuse you create. Unless you do exactly what you said you will, you are a liar. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. And every time you lie, a little piece of your soul dies.
You begin to believe that some lies are okay. You rationalize your lies by telling yourself you’re busy or your priorities are elsewhere. We fabricate all kinds of wonderful stories designed to give us a pass at being men of integrity.
It’s been said that the way we do one thing is the way we do everything. If you lie to your kids about your willingness to help them with their homework, what precedent are you setting in your life for the weight of your words? When you lie about the little things, it isn’t long before you lie about the big things.
As I put together a schedule (and as the timeline gets closer) for the release of this book, I’ve decided to ramp up the number of words I write on a daily basis. Right now, I’ve committed to writing two thousand words per day. When, for whatever reason, I don’t write my two thousand words, I tell myself, “It’s okay, I can make them up tomorrow.” Then tomorrow comes and goes, and the next day comes and goes. The lies we tell ourselves tend to spiral out of control. In this case, I can justify it by telling myself I’m only a couple thousand words behind. But that couple thousand words may turn into five thousand, then ten thousand, and before long, I may decide to scrap the book altogether.
One of the mistakes I see many men fall prey to is the connection (or lack thereof) with their children. These men are busy with work, for example, and miss little Tommy’s baseball game. “He’ll understand,” they hope. He might. But miss enough games, and Tommy will begin to believe you don’t care about him, and, ultimately, he’ll lose faith in his
father. How powerful can you be if no one believes in you?
Another trap men fall into is doing work less than they’re capable of. I once hired a painter to paint my office. He was fairly inexpensive, professional, and friendly. After he finished and left for the day, I came into the office to look around. At first, I was pleased. The color was right, nothing had spilled onto the carpet, the furniture was put back in place, and all seemed well.
Then I looked a little closer. This guy hadn’t taped off any of the corners or taken off any of the outlet wall plates. The lines were anything but straight, and every one of my wall plates was covered in blue paint. Did this guy think I wouldn’t notice? Or did he just not care?
Either way, it’s an integrity issue. Now, he may not have committed to the quality of the work he would do, but I believe it’s implied. When I pay a man to do a job, I want it done the right way. But what is “right?” That’s subjective. Or is it? Refer back to the section about knowing what is right and what is wrong. We all know when we’re shorting ourselves and shorting others.
When you do work less than you’re capable of, you rob yourself of the benefits of going the extra mile and maintaining a higher standard for yourself.
The solution to living with integrity is simple: do what you say you’re going to do; don’t say you’ll do something if you’re not going to do it.
It really isn’t that difficult to understand. I know we may have demands on our time and be experiencing pressure from spouses, coworkers, bosses, etc., but I’d rather give an accurate assessment of what I’ll do than lie simply to appease another person.
THE MINDSET—I DO WHAT IS RIGHT AND FIX IT WHEN I’M WRONG
Are you an honorable man or aren’t you? I know this might come across as harsh, but integrity is one area of life that’s black and white. I know we can all come up with stories and situations where the lines of integrity are blurred. Some situations may even be justified. Does a man lack integrity if he steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving children? The truth? Yes, he does.
