Sovereignty

by Ryan Michler

  This is going to be extremely difficult because you’ve become accustomed to living with something you didn’t have to earn for yourself. Naturally this is going to be hard until you build up the mental, emotional, and physical capacity to provide for yourself in these areas. Deal with it. It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be uncomfortable. It’s going to be awkward. But it’s only temporary.

  Soon, you’ll build up the mental fortitude, emotional resiliency, and physical strength to deal with all that life has to offer, and you’ll wonder what took you so long to stand on your own two feet.

  Find a Way or Make One. Years ago, I was responsible for the twelve- to fourteen-year-olds’ Scouting program in my neighborhood. One of the requirements for the boys each year was to participate in what was called a High Adventure. For our High Adventure, the boys chose a two-day seventeen-mile hike in the mountains of southern Utah.

  Before we left, I asked the boys to come up with a motto for their adventure. They adopted the Latin motto, Inveniam viam aut faciam, which means, “I will find a way or make one.”

  During the most grueling sections of the hike, the boys would spur each other on with their motto, Inveniam viam aut faciam. We successfully completed the hike with no major hiccups, but now, even four years later, the boys (who are now young men) remind me of that motto as a remembrance to overcome the most difficult challenges they face on their own two feet.

  There’s no way around it: you are going to face challenges and hardships. There will be obstacles that stand in your path. You can allow those obstacles to deter you. You can tuck tail and retreat to the life you’ve always lived, or you can decide right now that you will not quit and that the only way for you to go is forward.

  Too many men give up too early. Too many men let the slightest hurdle scare them away from what they say they want most. Don’t be that type of man. Live knowing that, when all seems lost, you always have the ability to find a way or make one.

  CHAPTER 8

  INTENTIONALITY

  “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

  -Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Take a look around society today and you’re likely to see the equivalent of millions of mindless, soulless robots wandering through our streets. For years and years, we’ve been conditioned by our parents, spouses, children, employers, mainstream media, and the government to behave a certain way and to carry out a set of predetermined duties without asking too many questions.

  More specifically, take a look at your day and ask yourself honestly if your life is a series of deliberate and intentional decisions or if it’s simply a series of patterns and habits you’ve developed over a lifetime of carrying out orders. Let me illustrate by detailing the average man’s day.

  The average man wakes up, hits the snooze button a couple of times, and gives himself just enough time to grab a shower, brush his teeth, and change into the same clothes he wears every day. He jumps into his car and sits in traffic for an hour or longer (he’ll typically listen to the same music or podcasts he always does) to get to a job where a stack of papers and projects awaits his arrival. If he’s lucky he’ll live up to his boss’s expectations and be awarded with the opportunity to take a quick lunch break, only to be rushed back to the office, where he continues the tedious grind. He clocks out, sits in some more traffic, gets home, kisses the kids and wife, grabs some dinner, tucks the kids into bed, watches an hour or two of his go-to TV show, hits the sack, and wakes up to do it all over again—every day for the rest of his life.

  Please do not misunderstand me. Developing habits and patterns is a healthy practice. In fact, the mind is constantly looking to develop these patterns in order to preserve energy and enhance its capacity to do more when it counts. These routines and patterns (such as brushing your teeth) are the very systems that allow you to focus on much more productive and meaningful work.

  But how many habits can you identify that produce anything but efficiency and effectiveness? Take the action of hitting the snooze button from my example above. For whatever reason, the man who continually hits snooze has told himself a narrative long enough that he actually starts to believe his own bullshit. Perhaps he tells himself that he deserves more sleep, or that getting fifteen more minutes of sleep is a healthy decision, or he’s convinced himself that those few more minutes of sleep will ensure he’s more productive throughout his day.

  Even worse than believing the stories he tells himself, it isn’t long before he no longer needs to believe it—it’s actually hardwired into his brain. No more thinking. No more processing. Just executing the orders the electrons in his brain have requested.

  THE MERCY OF OTHERS

  As with any battle, knowing the enemy is crucial. If we are to reclaim and maintain our sovereignty, we must know what we’re up against. I want to be very clear, I don’t believe the world is out to get us. I don’t subscribe to the notion of “haters.” But one thing I have recognized is that, at times, people’s interests are at direct odds with mine.

  Understanding and accepting this for what it is puts you in a position of power and control. If, for example, my six-year-old son wants to stay up until midnight every night, I know that is at direct odds with my objective as a father to raise healthy, balanced children. He’s going to use every tactic he can to get what he wants. Do I believe that makes him bad or the enemy or a “hater?” No, it just means he’s looking out for himself. I, as a Sovereign Man, can understand that.

  More devious is the competitor who may have just opened his office across town. It may not be enough for him to open his doors and conduct himself with honor and integrity. He may decide to spread malicious rumors about your business conduct. He may even attempt to reach out to your existing customers and falsify your business dealings or bring into play your moral, ethical, and legal integrity. At this point, you have a choice to make. Do you get dragged into the dirt and play at his level (which would only help prove his claims), or do you take the ethical high ground and stay above the garbage he would otherwise drag you into?

  Understanding and accepting that there are those who want to control you really isn’t that difficult when your head is clear. It’s when the choices, actions, and words of others have negatively impacted you that it becomes a challenge. The emotions that creep up when this happens are the biggest threat to your ability to keep a clear head and position yourself to maximize choices.

  When I was in seventh grade, I allowed another kid to occupy space in my mind. I allowed my emotions to take over and did the only thing I could think of at the time: fight him. Looking back now, I don’t remember what the fight was about, but I do remember the consequence. I was suspended and was very close to being sent to another school. It may sound like schoolyard antics from a boy who was still wet behind the ears, but I’d be willing to bet you’ve seen grown men (and perhaps yourself) engage in the very same behavior.

  Rash, emotional decisions based on the actions of others cloud our judgment, cause us to do stupid things, limit the choices we have, and keep us from making intentional decisions in our lives.

  Do not allow others to occupy real estate in your mind. Understand that most people are out to serve themselves. Very rarely do they care about you. You might be an easy stepping-stone to what they want and, therefore, find yourself as collateral damage. Strive to understand people’s motives, keep calm, use your head, regulate your emotions, and maintain your choices.

  THE MERCY OF OURSELVES

  The far greater threat to our ability to make choices than the child who just wants to stay up late or the competitor who wants to steal our business is our ability get in our own way.

  We aren’t just at the mercy of others; we are at the mercy of ourselves. More specifically, we are at the mercy of our choices, or lack thereof.

  Make no mistake. Everything in life is a choice, whether you decide to acknowledge that or not. Most men do not. What may have started out as a cho
ice became a pattern, and, as it goes, what became a pattern has now become a rut.

  It’s in our nature to look for the easy path. Staying in the rut will always be easier than carving a new one. So, rather than choose to consume new information, we continue to do the same things over and over and over again because it’s easier.

  This is how we sabotage ourselves. What may have worked for us in the past will no longer work for us moving forward. Priorities may have changed. You may have hit a plateau and are no longer experiencing the compounding gains you once enjoyed.

  I know this is certainly true of me as I began my health journey four years ago. Losing the first thirty pounds was relatively easy; the next ten, moderate; and the last ten has fluctuated. I began to grow stagnant because I refused to expand the information I consumed. I stopped hitting personal records, I stopped losing weight, I stopped gaining muscle, and I flatlined.

  It hasn’t been until relatively recently that I’ve started to hit new personal records again. What’s the difference? I’ve added a new regimen to my health tactics: strength training. But let me tell you, it hasn’t been an easy thing to do. I dipped my toe in the water for months before I finally decided to commit to learning a new and better way of doing things. And this has made all the difference.

  Consider a plane at takeoff. More energy and fuel are consumed during takeoff than at cruising altitude. There are a variety of reasons for this (power required to climb, thinning air at higher altitudes, and speed of travel while climbing versus cruising).

  The same holds true for you and your day-to-day activities. Starting something new always requires more effort, therefore we simply don’t. Most of us are comfortable with being complacent and simply cruising around our entire lives. But is that your ultimate objective?

  If you’re reading this book, you’re probably after a bit more. That is going to require you to get over the fact that you’re lazy, you tire quickly, and you want something for nothing. How do we do that? Simple: we choose. You can bury your head in the sand and pretend you’re at the mercy of the environment, your associations, and your upbringing, or you can make a conscious choice to do more and be more. Don’t fall prey to your natural desire to coast. Be deliberate, be intentional.

  THE THIRD OPTION

  One trap I see men fall into all the time is adhering to the idea that there are only one or two ways to do things. For example, one of the most commonly asked questions I get is, “Ryan, do you think I should take a job that would pay me more but require me to be on the road, or should I stay closer to my family but make less money?”

  While I can appreciate the question, what the asker fails to realize is this is not an either/or conversation. It is possible to stay home and make more money. What’s interesting to me is that when I bring this to the man who asked the question, I’m often met with a list of reasons why that won’t work for him.

  “Oh, but Ryan, you don’t understand my situation.”

  “I would love to do that, but I need the money.”

  “That sounds great but there are no good-paying jobs near me.”

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to have an online presence like you?”

  “Great, but I don’t have a college education.”

  The list is endless.

  If you’ve caught yourself making any of these statements, you’re more attached to your excuses than you are committed to being deliberate and intentional about your life. Let me be very clear about something: you get to keep what you defend.

  If, for example, you think a college education is required to make money, you’ll always live in poverty if you don’t have a college degree.

  If you think people are out to get you, you’ll always put yourself in situations and surround yourself with people who are out to get you.

  If you believe it’s not possible to make money and be close to your family, you’ll never have both.

  See, you revert to your default thinking. And there is nothing intentional about that. Consider for just a second that, when met with two choices, there may be a third option you have yet to recognize.

  The problem is that you’ve been living in a box. Hell, you are the box. Every experience, engagement, conversation, situation, belief, thought, book you’ve read, class you’ve attended, and sermon you’ve listened to has erected walls around the world you see. To tear down those walls, or at least expand them, you’re going to have to be a bit more intentional about how much or how little information you consume and where it’s coming from. It’s been said that knowledge is power. Even more accurate, options are power. We spend a lot of time restricting ourselves to limited solutions to our problems. A Sovereign Man is always looking for an alternative or an often-unseen solution.

  THE MINDSET—EVERYTHING IN LIFE IS A CHOICE

  Choices are powerful. Too bad most men spend their entire lives limiting them. We limit our choices through our thoughts and beliefs, the scripts we’ve chosen to believe, the echo chambers we create, the excuses we tell ourselves and others, and the power we give others over us.

  Sovereignty is about recognizing that you have so many options available to you if only you would be more intentional about exercising them. Most men seem to be content with throwing up their hands and crying, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it!”

  Wrong. There’s always something you can do about it. There’s always a choice to be made. There’s always new information to be learned. There’s always a new perspective in which to look at things.

  Are you bold enough to tear down your preconceived ways of looking at things? Are you brave enough to expose the default answers you’ve always subscribed to? Are you strong enough to put your neck on the line and make a new choice to do something different?

  Only when you can answer yes to these questions and recognize that your life is a series of choices can you truly say you’re living with sovereignty.

  THE SKILL SET

  Make Up Your Mind. The single greatest skill set you could learn when it comes to living with intention is to make decisions. One of my pet peeves is when I ask my wife where she would like to go to dinner, only to be met with, “I don’t know, wherever you want to go.” Or, when I ask what she would like to do on a given evening, she responds with, “Whatever you want to do.”

  If you want to live your life with more intentionality, learn to be decisive and articulate what’s on your mind. If the guys at the office ask where you want to go for lunch, tell them what you want for lunch. If your wife asks what you’d like to do this weekend, tell her what you’d like to do this weekend. Do not play coy. Be decisive.

  Delegation. In addition to making decisions, the skill of delegating tasks you should not be doing is of the utmost importance. I’ll admit, this is a skill set I am still improving. I’ve realized that if I am to do all that I am meant to do in my family, my business, and my community, I’m going to have to remove some things from my plate.

  Yes, things have to get done, but there’s no manual that says I have to be the one to do them. Learn to delegate. Learn to let go of the need to do everything. Learn to release control of the things that don’t require your control. Only then will you be able to be intentional about the things that truly matter.

  CHAPTER 9

  DISCERNMENT

  “The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control.”

  -Epictetus

  Everything is within your control. Sounds good, right? It’s catchy. It’s empowering. And it makes a great bumper sticker. Too bad it just isn’t true. The reality is that there is a lot within your control—but not everything. The sooner you realize this and accept it for what it is, the sooner you give yourself permission to let go of the things beyond your control and focus only on what is.

  This notion might sound counterintuitive, considering we’re talking about w
restling control over your life, aka sovereignty. Although discerning what is within your control and what isn’t won’t give you more power over all of life’s variables, it will give you power over the ones that actually matter.

  Consider all that is outside of your control: your health, the economy, the weather, your favorite football team’s performance last night, what other people do, what other people think of you, and on and on.

  Yes, you may be able to influence these things, but you cannot control them. Attempting to do so is delusional, it’s a waste of time, and it’s a recipe for insanity. I can say that only because I used to live my life in delusion. I believed that the more I fought, the more I struggled, and the more I beat my head against the wall, the more likely I would be to get my way. It was exhausting and unsustainable.

  The practice of focusing on the factors outside your control consumes your time, energy, focus, and attention, leaving you helpless when an opportunity actually presents itself.

  If you’ve ever been to a Las Vegas magic show or seen a magician perform on the street, you’ve experienced this firsthand. No one actually believes that what these performers are doing is “magic.” They’re tricks. We know it. The magician knows it. And yet, it’s difficult for us to expose the master’s tactics.

  Why? Because the magician knows how to manipulate your attention. You’re so busy looking for the answer—and he’s so well-versed in human behavior—that he makes you look left when you should be looking right. In that split second, the trickster performs his trick right in front of you, and you’re left in awe to wonder how you could be so easily deceived.

  We laugh and shrug it off because it’s all fun and games. But what if your life is like one big magic show? What if there are forces at work that keep you from focusing your attention on where it should be? What if you are looking left when you should be looking right?

  THE PATTERNS THAT DON’T EXIST

  Our minds (and I believe this is especially true about men) are problem-solving machines. We are constantly on alert. We are constantly looking for potential threats. We are constantly looking for challenges to face.