Skills Every Man Must Master UPDATED [0:00:00]
Self-defense of bugs here. [Music]
The first skill that I think every man needs to have, self-defense. You’ve got to be
able to fight if your back is up against the wall.
Now, growing up, I never learned how to fight, never studied martial arts, I was never in
a fight. And I always felt this was something that was missing that to be a man, I needed
to know how to kick somebody’s ass. So, what did I do? I joined the United States
Marine Corps. That being said, let me be clear, kicking
somebody’s backside does not make you a man. And what I learned in the marines was
the warrior mindset. It’s all about the will. It’s all about being able to take
the action about being observant about what’s going on and being able to have the basic
moves to be able to defend yourself. You see, the first step to self-defense is
not going out and buying a gun, it’s not going out and buying a knife for a battle
or even learning how to fight. It’s about you changing your mindset to one that I am
going to be one hundred percent responsible for my own safety and the safety of those
I care about. That mindset for me is all about maintaining
situational awareness. There’s a reason that I don’t drink, I don’t use drugs.
I don’t put myself in situations in which there’s a high likelihood of something bad
happening. Once you make the commitment to the warrior
mindset of paying attention to what’s going on around you, then you can go out and pick
up the tools and get the additional training that goes with whatever tools you choose.
Whether it’d be a fist, knife hand, or something else, make sure that you’re competent with
it, that you’ve practiced with it, that you are confident and you know it in and out,
so that you can defend yourself if the situation arises.
Next up on my list, every man needs to know how to change a tire, how to jumpstart a car,
how to sew on a button, how to iron a shirt. Okay. Where did this list come from? Why did
I put it all together? Gents, it’s all about self-reliance.
So, it always cracks me up when I’m reading the comments on my how to sew on a button
or how to iron your shirt video, that people are saying, “Hey, I would never do stuff
like this. It’s not manly.” Here’s the thing. Things that need to get
done, they don’t care how you classify them. They just need to get done. And, a lot of
you guys out there you’re single, a lot of you don’t have someone that you can give
this work no matter how you deem it. Point is, it needs to get done and I think every
man needs to have the basic skills to be able to take care of themselves.
And, speaking of self-reliance, every man needs to know how to cook. And I’m not saying
you got to do anything fancy, just watch Gordon Ramsey, chicken fry rice. Uncle Roger approves
of that stuff. [Sound effect] Yeah. It can be simple. My son watches these
videos and he’s getting into this and he’s cooking up some really good stuff. The thing
is is when you can cook, you have a lot of power over what’s going into your body.
What goes into your body, this basically defines how your body is going to look.
Now, a lot of guys think that cooking is boring, it’s a chore. Yeah, it’s way too much
to learn, I don’t have time for it. What if I were to tell you in less than 15 minutes,
you can learn some of the basic key things which will change the way you cook food?
What? Go check out the book right here, Salt, Fat, Acid, and Heat. It’s over on Blinkist,
the sponsor of today’s video. And, what I love about Blinkist is they get you the
information you need. Literally in less than 15 minutes, you can go through and you can
learn enough about cooking that it’s going to fundamentally change the way that you’re
making most your meals. An example of a key insight I picked up here,
the proper use of salt. Now, for years, I was not using salt whenever I was cooking
steaks. I just wasn’t at all. Why? I mean, I’m not a big salt fan. But I come to find
out just putting a little bit of salt evenly distributed on the meat, letting it soak and
penetrate the meat, all of a sudden did a better job of bringing out the flavor.
The same thing applies when you’re boiling things, you want to add a little bit of salt
whether it’s potatoes, vegetables. Point being that little bit of salt is going to
help enhance the flavor. Now, what about fat? How is that useful, how
would you use that in cooking? Well, the thing with fat is if you want something crispy,
fat is going to be the key. In addition, cooking fat with the leaner meat is going to give
it a lot more flavor. And to be honest, gents, that was just the
first seven minutes of the blink. After that, I learned about acids. We also learned about
the importance of temperature, why a low heat is good for certain things, other times, you
really want to turn the heat up, so that you can really cook the food in a certain way
especially proteins. Gents, as you can probably tell, I’m excited
about this book, so I just picked it up. And, again, in a short amount of time, I learned
a lot. Now, I get it, a lot of you guys are not into cooking and that’s why I love how
Blinkist has thousands of other options. Another blink I’m going to highly recommend,
Make Your Bed by William H. McRaven. In case you guys are not familiar, this guy is legendary
Navy SEAL Texas Longhorn graduate. This dude talks about how to improve yourself, and it
starts with something simple. Yes, making your bed. Anyone that served in
the military knows that you had to have your rack perfect. You had to have your bed makes.
It all started there with inspecting basically your room with those barracks making sure
that everything was squared away. Why does it matter if your bed is made perfectly?
Because if you’ve paid attention to those details, in the military it’s pretty much
known, well, you probably paid attention to cleaning your weapons. If you don’t clean
your weapon, guess what? Rust is going to form and it’s not going to fire.
[0:05:00] In this blink, which is only ten minutes by
the way, McRaven really lays it out exactly why the little things matter, how you can
start to make these little changes in your life and how they can lead to big improvements
over time. And, in case you’re wondering, also in my
library, I’ve got Atomic Habits by James Clear. If you want to learn how to read people’s
body language, you want to check out, What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro. And I’ve
also got business classics like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
And, by the way, all these blinks also come in audio format. So, if you don’t want to
just read it in 15 minutes, you want to listen to it, they’ve got you covered there as
well. That being said, if you want to dive deeper, if you’re like, “You know what?
I’m enjoying this blink, but I want the full audio book,” they’ve got you covered
there as well. They’ve got special membership pricing for being able to grab audio books
right there in the app. Gents, I personally use Blinkist and love
it. I’ve got people on my team that use it and love it. It’s a great tool that every
person who’s serious about self-improvement should be using. And, gents, I’ve got a
special deal for you. The first 100 of you to use that link down in the description can
try Blinkist for free. And, if you decide to stick around, you want to up your membership,
you get 25% off. Use that link down in the description to get
the best deal out there on the web, gents. It’s a good deal. Use it or lose it. Like
I said, I love Blinkist. I use it, it’s an awesome tool. You should check it out.
Next up, gents, you got to have physical strength and I’m not saying you got to be a body
builder, you got to go out there and run a marathon. No, I’m saying you got to be able
to master your own body. One thing I love about the military is they
didn’t care how big or huge you were when it came to the muscles. It was all about can
you actually get over that wall, can you lift yourself up. Can we start 70 lbs on your back
and can you hike for a 20-mile forced march. Crossfit, weightlifting, cycling, running,
swimming, it doesn’t matter what you choose, gentlemen. Find the one that works for you
that you resonate with and then learn to master your own body.
Next up, gents, financial acumen. Seriously, I have no idea why this is not taught in elementary
school, in high school, and, again, in college. So important that you spend less than you
actually earn and that you’re saving money. Sounds simple, but so many of us screw this
up, including me. Yes, I had to go through a bankruptcy and then, read tons of books
on personal finance to be able to figure this stuff out.
Now, if you do go over to Blinkist, again, our sponsor, check out Get a Financial Life.
I really like this blink. It’s by Beth Kobliner. Really easy read. I think it was what? 12
minutes, and you’re going to learn a lot about the basics of personal finance.
The next key skill I think every man needs to develop, how to protect your time like
you protect your money. Now, we’ve all heard the saying that time is money. Many of us
would agree with this, but very few of us actually implement it in our lives.
I mean, think about it. If the richest man on his death bed does not have enough money
to buy another minute, what does that make this hour worth to you? Well, if you’re
like most people, you’re just busy. You’re doing things, the things you were told to
do. Sometimes you’re even out there just wasting time because you don’t know what
to do with it. Gents, I challenge you to look at your life
as if it’s a calendar. In my situation, I’m 44 years old, if I double that, what?
88? Sounds like a good age, right? Here’s the thing. Rip that calendar in half
for me because I’ve already used half of my life. And there’s no guarantee that I’m
going to get that second half. All I know is that I’ve got today. So, make sure look
at how much time you – most of us, don’t have as much time as we think. We’re wasting
we’re idle with our time when it’s our most precious resource.
The next skill that every man needs to have, to be able to build an internal compass that’s
going to help you navigate through life. If you’re familiar with orienteering, you know
that a map and a compass, you can pretty much get any place you need no matter how challenging
the terrain maybe. If it’s night, if it’s day, you’ll find a way to be able to get
to where you’re going. Here’s the thing is in life it’s a lot
more difficult. There are so many obstacles and it goes on for a while. And if you don’t
have an internal compass, you don’t know what your values are, you don’t know what’s
important to you, you don’t know what you stand for, then you’re not going to be able
to find your bearing, the direction that you need to go, your north.
You’re going to run into obstacles. This is life. And when you’ve got that internal
compass, you’re going to, yeah, maybe get off a bit. You’re going to maybe have to
go around. You may have to go over. Here’s the thing is you’re going to be
able to maintain your bearing, so that you can get to the destination, you can go in
the direction that you need to to be able to accomplish to get out of this life what
you want. Now, this next point is really difficult especially
for us career-driven guys, and that is to know that you are not your job. You need to
separate yourself from your work. And I know for me this was getting really bad earlier
this year. My videos weren’t doing well. I was putting
out content, working hard, driving people on my team. And I was coming back home and
I was to be honest an a-hole, and thank goodness, I had a partner, my wife, she let me know,
“Hey, I actually don’t want to be around you sometimes.”
You have to think, how are you being this way with your friends. Are you – because
maybe work is going bad, you’ve lost your job, you’re looking for a job. Are you letting
this affect your relationship with the people that care most about you?
[0:10:02] You may not have kids. You may have just a
little brother. You may have people that used to spend more time with and all of a sudden,
you’re neglecting them because you’re so stressed out at work.
Here’s the thing, you’ve got to find a way and this is difficult, but you got to
find a way to separate it, so that you can come home so that you can spend time and build
relationships with the people that matter, the people that care about you.
Find a way to separate it because you are not defined by the success of your job. You
are not defined by how much money you make. You are not defined by what you own. You are
defined by what – how you go through this life, the dignity, the courage, the strength
that you deal with the issues with what you’ve got.
So, I’m getting emotional there, but you guys I really care about you. And, hopefully,
you’re enjoying this video. Let’s talk about deep relationships. That’s the next
thing I think you’ve got to have the skill to be able to build deep relationships.
Men are really good and the research shows that with light relationships, yeah, we’re
better at that than we are deep relationships. The problem with light relationships is that
over time, they start to disappear. We lose those connections.
But, you want to focus in on deeper relationships. And these are ones when you remember maybe
people’s birthday, set it up in your calendar easy one right there. Maybe send people gifts.
I know for me, that’s what I’ve done this and I’ve sent out a lot of books, a lot
of those challenge coins to just friends of mine, people that have helped me out. And
that’s one of the quick hack right there, just send out some gifts and packages to people.
I found just writing letters, I did this for a number of people. It really meant a lot
to them especially people that are single, people that don’t have – maybe you’re
single, maybe you’re by yourself right now, well, guess what? Just start writing some
stuff out and sending it out to people. Nobody does this. Maybe even write them a
longer message on Facebook, whatever platform you’re using and let them know how much
they mean to you. Write them a nice email, call them on the phone. When was the last
time you called someone that a coach or maybe a good friend that had helped you get a job,
had helped you achieve things in your career and you haven’t told that old boss that
was a great mentor ten years ago where you’re at and what’s up?
Reach out to them because guess what? Not only are they going to feel better, but you’re
going to feel better as well. And that is the start of deep relationships, letting people
know that you matter to them and that, yeah, you would drive across the country to help
them out. The next skill I think every guy needs, how
to listen. So many of us when we’re listening, we’re not listening to people. We’re waiting
for our turn to speak. We’ve got some important point to make. How about you actually don’t
say anything? And you really, I mean, listen, hear what this person is saying to you.
And, one way to do this is simply to ask more questions, encourage them to speak more. The
world really needs more listeners. People that are out there really trying to understand
this person that has, you know, very different point of view than you. Yeah, this person
is stupid. No, they’re not. They’re an intelligent human being most of the time that
just simply views the world differently than you, has grown up differently.
And really seek to understand their viewpoint even if you think it’s myopic, even if you
think there’s no way I could ever agree with them, at least you can try to put yourself
into their shoes, so that you can say, you know what? Under certain circumstances, I
can see where they’re coming from. The next skill I think every guy needs is
the ability to let it go, and I’m not talking about Anna and Elsa over at Frozen. What I’m
talking about is letting go all the grudges, all the hate, all the frustration that you’ve
got with maybe people in your life, you’ve got with work, you’ve got just with things
that have happened to you. So many of us are haunted by the past and
we let it dictate the future. Now, I’m not saying that your past doesn’t have an effect
on your future, but I do think that you have the power to be able to let things go and
move on. And to release that hate, to release that frustration, to find a way to overcome
those setbacks, so that you can go out there and achieve become the man you know yourself
to be. Now, gents, I know you got an opinion. I want
to hear from you down in the comments what you like, what did I miss, what would have
added to this video to make it better. So, what video to watch next? How about how
the top guys out there how they think differently? We’re talking about the guys that are starting
multimillion dollar companies, the guys out there getting six-figure job, the guys out
there in amazing relationships, how do they think differently?
So, for this video, I did a lot of research. I think there are some pretty cool insights.
You want to go check it out. It’s a great video. You can go check it out by clicking
right here. [0:14:13] End of audio