Ep 122 Build. How to Improve as a Man

[Music] All right, here we go. This is a Travis Meville podcast I am. I've written a few books, the most recent of which. Because this one it's called Ideal Man Mastering Masculinity. It's a midlife checkpoint. For all you guys out there want to know if you're doing it right, you probably are. If you're asking the question, am I doing it right? Then you care what the right thing is and that means you're probably chasing that. For more background on that, everything in the black covered book, Mastering Masculinity, is a result of habits that you developed by reading the white covered book which is reviving masculinity. Both of these are available anywhere you buy books. You can go into Barnes and Noble if they don't have it, they can get it. You can get on Amazon right now in order it order it. It'll be at your house in four or five days here in the US a little bit longer if you're in Europe or Asia or any other places I've sent it. It does take a while in some of those places to South Africa and Estonia. Sweden, Finland, UK, Australia a few times. Yeah, it's all over the world. What a nice compliment. Anyway, that's what I do. I write these books for the purpose of this show. That's my night purpose in life. Now what I want to talk about today is building. If you are a man, you have the desire to build. You have the yearning to improve things around you to make things better to leave your mark. Say it however you want to. It's a natural thing for guys. I actually am a builder. I have a builder's license here in the state of Michigan where I live and I do use that skill to help people. I charge a money to build things for them basically. I just yesterday re-stripped off a rotten little section of deck and resurfaced it and put it all back together and put a coat of stain on it. I just I like that work. It took me a half a day. There's some pictures on Instagram. If you want to go take a look, I sent I put some up. The two days before that I build a wood shed for myself. I don't a bunch of leftover materials I had for building my house. The building that I'm actually standing in right now recording this episode I built it myself which I know I talk about that a lot but I'm fucking proud of it. Why wouldn't you be and do something like that? Let me tell you, you'll be proud too. It's a lot of work and it's pretty cool. I actually do build things. I've kind of gravitated towards that since I was a young guy. I can remember the first thing I ever built sitting in the barn with my dad. He had workshop out there and we built a bench. It was really just like a stool, like a chair, out of just a mention of lumber. I remember thinking it was the coolest thing and so I think I just kind of had it in my blood to do it then. When I was a kid my dad was my hero and if he wanted to do it, well then shit I wanted to do it too. It's kind of a bit of a glove. It's what we do here. Father's a role model. It's important. But why is it important? I mean why is building things important for a man? Well we've covered this many times before. A man without a purpose is the most dangerous man. What do I mean by that? Well when you do have a purpose you have a reason for being alive. You have a thing that drives you, a thing that pushes you forward and the opposite of that would be not having a purpose and now you are listless and aimless and that doesn't change the fact that you still have a lot of testosterone, a lot of strength, a lot of desire to change, a lot of desire to create, a lot of desire to make a mark essentially. If you're not doing that in a healthy way, building something will then the tendency is and this is much easier than building things but far less satisfying and that's to tear things down. You know I have a, I'll talk a little bit more about this later but I serve on the school board here in the town that I live in and without revealing too much information here. I spoke with a young man the other day who's having trouble who's kind of in a rough spot and I sent him a copy of our reviving masculinity which I believe is the the young man's guide for how to get your life together and get it to where it needs to be. You know what I told him was hey man these hands have been in handcuffs and I showed them just like this I'm like I've been in handcuffs I've seen the inside of a jail cell I've done bad shit I have but you know I have my life back together I believe that those little points build build the high points in your life if you want to have high points of low points just by contrast make your highs feel a lot higher. You know I take my house for example it's only 1500 square feet but I built it myself it's not massive but I've been low that I've been homeless before in college I didn't have any place to live I sleep in on people's floors so I very much appreciate this right and that's what I try to get across to this young man hey doesn't matter where you come from it matters where you end up what do you aim in towards you know so that I saw an Amazon sent me a thing today said that my book had arrived at his doorstep and sends you a little picture you know so I hope that does something for him he clear I mean this guy just clearly no father's life and nobody worth a shit anyway and as we know you know boys become man socially they've got to see role models they've got to see men doing it right or they won't know what to do there's not a lot of biological component as far as what should your actions be what direction should you be moving there's not a lot of that out there without a father you know and I can go back into that more later and I will here we're gonna talk about school here in a minute but yeah that's why build it sets sense of purpose like I left I left a mark behind I did something that that needed to be done I improved the thing that needed to be improved my life is not meaning I did something that was helpful and useful and and moved the world forward or at least got it back to where it was something like that that's why it's important without having the desire to build again you want to tear things down and that that's okay so there's the background so what kinds of things in your life can you build you know where can you put your energy maybe you you don't have the natural ability yet and I've got a couple of buddies who don't have any abilities with their hands like they can't build anything do anything so so you got to be able to build another area you know you you don't have a builder's license I got three good friends who do have builders licenses and I talked to them all the time about what we do and we have that in common but all right so you don't you don't you're not building things physically well you can always build your family okay and I'm of the mind that the more children the better stronger the children the better and that's that's real simple you're building your family name you're building your your legacy you'll you'll build you're building your genetic lineage I think it's the till of the hunt or one of these great emperors you know conquerors there's something like 25% of everyone in Asia has his DNA and I mean and you probably not gonna get to that with a lot of what I'm gonna do that now that's a lot of raping to get to there but the the idea behind it is hey you know prosper um be fruitful um get your your your best work out there and I'm of the mind that the best work you'll ever do you know I built a lot of things physical things the best work you'll ever do is how you improve the people around you um you know I don't have my own family that was always my goal I really wanted to do that I just just never worked out but I can feel very proud of of uh the way I've built my my nuclear family I've tried to you know like this just last weekend I was down in my brother's place hanging out with him I built in that relationship I really enjoy him he's a great dude and you know I talked to my sister when I can last week or two weeks ago I think I was down at my mom's house I think it was last weekend yeah so less than 10 10 days going fewer than 10 days ago I was at my mom's place hanging out with her and the reason I was down there uh was to how about a friend a buddy of mine and I figured if I was down there am I as well you know put in some family time which I did I went over to visit a cousin and sort of married in cousin and pick up this piano that had been been my grandmother's anyway I drive all the way down to where I grew up three four hours away and I'm I'm all of the time I spent down there was for other people and I'm not some saint you know it's not like I didn't enjoy it but all of those interactions positive interactions those build relationships they build your family the more you can bond your family together the strong your family is that's always a good thing um outside of just your family wow you've got all the other relationships in your life and that's another thing you can build if you don't have the physical means to physically build things. The reason I was down Now, last weekend was, you know, one of my best friends is his mother passed away a few weeks ago and they had her celebration of life. Of course, I'm not going to miss that. You know, and you got to think about it from his perspective. Here he is standing there in a very much a low point in his life, eulogizing his mother. I mean, that's pretty low and in the seas walk in, a stream of good bodies. You know, and I stood there with all these great men that I know, you know, Chris and Eric and Harley was there and Julian and I'm going to forget some guys. Dan, Dan was there. Vickson was there like all these guys that are great men that I really respect and admire all filed into to let him know so that he could see. You know, and that's what it is. So obviously we can't bring his mom back. She's a great lady. I really enjoyed her. But we can't bring him back, but what we do, what you do by showing up at something like that is he's standing there and he's watching this, this parade of good men in his life walk in and it's a reminder of how much good he does happen is life, right. So yeah, I'm in a low point, but hey, don't forget you got all this other, all these other great connections, right. Of course, he's got a ton of family there and friends and. Family of friends and friends of family 200 people are in this room, you know, because his parents very outgoing people, a lot of fun. Matter of fact, they know some of my relatives, it's. His dad Tom is a very social guy and so he has a lot of friendships as well. But yeah, that's how you build a relationship when they're down there to pick them up and when they're up, you know, they're to celebrate with them. You know, when things go well, you help them out. Yeah, I'd look at my circle of friends and I've been a best man four times. I think that says good things about me, you know, that. Four men on the planet believe that I'm a best man. For that job, that's a hell of a compliment forever grateful for being given that compliment. Can you count those in your life? Can you count the amount of times that you stood up in somebody's wedding or read next to them when they did something very important help them celebrate. This is much as a low times you want to be there. And that's a great way to build relationships, you know, also on the vein of build relationships. I think text messaging is especially among men like the best thing there is for maintaining relationships, especially with your boys. And I learned that like texting just got real big early mid 2000s, I would say is kind of when everybody was texting. And you know, right around then is when I moved to to Indiana. So I moved to a different state. I was several hours from all of my friends and a lot of my family. And right then I got my first blackberry, which has the full keyboard at the bottom. So man, I got good at texting because those things were so nice you could feel the buttons. I could text it not even looking, which was nice. And I was able to maintain great relationships through the many years I was down in Indiana. And then they were right there for me when I moved back home, which was super helpful. Yeah, so just texting man, anytime I see a thing out in public or I run across something on the internet and I have to be on social media and stuff a lot because of this because of the books right. I'm always seeing posts that remind me of this body or that body or this experience we had or this thing that we did together. And I never hesitate. Snap a picture, send it to the guys, you know, involved in that. Just remind them, hey man, think about it. Hope all is well. You're on my mind when you're not around. You know, you're good dude, glad you're in my life. You know, if I do that with family too, why not? You know, texting I think is huge for that. And let me pause here with the relationships. Some of you are thinking, what the hell do you need friends for man? You got a family would all you do is drink beer. You know, not like specifically judging me, but maybe looking at your own life, you're thinking, what the hell do I need all these friends for? Well, you know, you're going to have to utilize your mom one day too. That's going to happen man and I'm going to want those guys around to help you and why wouldn't you want somebody there helping you when you celebrate. You know, something's going really well for you. Why would you not want that? I mean, the stronger relationships are stronger you are. There are no, there are no exceptions to that. Strong relationships you are stronger. Strong relationships you have the stronger man you are. We're not about that. Yeah, I do actually build physical structures. I do a lot of work with my hands. I really enjoy it. Like this weekend, my buddy Chris is coming up. We're just going to cut firewood. And I love it. Like I built a cool log splitter. I've got a couple nice chain saws. We got some equipment. I'd like to tell you I just finished building a new wood shed here at my house. I like that work. I like the end result of it. It's a great workout. Obviously moving all that wood around and running the cool. The tools are awesome. Like I love the sound of a chain saw when it's wide open. I love using my log splitter. But the best part no doubt about it is looking at a stack of split dried cut firewood. Like it to me, it's better than better. It feels better than looking at a bank balance. Like a positive bank balance because I know that that has universal appeal. Whether things are going well in the world or going piss poor. You got to be warm. You know, you need to be warmer. You're going to die. So it's universally helpful. I know without a doubt no matter what comes that firewood is going to be helpful for me. And of course there's a sense of satisfaction looking at it going back on all that. That's a lot of work. It looks cool. I'm glad for it. It's pretty cool. I get the same feeling when I look at a structure I build or something that I fixed or a house that I painted I paint a lot of houses and you know the difference they look so damn good when they're done. When you go through my phone if I you know I can go into my images and search the word house and I'll get hundreds of pictures. Because I take all kinds of pictures of the stuff I work out even though it's not mine. That satisfaction is a thing you need to be seeking out. You need to be looking for that. Ways to do things where you can physically look at and go. I did that. I made that. I built that. I fixed that. I cleaned that. Whatever it is. Those things in your life are huge today. I'm on my way up to the gym this morning. And I out of my way and swung past the high school football field because yesterday. I'll talk about more about this in a minute. I painted the field goal posts. The game field posts and then the ones on the practice field behind it. The ones in the practice field were. They were shit like they were in such bad shape. They've been painted no joke. 20 years 25 years they had. Four different colors on them. I mean the chips were unbelievable. I brought like six jars of sauce that I go with all the chips I peeled off of this damn thing. That's a bad joke. Yeah, it's I drove by just to look at it this morning. Yeah, fuck yeah, looks good. Yeah. Feels good. Feels good to improve something. You know. So if you can make any kind of physical structure, I should like. Like my brother, for example, like he's never going to build his own house. And he he's not. Which is crazy because he has the ability at least to frame like he was on a legit framing crew when he was a young guy and when I built my cabin. He helped me frame it like I couldn't have done that without him. He was far beyond my knowledge at that point. But he's that's not usually his thing. He's more of a build a. Build it like a like a cutting board or build a really cool sign make it out of old wood. Like so he does what woodworking does create things. His are just far more artistic and detail oriented than the stuff that I make. Which is cool. Everybody's got their thing, but he has that satisfaction in his life. So don't feel like build houses the only you can build. I mean, I work on cars too. I've built several vehicles. Various stages. Not a lot of lift kits, you know, motor improvements, reruns stuff. Just a lot of suspension, a lot of breaks. And that's satisfying to anytime you can work on a thing with your hands and build. You're going to feel better. Let's see now by far the biggest thing the most important thing you need to be building is something beyond yourself. You know, your career, that's important and it's helpful. You know, I talk in a master in masculinity about professional sovereignty. Specifically talks about making money and making money is the thing you got to do. You know what I mean? Good luck getting by without without money. And as much as I enjoy building, I wouldn't be doing the construction work I do if it didn't pay so well. But I make enough doing that stuff in the summer to pay for my life all year. So it works out pretty great that I can do something I like and make great money at it. I don't think you need to live. You don't need to love what you do, but you should like it. You know, it's got to be a thing you enjoy or it's going to be a difficult 40 hours a week for you. That's going to suck. But anyway, building something larger than yourself. What I mean by that is a thing where you are giving to it far more than it's ever going to give to you outside of again, that sense of satisfaction. You're giving to a thing that's not going to pay you. It's not going to fuck you. It's not going to cook for you. Building a thing that you can just be happy that you built it and know that you put your time in and put your all and made it made it great. Now what I've chosen, I've chosen two different things in my life that fit in that in that realm. The first thing is to build the community that I live in here. I live in a small town in northern Michigan and I taught for over a decade and during that time I coached a lot of sports and I had some success. So here I am in this new town. I've chosen to help by coaching football. So you know you guys are not coached before, I've coached all over the place and I'm in this small town and man I want to help the community and that's one place where I know I'm, I've got some strengths there, I've got some abilities and will that help the community yes it will. When you have a great football team and by great I don't necessarily just mean wins. I mean that character, kids who are making good choices and becoming great men. Well then those great men are going to go out in the community and improve the community in ways that you can never comprehend that way, that ways that you can never quantify. So that's always my goal with these young men. Let's, let's make them the best men they can be. I mean they're 15, 16, 18 year old, a young guy is looking to want to be adults and some of them don't have fathers at home. Some of them don't have fathers worth of shit even if they aren't home and it's an opportunity for me and the other coaches to be that surrogate mentally we talked about at the beginning. Well I can be that alternative. Like when you, when you're at home and you just got single mom at home and you got all female teachers and you don't have any male role models you're left looking at what's on TV screens on the last and of course all that shit's garbage man. Good luck finding a good solid role model on a male role model on a TV screen or on your phone. But instead you can give them an alternative. I grew up with a great father no doubt about it but my high school track coach I had him for one season, one year, one sport. But I ended up modeling a lot of what he did as a coach. Like I still do things a lot the way that he did it and that was 30 years ago. I still do things a lot like Mark Ladd did things and proud to say that. I'm proud of that guy. I'm proud to know him. I'm proud to be a part of his coaching lineage. He taught me a lot just by what he did, by how he handled things. It was a lot less about the strategy and the X's and O's of track and field. It was about this is how you should handle your life young man. And really most of that echoed what I was getting at home. But to get it from an outside source just reinforced it right. It fortified what I thought I already knew and yeah, so I still follow a lot of his stuff. So I get to coach football here in this small town which is great. I volunteer to do a lot of things outside of that. I host all the post game get together with coaches and families and support people. Superintendent was at the last one. I host that stuff in my garage. I got a nice big heated garage with music and lights and all that. Big beer fridge and all the stuff that you need for a thing like that. I do that when I was down state for that celebration of life for my buddy's mom. Another thing I went and picked up was a what's called a segment timer which is this big clock with a countdown that is going to help keep our practices much more organized and disciplined. You know, I arranged that deal and got that from a school that I used to work at and brought it up here and now I'm going to be able to use that with this new school which will revolutionize how we practice which again, everything we can do that improves these boys improves the whole community. No doubt about that. I'd like to tell you that just finished painting the goal posts. One of them was all wonky. Bent. I've been bent for 20 years who knows how long nobody could remember when it wasn't bent when I asked around even the old timers. So I got a buddy who's got some equipment. He brought over a big excavator and we straightened the thing out and I'm painting them and just little things like that I think go a long way. Things that the community is going to see enhances their pride. I learned that very early on in the education world that you sort of reflect what you see right. If you're everything around you, you see as dirty and shitty then you're going to continue that but everything around you are sharp and clean and looking good. Well then you're going to you're going to continue that and these are young people that are malleable. We want to met. We want to mold them into good positive people. So trying to do that things like that. I'm on the school board. I'm serving there. That's a, you know, everybody tells me it's a thankless job so far. It hasn't been too bad but it's a little boring sometimes but there's no money in it. You know, it's just me trying to help the community which, you know, I have the background. Right. I was an educator for a long time. I got a master's degree. I researched all this stuff about young men. I can help. What can you do? What ways can you help improve your community? I was talking with my buddy Julian last weekend and I suggested that to him because he's just getting into coaching and I mentioned the school board thing. I'm like, man, they'd be lucky to have you. He's a very bright guy. He's super, super able to figure things out real, you know, like analytical mind on him. Very smart. Very smart. He's a hard looking guy like he would be very persuasive in one of those rooms sitting on one of those boards. He'd be very helpful for his community. So I put that in his ear and he said, gave him something to think about. So maybe that'll go that way. We'll see. But yeah, that's serving something bigger than me larger than I am. It's this community that I live in. I want to try to make it better. I want to be a positive part of it. Move things in the right direction when I can. That's the one thing my community. That's the one bigger than me thing that I've chosen. And then the second thing that's larger than I am. I've chosen. As a purpose. Is this? Is this right here? I'm going to be really honest with you. I've written three books so far and I've got 100 and some, 120 some podcasts out there. It's been four years I've been doing this stuff. I've got all kinds of social media. I mean, I would tell you, 25, 30 grand of my own money invested in this stuff between publishing and the travel and all the apps you got to buy. You know, the equipment here that I'm recording with and it just the money is, my money is going into it. I have not made back what I put in. That's not close. It's probably not even half, it's probably not even a corner. Yeah, and I'm hoping that eventually that becomes an investment that pays off. But yeah, again, I'm putting into this because I need something that I can feel good about. I want to know that I'm improving the world. So I'm doing something in my community with football and school board and all that, but I also want to improve the whole world as they can. I have offered a solution to the problem that I've heard over and over again that there are no good men anymore. Now, as soon as I became single in 2018, I started dating. Like that's the first thing I started hearing from these women I'd be sitting across from at a bar or restaurant or whatever, even just talking to them on the phone and they would tell me, oh yeah, they're still men or junk, men or shit. There's no good men. I'm like, how can that be? It's half of the planet. You know, we're the greatest country in the world, the greatest country ever devised. How can that be that there are no good men? And then I started doing some research and I started figuring out that anyway, all the things you've heard me talk about for the last 40 years, I started figuring on that out. And I decided if I were going to complain about that, if I wanted to have a right to bitch or judge these fruity soft ass, not real men, then I see sitting in the passenger seat while his girl's pumping gas in the winter. Sitting in the passenger seat at all. Man, you should be driving, bro. That's a hard one for me to, unless you're drunk, you're injured, you're driving. Man, that's part of your job as a man. Not open indoors, no respect, no kind of etiquette, no kind of ability to interact with women. No desire to protect and provide, at least none that they've been taught. There's so many guys that need that and they aren't doing it because they've just never seen anyone else do it around like a teenager, no role models. That's what I wanted to address here. That's what I'm trying to do. I want to offer a solution. When I heard that, when I started hearing that from women, I didn't like how it made me feel. It made me feel like, well, maybe men aren't that good. Then that dug into my own personal insecurities which I had to do with, well, shit, you find in yourself singling in your forties, you're doing something wrong, man. Something's wrong. You're a handsome guy, you're fit, you're well spoken, you're, I've got a lot of cards, thanks, mom and dad, and how is this head? So I started learning how to be great at being a man and then I thought, well, maybe I can help make everybody else better at it as well and then they'll quick complain it. Well, that's my hope anyway. Yeah, so all this research, all this reading, all this information, all the podcasts, everybody I've spoken with, all the other professionals, the psychologists, anthropologists, doctors, relationship coaches, therapists, you know, all these people that I've talked, spoken with that I've learned from, you know, I'm giving that information to you. So you can just absorb it and you don't have to go out and spend all the time that I've spent and that way, hopefully, hopefully I am improving the world. I mean, that's what I'm for. What can you do to improve the world around you? You know, outside of building those relationships, outside of, and that's the biggest one I'm telling you, building relationships, outside of building your community, outside of building your family, building physical things. What can you find that's bigger than you are? And you can argue that your kids are because they kind of are bigger than you are because they'll be there after you're gone. That's a big deal. But what thing can you donate your time to? What thing can you volunteer yourself to? And what way can you be of use just in the most raw, generous way? Where can you put your time and effort? And maybe it's a situation where you have your kids come with you to do those sorts of things or you're volunteering. I don't know to hand out gifts on Christmas to the less fortunate and you bring your kids with you working at you know you spend a couple nights at a soup kitchen learning how that works and helping out the By the poor. I mean what There's a ton of lessons that you can learn the kids can learn from being in that environment ways that they can You know it's just there's a ton there so find a way to be to be involved in something bigger than you That's the best way you can build I would argue that you absolutely need to have that as a man without it You are your life is less fruitful without it. You're less you are less productive without it Your name does not ring with the same glory that it could Had you been giving your all and let me tell you you will get back from that too that sense of satisfaction that Deep breath of knowing you're impacting It's huge and I'm not saying you know don't go be a fucking advocate don't go be an An activist That's a that's bullshit. It's not about what flag you have over your picture on Facebook. It's about what are you doing? What are you gonna go do that's gonna help the world's gonna change the world do that, okay? So building that's what it is you are a man you are meant to build find ways to do it I gave you a bunch of places you could do it in a lot examples from my own life I don't think there's any reason why you can't knock that out especially now the holidays are starting today is Halloween Uh rolling into the holiday season here got a lot of people that could use your help and a lot of other people who are gonna need to feel needed So uh do that if you can my name is Travis Neville. This is the Travis Neville podcast Please buy my books. They are on audible. They are on Amazon. They are at Barnes and Noble Uh or just hit me up on comment on this I'll send you one for free. I will if you've got a story. I do the saw time my son really needs a role model What do I do? He doesn't have a father blah blah first thing I do is send him a book for free Give me your address a send him a book for free and a t-shirt some stickers That will help him outside of that. I'll give you all the advice I can give you I'll give you the benefit of my wisdom for free Okay, it is me trying to change the world around me help make everything better Again, I'm Travis Neville. This is the Travis Neville podcast. I hope that in some way today She'll help you to get your shit together Have a great week