Sovereignty

by Ryan Michler

  Answering these questions will help illuminate the path you’re meant to walk, but it’s not always enough.

  More often than not, even when a man knows what he wants, the fear of walking alone holds him back. What if people mock me? What if someone disagrees with me? What if I lose what I have already built? What if friends turn their back on me? All those things and more will happen. The greater threat lies not in walking alone, but in never doing what you were meant to do.

  Take the Next First Step. So, you’re working toward your purpose. You’re answering the questions listed above. You know you’re going to have to display courage on this chosen path and that you may walk it alone. What do you do now?

  Very simply, you take action. That’s it. There’s no real way to dress it up and make it an easier pill to swallow. You do the thing you want to be doing. Yes, you’re going to come up with all kinds of excuses designed to keep you safe, comfortable, and conforming with the world around you. Recognize that and do it anyway.

  I’ve found it helpful to avoid looking at all that has to be done and, instead, ask yourself, “What’s the next first step?” Then, do that. Once completed, ask yourself again, “What’s the next first step?” Then, do that. Over and over and over again.

  This is the only path to building confidence and, in turn, developing the conviction of a Sovereign Man to drive on. When life gets tough, drive on. When you don’t feel like doing it, drive on. When people leave you, drive on.

  As Theodore Roosevelt said, “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.”

  What is your next first step?

  CHAPTER 16

  SELF-AWARENESS

  “No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself.”

  -Fulke Greville

  Self-awareness is such a buzzword these days. Every self-help guru and motivational speaker throws around the word “self-awareness” as an empty rallying cry to all the wannabe entrepreneurs and enlightened of the world. And, whenever a marketer gets ahold of a word, he completely distorts the meaning of it.

  Self-awareness isn’t about some misguided or surface-level notion that you should know what you’re doing and how it’s being perceived by others. Self-awareness is about a deep-seated understanding of why—why you think the way you think, why you believe what you believe, why you act the way you do, why you get mad, why you get sad, and why you are exactly where you are today.

  Some may even wonder if this information is even necessary. What good does it do to understand why you think the way you do as long as you’re producing results? In my experience, a man is significantly more productive and has the power to utilize laser-like focus when he’s intentional about the thoughts, beliefs, and experiences that drive him in the first place.

  In many ways, self-awareness acts as a gauge to measure how far you’ve come and how far you have yet to go. Without a clear understanding of the driving beliefs and events in your life, you’re left to operate in much the same way you always have.

  But when you learn to harness the power of your thoughts, ideas, and emotions, they become a powerful leveraging tool to reclaim your own heart and mind and step into the work of a man.

  When my wife and I first started having children, I was lost—as any man would be. I had no idea how a father steps up in his children’s lives, and rather than engaging with my firstborn son, I disengaged. Truth be told, I was afraid. I had no idea what the hell I should be doing, and the only experience I had to draw upon was the absence of a father in my life. As a consequence, I distanced myself mentally and emotionally.

  It wasn’t until I took the time and attention to understand why I was distancing myself that I began to understand that the experiences I had as a child helped drive the way I operated as an adult. When we begin to see that past experiences, thoughts, and conversations dictate the way we behave decades later, we give ourselves the power to choose a new way to operate.

  OPERATING IN THE DEFAULT

  Most of us, however, are operating in a default status. We drive to work the same way. We eat the same food. We listen to the same music. We have sex the same way.

  Good, bad, or indifferent, our interactions consist of a few simple scripts we’ve executed over and over again. They have become our programming—our operating system. The reason that you are experiencing the results in your health, your business, your relationships, and every other facet of life is because the scripts you’ve been running are producing those results. And even more interesting is that the scripts and subsequent results are predictable.

  This is an empowering reality considering the fact that, by adding a new variable to the script or the equation, we can predictably produce a different result. In fact, if you have any desire to achieve a new outcome, you have to introduce something new to the equation. It’s the only way to change.

  Consider the man who’s attempting to lose weight and get his health in check. He makes a few changes to his diet, his sleep patterns, his activity level, and his exercise program, and, surprise, surprise, he loses the weight. New variable, new results. Unfortunately, most of the people who do this end up reverting back to their default internal scripts and putting the weight back on.

  To affect lasting change, you cannot simply change the external outputs; you have to change the internal inputs. You have to rewrite the programming. And you can’t rewrite the programming until you know what the initial programming is in the first place.

  To go back to the man who is attempting to make healthier choices in his life, maybe as a child his mother rewarded him with cake and ice cream every time he did something good. Now, he equates eating sweets with a reward for good behavior. Maybe every time he messed up, his dad made him go outside and chop wood. Now, he equates physical exercise with messing up.

  The default mode you are currently operating in is not inherently bad. There are plenty of scripts you operate by that produce positive results. The whole point of becoming self-aware is to first, understand the scripts; second, objectively look at the results the scripts are producing; and third, proceed accordingly.

  To effectively become more self-aware, there is one simple question I ask myself on a daily basis: “Is this thought serving me or hindering me?”

  I had a business mentor once tell me that when he started hiring employees for the first time, he hated it. He believed that good employees were impossible to find, and, given the opportunity, his employees would steal from him every single time. He also subscribed to the idea we’ve all heard: “If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.”

  It wasn’t until his business mentor asked where that idea came from that my mentor realized he’d learned that from his father, who, coincidentally enough, had employees who stole from him.

  Once he identified the source of his thoughts and actions, he was able to ask, “Is this serving me?” He knew that, to grow his business to the level he wanted, he would need help. He set about learning how to hire employees correctly and implement systems that would limit the opportunities and desire for employees to steal. Armed with this knowledge and action, he now runs a nine-figure business with more than twenty-five employees.

  CONJURING UP THE PAST

  This story demonstrates the power of revisiting your past. This is not, however, an opportunity for you to dwell on what could have been or how you might have been robbed by your parents, teachers, coaches, counselors, mentors, etc. Conjuring up the past is an opportunity for you to understand yourself and how your thoughts and beliefs came to be.

  In addition to asking yourself whether a thought serves you, another powerful question is, “Where does this idea come from?” You could not possibly have a thought without learning that thought from somewhere and/or something. Striving to understand the answer to that question arms you with the knowledge needed to consciously decide whether you still believe that thought is true.

  This is the power of being a human being—the ability to change simply beca
use we want to. But you’ll never change and, in turn, create a new reality for yourself if you aren’t able to examine what drives your thought-making process in the first place.

  Unfortunately, most men use the exercise of looking into the past as an opportunity to judge themselves. We should not, however, judge ourselves, only the action, experience, and/or encounter that helped drive us to become who we are today. This is a big distinction.

  It would be very easy for a man who has gained too much weight to consider himself a fat, lazy slob. Let’s revisit the question I proposed earlier: “Does this thought serve him?” No, it hinders him and potentially keeps him from moving forward. After all, he has resigned himself to being a fat, lazy slob. He may have fat. He may act lazy. He may be sloppy. He is not, however, a fat, lazy slob unless he chooses to define himself that way. Revisiting the past is an exercise in examining what has transpired so you can objectively decide whether it’s serving you and your ambitions.

  EMOTIONS

  One of the hardest things for a man to overcome on his journey to become self-aware is the pressure of society regarding what a man should and shouldn’t be. Let’s be honest, much of what you are reading in this book could be considered the same. I’m confident that, armed with the knowledge shared here, you can decide for yourself.

  That said, when you cling too tightly to what I or anyone else thinks, you limit your potential to make a life you are excited about. And one of the biggest hurdles we face is society’s pressure to put away our emotions.

  It’s not just sorrow and fear we’re asked to hide. It’s anger. It’s jealousy. It’s rage. We’re told that a real man doesn’t display his emotions. I disagree. I think the display of emotions is a human condition, for woman and men.

  I hear from men every single day who ask how they can temper their anger or how they can overcome the sorrow they may be experiencing. In many ways, I think this is a major contributor to depression and, ultimately, suicide in men.

  A man should not be required to hide his emotions in order to be considered a real man. But I do think a man would be well-served to understand his emotions. If you’re pissed off because you got passed up for a promotion, good. Maybe that anger will drive you to do the work required to secure the next one. If you’re sad that your wife left you, good. Maybe you’ll wake the hell up and go to work on yourself so you can salvage the marriage. If you’re feeling down on yourself because you yelled at your kid, good. Now you can apologize and learn from your mistake.

  Emotions aren’t bad, regardless of what people are telling you. Anger, greed, jealousy, rage, joy, sorrow, love, hate—all of them are good. All of them are there to serve you. When you attempt to hide them, you negate the power the spectrum of emotions has to tell you what’s working in your life and what isn’t.

  I’d have you consider that when you tell yourself you shouldn’t cry, you’ve subscribed to a lie. You should cry and you should strive to understand why you’re crying. When you tell yourself you shouldn’t be so angry, you’re overlooking a tool to help you on your journey to become a Sovereign Man. You should be angry and you should strive to understand why you’re angry.

  The key to controlling your emotions is not to hide them, it’s to understand and learn from them.

  THE MINDSET—I UNDERSTAND WHO I AM

  The journey of self-awareness and self-discovery will not happen overnight. It will take years to master and develop. But once you learn where your thoughts and ideas come from, what experiences make you think and act the way you do, and what your emotions are trying to teach you, you make yourself the master of yourself.

  See, most men wander around all day, every day without a clear understanding of who they are. I know how frustrating this can be. For a long time, I could not understand why I felt like there was something missing from my life. I knew I was destined for more—in my business, my health, my relationships, and my life. For years, I walked around as a shell of the man I knew I was meant to be. I would see people succeed and be pissed off that I wasn’t succeeding. I allowed my emotions to control my life because I refused to see them for what they are. I wallowed in my ignorance because I believed I could not fully express what I was experiencing.

  Through years of study, research, and experimentation, I’ve found that continually striving to find who you really are and what really makes you tick is the most liberating journey you can take. For the first time in my life, I am free from my expectations because I have a firm understanding of who I am, and, more importantly, I take the actions those conclusions bring me to.

  Without an understanding of who he is and why he is the way he is, a man will never truly be sovereign. Consciously or unconsciously, he will always subject himself to the expectations of others and himself. The journey to sovereignty will never be complete until a man understands who he truly is and steps into it with all his heart and mind.

  THE SKILL SET

  Margin. The single biggest hurdle to becoming more self-aware is our constraint of time. Look, I get it, as men we have a lot of responsibilities and obligations. There just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do all we need to get done, let alone adding time to just sit and think.

  But if we have any hope of becoming more self-aware, intentional, and deliberate about our lives, creating the margin to ask ourselves powerful questions is an absolute necessity.

  Whether it’s some form of meditation, hiking outdoors, participating in your hobby of choice, or just sitting quietly somewhere, allowing yourself uninterrupted time to think is a pivotal move on your journey to become a Sovereign Man.

  I personally would suggest that you get out of bed thirty minutes early. This is a great time to reflect on your life and what you want out of it. Most of the family won’t be out of bed, it will be quiet, and you won’t get bogged down with distractions like e-mail and phone calls.

  Participating in morning reflection isn’t enough, however. It wasn’t until I added some time in the evening that I really began to see the results of understanding who I am and what makes me operate the way I do. I would suggest you make it a goal to complete your work a half hour before you normally do and use the remaining thirty minutes as a time to unwind, destress, and reflect. Not only is this a great way to cap your day, but it will help you be more aware of what you’d like to get done the following day.

  Outside of a morning and evening routine, reflection throughout the day is crucial. If you notice you’re getting upset over something, don’t freak out and lose your cool. Simply ask yourself, “Does this serve me?” and “Where does this anger, joy, sorrow, frustration, etc. come from?” Armed with the answers to these questions, you create the bedrock for understanding who you are and recapturing control of your thoughts, ideas, and emotions.

  Replace the Script. Once you have the practice of margin down and begin to see where everything you think, believe, and feel comes from, you have two choices: stay the course or change the path.

  There’s nothing wrong with answering the two questions I posed earlier and deciding consciously that the beliefs do, in fact, serve you, then choosing to remain in the default. This is the ultimate goal—to have such a clear understanding of who we are and the ability to act upon it that it no longer requires focus and attention to do it. In other words, aligning your beliefs with your actions has become habitual.

  That said, if you do decide to change courses, you’re going to have to replace the scripts and programming you’ve been operating by all your life. If, for example, you smoke cigarettes and you have a clear understanding of where this comes from, you can now change what you tell yourself about the act of smoking. Whether it’s cigarettes, alcohol, rage, or any number of things you recognize as not serving you, never underestimate the mind’s ability to change. We call this neuroplasticity, which is the brain’s ability to form and reorganize synaptic connections.

  This, of course, doesn’t happen overnight, but through consistent reflection, margin, and
replacing the scripts you run your life by, you can literally rewire the brain to serve you more effectively.

  There was a time when I was drinking up to two energy drinks per day. I decided that these drinks did not serve me and replaced the script I was telling myself about the consumption of these drinks. Believe it or not, I would repeat the phrase, “Healthy people do not drink energy drinks.” Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. I had such a deep desire to be healthy that I would do whatever it took to get there, including eliminating energy drinks from my diet. It took a little time, but it was as simple as that.

  I realize that may be a small example, but I see results from this skill set on a daily basis. Men are quitting cigarettes, going to the gym, reducing their rage, connecting with their spouses, forging new bonds with their children, budgeting, starting businesses, asking for promotions, and so much more simply by the power of the inputs into their brains—their scripts.

  What you tell yourself is powerful—make sure it’s serving you.

  CHAPTER 17

  DISCIPLINE

  “There are two freedoms—the false, where a man is free to do what he likes; the true, where he is free to do what he ought.”

  -Charles Kingsley

  If there’s one foundational skill that unlocks the key to satisfaction, fulfillment, and contentment in your life, it’s discipline. And discipline is a choice. It’s something that can be developed. Sure, there may be those who were born with the predisposition or the personality to be more disciplined, but that doesn’t, for one second, mean that a man who has lacked discipline in the past cannot learn to develop and harness the power that comes from maintaining action despite his feelings or any outside circumstances.

  The only problem with discipline is that no one wants to actually be disciplined. We’re more interested in maximum results with minimal effort, and while there is validity to that desire, it does not produce long-term results consistently. This is why discipline is so critical on your journey to take control of your heart and mind. To achieve lasting, predictable results, day in and day out, a man must exhibit discipline and dedication to the small actions that produce the big results.