What You Need To Know About Success

All right, men, welcome to the mantalks show. Whether you are new to this show or not. Just a quick reminder that mantalks is really a platform for your betterment as a man, as a husband, as a father, as a leader, whatever area of your life you're looking to better yourself on and in, that's what Man Talks is about. We have some great resources, whether it's this podcast or whether it's something like the alliance, where we have men from around the world that are in teams that hold. Hold one another accountable, that push one another, that call each other forward into a better version of themselves. And so if you're wanting to learn more about that, go to mantalks.com and check out the Alliance. But today, I want to talk about success. Because we, as men, we love this idea of being successful. And in many ways, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. We all want to pursue and find meaning in building something. There's something within our masculine core that wants to sharpen and itself that wants to sharpen us as men, that wants to create and build something in the world and societally, socially, we are rewarded for that. We are put into different places within social culture when we are successful. But there are some very key things about success that we need to know along the way if we are to be successful and if we are to enjoy ourselves and find fulfillment in it along the way. Because as Tony Robbins said, success or without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I found that to be absolutely true, that if we are to pursue this thing that we call success, however you may define it, whether that is financial wealth, a healthy relationship, a vibrant sex life, a robust physical body that you have developed and built and put time and effort into, whatever value you have developed as a man. Because for me, that that is really what success is tied to. It's tied to value. What kind of value can you build as a man, financially, intellectually, emotionally, physically, relationally, within your network, Those are the components. However you create value within those different parts of your life is what ultimately is going to lead to success. But the catch is that you need to be fulfilled in the act of pursuing and building those things, of creating that value. And so I think it was Winston Churchill that says that success is not for final and failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that ultimately counts. And I love this idea that success is not final. It's something that continues to evolve. It's something that you continue to learn from and grow and develop and nurture and create, and that when you fail, it's not indefinite. It's not a permanent state, right? Sometimes we as men can get stuck on our pathway in trying to have and develop a successful relationship or trying to build a successful business or career, or be financially successful or physically successful. Sometimes we can struggle as men and get caught because we see failure as this fatalistic, permanent thing in our life that all of a sudden occupies real estate. And if you look at the state of men in our current social setting and environment, this is one of the things that a lot of men are struggling with. We have in some ways created very, very safe men, weak men, domesticated men who have become somewhat obsessed with being perfect in their endeavors towards success. And it robs you as a man of learning from failures, of learning from setbacks, of learning from having life come and kick you in the teeth and, you know, take. Take you out by the knees and all the other sayings that we have when it, when it comes to failure. But success is something that we continue. Continues to evolve. And I think arguably one of the biggest missing pieces that most men have not quite figured out. It took me a tremendously long time to figure this one out, especially in the generation that we live in, is that success doesn't care necessarily about you. It doesn't give a shit about whether or not you're tired. It doesn't care how much effort you put in. It doesn't care how exhausted you are or. Or whether you think that you've earned it or whether you think that you deserve it or are entitled to it, or think that you should have had it by now. It doesn't care about any of those things. It doesn't matter that you think that you should have attained it or that you think that you should have acquired some form of financial, career, entrepreneurial or relational success or physical success. It isn't concerned with how much sleep you've gotten the night before. It's not concerned with how much time and effort and energy and money that you've spent pouring into trying to be successful. It's not worried about those things because success ultimately is a. Is a kind of genius of making you question yourself, of making you question your answers, of making you question your path. It's a kind of genius in creating doubt that causes you to undermine yourself. It's a salesman of fear, right? And the more that you want success, the more that you are clinging to the idea that you should be successful, that you should have attained something by now, the more that you buy into the fear that success ultimately is Inadvertently trying to sell you. And the more you get caught and wrapped up in this idea that you need to be perfect in order to be successful. And this is why I love Winston Churchill's quote, because success is not final. You never reach some sort of ultimate pinnacle where you are, quote unquote, fully successful and you don't need to go any further. Right? That would just be death in a way, right? That would be an inviting death in that you would have somehow as a man. And this is, you know, the masculine within us loves this idea that at some point in life will be ultimately satiated. We will have found this ultimate form of freedom by achieving everything that we could have ever wanted. Right? We can see this in science and the research that is wrapped up in and around how do we as human beings live forever, right? It comes from this egoic place of wanting and desperately hoping, this masculine part of us that wants to live forever so that it can accomplish everything that it hopes to accomplish, but it's not a realistic outcome. So success is really the ultimate test of facing the unknown. It is the ultimate pathway of you as a man being able to embark on the journey of not knowing how things are going to turn out, of entering into the arena of I'm going to give it my absolute best. I'm going to give 100% of what I have in this moment. And I might still fail. It might still, might not be enough, but I'm going to do it anyway. Because I know that failure isn't some death oriented end. It just means that I've met a limitation in my life right now. And that limitation can inform us, right? Because what do we know about failure? We know that failure teaches us. We know that failure informs us of how to do things differently. You know, and what do we know about successful people? You can read the biographies of anyone successful in the world. And if you read between the lines of their accomplishments, what you will see is an individual who has allowed failure to teach them, who has failed their way to success in some capacity. And so success isn't something that we should become so obsessed with. Success isn't something that we need to be wrapped up in, in and around. It's that we need to have an aim, a direction in life that we are building something that we as men are creating value within our relationship, within our family, within our own lives, our own health, our own minds, our own communities, our own work environments, the environment that we inhabit, the culture and society that we live in. And the more that we can create value within those spaces, the more that we as men will find success inherently. So the real question is, are you willing to do that? Are you willing to try and attempt to build and create value? Are you willing to fail over and over and over again? Are you willing to pursue and build and create and enter into the arena of the unknown, not knowing how it's ultimately going to go, but being open and willing to fail along the way and allow that failure to not only inform you of what the next steps are, but to develop a more robust quality of resiliency within you as a man so that you can face the inherent hardships of life? You see, I think for me, ultimately, just to close this up, success is a mirror. It is a mirror for who you are as a man. It is a mirror for where you are at in your life as a human being. It is a mirror for your desires, for your fears, for your anxieties to all manifest in your life and to continue to create direction, to build value as a man inherently within your relationship, within your career, within your business, within your community. And to have that be your polestar, to have that be the magnetic north on your compass as a man, adding value, providing value, building value, building yourself as a man. So that's what success means to me. That's what I think every single man should know about success, is that it is a mirror for you, just like social media is a mirror for human behavior. Success will bring out the worst and the absolute best of every single man who begins his pursuit of that success. So don't forget to leave a comment below. Don't forget to leave a rating and review. Subscribe to the channel and the podcast again, whether you're on YouTube or on the podcast, listening to this on Apple or Spotify. And thank you so much for tuning in. This is Connor Beaton signing off.