SPEAKER_00 0:03

Bro, don't lose that spark. If there's something that you like to do that may seem kiddish to other people, to your significant other, to your parents, to your co-workers, like let them talk, but don't lose that spark of things that bring you happiness and joy.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Failures Podcast. Today we're talking about the muted man. We'll get into the definition. Quick question. Would you rather be liked by everyone or respected by yourself? This episode is about that question and that question only. When we talk about the muted man, Rich and I invented a character so you could understand who this guy is. Let's say this guy's name is Eddie. Eddie's our example. Eddie has mastered the art of being muted, being invisible in a crowded room. Eddie laughs at all the jokes that are not funny at work. Eddie lays low, he doesn't have a bunch of opinions. Eddie gets along with everybody. Eddie sways to whatever the room thinks about politics. And he's talking to a Republican, he says, hey man, I get it. I agree with you. If he's talking to a Democrat, hey man, I agree with you. If you're talking about sports, no one knows his favorite team. Eddie is the most agreeable person in the entire company. He's a muted man, he has no personality. Eddie is just easy to deal with. But guess what? He wasn't always like that. When Eddie looks at old pictures of himself and thinks, damn, what happened to me? I used to be that guy. I was full of life. I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of friends. When did I become a shell of myself? When did I become self-censored? When did I become a muted man? That's what this episode is about today. The muted man. The guy who used to be loud, used to have personality, used to have energy, used to have charisma. But as he's getting older, he's starting to see he's losing himself. We don't know what exactly that thing is that you lose yourself to, but that's what this episode is about. Rich and I are going to unpack how to avoid becoming the muted man. My question to you, Rich, is do you relate to the eddies of the world? Where do you think this comes from? Where does this muted transition start?

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah, man, listen, I think there's a little bit of eddy in all of us. And I think this starts a little bit after high school, maybe starts around college time. Definitely when you start to enter the workforce, you start to see yourself in many different scenarios and friend groups and situations. You start to feel like you need to be a little bit different in order to be liked. And I just feel like little by little you start to shape shift depending on who you're around, because you feel like you need you need to show up a little bit different in order to be liked by certain peer groups. And man, little by little, you stop being the funny guy, you stop being the smart guy, you become the guy that goes silent. And you know, there's a lot to unpack today. So I'm happy to jump into this one, Jess.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

I do like something you mentioned earlier, and that's about being more mature. What do you think the confusion between being more mature and losing your inner child? What's the difference there?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

I think people naturally feel like if they're not being mature, they're going to be taken as a joke, right? And I think the fear comes from feeling like you don't belong, feeling like you're not accepted in a peer group or a group of friends. And it's so scary for a young guy to feel like he's being rejected by a group of friends, right? Or he goes to work and like no one wants to hang out with him after work because he's just a little different. There's a lot of interesting nuances with that feeling of feeling like you need to be a little bit more mature so people don't think you're immature.

SPEAKER_01 4:02

That is a tight rope to walk, but I think from reading enough feedback from our community and checking out Reddit to really get a good idea of what this topic is about, a muted man, to me is a man that almost seems like an animal with no teeth that needs to survive in the wild. It's a guy that used to have fangs, he used to be aggressive, he used to be playful, he used to enjoy his life, used to run around. Now he just kind of lost all that sauce. And he is using the word maturity as a cope. Oh, I'm just mature, I'm grown. But I don't know. I don't know if you lost your maturity or you're becoming more mature, or you just lost your personality. You're slowly disappearing into a dark hole of adulting. And I think that is what we're talking about on this episode today, Rich, for the guy who probably feels like, damn, after I heard that intro about Eddie and I heard Rich and Justin say that I'm losing my personality, I'm not maturing. Maybe this episode is about me. And I think it's nuanced. You can easily slip from the age of 28 to 38 without noticing this is happening. And I think there's a version of that, and both of us, Rich, I do have personal stories that I want to get into of me almost letting that more fun, more alive, more engaged, more involved version of myself. I'm a pretty passionate guy. Anything I do, I'm excited about. And there was a time in my life where I lost a lot of that passion and that excitement for life. And I'm I'm happy that it took a crisis. And I'm gonna share the story, but it took a crisis in my life to happen in order for me to rediscover that passion and that inner child and excitement for living.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yeah, and I think that's super interesting, right? Like how just over time you start to make little tweaks about your personality and your character. And little by little those tweaks compound and ultimately have you become this person that is like no longer you, right? Everyone remembers you being a certain way, maybe being the funny guy. And all of a sudden, when there's fun in the room or there's jokes being flown through the air, like you don't contribute to the jokes. It's like, damn, Eddie used to be the funny guy, now he's just quiet anytime there's laughter, and there's a huge disconnect, right, between who you used to be and who you're becoming. And I think that's part of the cautionary tear that we're gonna share today. It's just like we don't want you to go down the path of modifying yourself so much so that you become detached from who your true self really is.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Let's stay right there, Rich. Who you used to be versus who you're becoming. I like how you said that. Can you talk about your personal life experience? You've had a lot more atypical corporate jobs than I've had. I have worked in music for a long time and I've worked in the hip hop and RB side of music. So I'd be lying if I said a lot of my career was in worlds that were overly corporate, but who you're becoming sometimes just kind of changes over time, right? Like then you just start centering yourself who you are for the eight hours at work.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, for sure. And that's definitely me, right? I'm a cybersecurity engineer, and throughout my career, I've always worked in corporate settings in the financial services industry. Most recently, I work at a private equity firm, and I've found myself in these roles, being in a lot of board meetings, conducting a lot of different presentations, and you know, to simplify just being with the suits in the room, right? And I've always felt initially entering those roles that I needed to be polished, right? I needed to not use slang, I can't curse, I need to speak proper, I need to present the best version of myself. And what I found was that not being able to curse, being too polished, you know, not wearing my favorite color socks, like just little details about who I am and my personality made me feel like I was performing at the end of the day. And I just remember getting home, just being exhausted for eight to 10 hours a day, feeling like I'm showing up at work a different way than what I truly am in person. Not to say that these two people, these two versions of Rich are completely different. They're not. But I do feel like I have to be a little bit more reserved and a little bit more muted when I'm at work versus when I'm home or hanging out with my friends.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

I'm willing to believe that most people listening to this episode, that's probably ground zero for a lot of their pain and confusion and the dullification of their life. I used to spend a lot of time around people who are like me. They came from the same hood I came from, they came from the same town I came from. We went to college together. And when you have the choice of finding your own tribe, you tend to surround yourself with like-minded people that have a similar sense of humor, a similar worldview. If you're a light-hearted person, you don't like being around stringent and tight and like, you know, narrow people. You like being around people that are a little bit more loose. And I think one of the negatives of thriving in the workplace is that you almost have to dull everything about yourself in the workplace. Because if you show your true personality, you don't know how that's gonna affect your bottom line. You don't know how that's gonna affect you in a performance review. So what happens in the workplace is a lot of people are kind of reading each other to see what the baseline of normal is. And the problem is with that, is you get an average. And whenever you get an average, it kind of takes away the edges, the highs and the lows of everybody in the room because everyone is trying to be a part of the average. And when you're trying to be a part of the average and you're trying to protect and perfect being normal and average, you kind of lose what makes you you. And like we said earlier in the intro, there is a one of one in all of us. There is a uniqueness in all of us. There is a fire and a desire that we have for life and an appetite for exploring more in all of us. And there is something about that conveyor belt of the Legos movie where every everything is awesome and everybody's doing the same job for day one to the end of their lives, that it kind of strips that away from you and it takes away your personality. And it's it's a slow erosion, Rich. It happens slowly over time. It's something that if you don't monitor and you don't allow yourself to rediscover your hobbies or rediscover your passions, I can see a lot of people falling victim to the muting of themselves without even knowing it.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Yeah, I agree with you. And I think the worry for these young guys comes from the fact that they want to feel validated, they want to feel accepted, they want to feel good amongst the tribe, feel like they're a part of something. And I do feel like that ends up changing depending on how you show up for people. So I think if we can share a little bit of actionable advice, I think you should hone those relationships, right? The more trust you build with someone, the more of yourself can come out of you in that relationship, right? And cultivating work relationships, building solid friendships will allow yourself to have more of that freedom of being your true honest self. I think the fear and the anxiety comes from when you're showing up to places that you haven't built a relationship in, and then you're worried about what people may think of you, or you're worried about that external validation from that set group of people.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Yeah. There is a segment that I wanted to get to, and we should get right into it here, Rich, which is being your authentic self in different rooms comes at a tax. And I think young men are very observational. They learn this quickly. You might have been young, wild, and free when you were in high school and you were in college, you had a mohawk, you had tats, you spoke freely. If your dad was kind of a wild degenerate with wild, crazy political views, you kind of adopted that from him, even though you may have not believed it. And you kind of go into the world learning, oh shit, I can't be this type of person everywhere I go. I can relate to that because I'm from the East Coast. My family's from New York. I was raised in Jersey. I have a specific way of communicating. I'm loud, I could be abrasive sometimes, I'm insanely opinionated. And I remember getting into the workplace early in my life, Rich, and realizing, damn, people keep popping me over the head and sending me to the penalty box or sending me to the principal's office or sending me to speak to HR every time. I have a pretty normal, honest moment. It was pretty standard in my life. I I've always been able to express myself. And what happens is you could see the world slowly shaving my claws down. So I'm less and less like the wild animal I was before I got domesticated by the workplace. And I want to discuss the tax that comes with being yourself, being your authentic self in different rooms. Why do you think that's an issue, Rich? Because I feel like you can be yourself maybe in one room, but in the room where you're hanging out with your girlfriend's family, you might not be that guy. In the other room on social media where all your coworkers are following you, can you still be yourself on LinkedIn? Can you still be yourself? I think this is a challenge for young men because there's so many rooms that they live in. And muting yourself is probably the best thing to do because you don't want to show too much of your own personality.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

Yeah, that's a great point. And that's an interesting nuance that we definitely need to jump into, right? Because I feel like you should have the ability to read different rooms and understand which version of yourself should be showing up and how you can turn that knob volume of your personality up or down, depending on what room you're in. But you should be able to have the ability to do that. For example, if you're showing up to your girlfriend's parents and her father is like a very stern guy, is just ex-military, very serious, zero bullshit, right? Maybe the funny guy in you shouldn't show up in those interactions because this guy is a stone cold, zero fun, zero jokes type of guy. So maybe that fun personality that you have should be dialed down when you're around him. And just like that example, just many different aspects of like you should be able to turn the knob of your personality up and down depending on what rooms you're in. I think the cautionary tale is when you modify yourself too too much and you overcompensate for dialing that knob down, right? Because you feel like, man, I can't be myself anywhere I go. So I just keep the knob dialed all the way to zero, and you're showing up everywhere a muted man. That is the problem that we're here to discuss today.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

I think an oversanitized man is the muted man. When you're oversanitized, that means that you're acceptable for every single person in the world. You're almost like a politician. Grandma will like you, a young person will like you, the cool influencers on TikTok will like you. You're just always speaking not to show who you truly are, but to make yourself conveniently able to fit in every room. So a muted man is a sanitized man, but that doesn't work when you're trying to live your truth, when you're trying to genuinely be happy. You can only bottle who you are, but for so long. So my cautionary tale to the young man listening to this episode is a very simple marketing rule that I live by. I've been doing marketing for 20 years professionally. I'm a project manager at a major record label. This is a rule that I have for product. And when I was going through the show script today, it hit me. Oh, this actually applies to this episode. And the rule of thumb is if your product is for everybody, it's for nobody. Apathy is the worst feedback any entertainer could get. If someone can just acknowledge that you exist for the two minutes that you're speaking to them, and then they will never remember who you are. They can never remember your name, they don't know who you are, where you're from, any expressions you've had, anything that makes you unique, anything that makes you funny or interesting, you don't want to be a product for everybody. Because if you're for everybody, you're for nobody. And that rule doesn't just, you know, work for music, it works for everything in life. Imagine being a guy that introduces themselves to a girl in a room full of other guys. And if that girl left and she spoke to her friend and was like, hey, I met Eddie. Eddie said he met you at the party. And her first response was, I don't remember meeting that guy. I don't know who he was. Knowing damn well that she had a five-minute conversation with you, that means you're insanely sanitized. You're a muted man. You're somebody that just goes through the world, easy peasy, don't ruffle any feathers, you don't shake any trees, you're just friendly with everybody. We're not telling this guy to be mean, be angry, be a dickhead. We're saying stop suppressing your own personality to fit in every room because that makes you the least memorable. And that's probably the reason why you feel upset, you feel lost, you feel misguided because you lost yourself in the process.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

I love that, Jess. And I'd reframe that to say that you became the safe man, right? You're safe at work, you're safe with your significant other, you're safe with your friends. And you know what happens when you're so safe that you don't allow any rejection or judgment of you? You become numb and harder for people to connect with, right? You're just this thing that exists.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Rich, I think that's a good angle if you position it towards young men dating, right? Like the safe man is probably the least memorable man.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Absolutely. And in a world of dating, when a woman is trying to find her man, right, and the diamond in the rough and the guy that's going to give her an amazing life, she's looking for that spark, that guy that appeals to her, that shows up differently than every other man she's ever had before. And if you're playing it safe, right? If you're not showing a little bit more of yourself, of your uniqueness, your personality, what about you makes you special, people are just gonna glance right over you and eventually you're gonna just be ignored by the world.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Yeah, it's kind of messed up because most of our episodes come back to like the same five common themes. And I think it's pretty obvious when you go through the show notes and you unpack the muted man, the safe man, the sanitized man. However, you want to frame this type of guy, the real underlying issue is there's a fear of friction because you don't want to show your true self because you don't know how people are gonna react to it. So it's better to lay low and not show my true self. There's a fear of judgment from the tribe, right? Like that's the reason why you don't want to show your true self. You don't want to let people know, man, I love anime. Man, I love Korean movies, man, I love silent films, man, I like wearing really loud colors. I just think it's something fun. I like being expressive with my clothes. That all comes from being in fear of what the tribe is going to think about you. And that judgment paralyzes you so you decide, fuck it, I'm just not gonna do anything. I'd rather lay insanely low so I don't become a topic of discussion for anyone. That's really the underlying issue here, Rich.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

Yeah, absolutely. I would love to get into some ways and basically the cautionary tale of what is the cost of continuing to be a muted man, right? Like there is a big disconnect when you become this muted man because you're moving further away from your personality and what makes you you, and that has an opportunity cost, right? So I think we should definitely unpack some sort of uh actionable ways that this man can turn back the volume of his life and become an unmuted man.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Well, I mean, I think the most valuable takeaway from this episode, if you're talking about what is the greatest cost of being someone that is just unforgettable, I mean unmemorable is that alone. Is it like no one will ever remember you? You will get passed up at every opportunity in life. And if that's who you are, then that's fine. I don't think this episode is for the guy who is genuinely chill, genuinely relaxed, someone that truly is differentiated. He don't give a fuck what happens in the world. He just kind of does his own thing. This is for the young man that's thinking, damn, I'm losing my personality. I look at old photos and videos of myself, and I don't even know who I am anymore. That is what this episode is for. And if you're experiencing that, you better believe that the woman that you love is no longer interested in you the way she was before because you're not that guy anymore. She's probably looking for excitement. She's looking for the guy she met, your coworkers. When you interviewed with them, you had all these highlights on your resume. You had all these things that made you seem like not only you were somebody worth hiring today, but you are somebody that is worth investing with into the future because they're investing in your potential, what you can become. The muted man is somebody that just the conveyor belt of his life has become flat and even and there's no growth. And you've recognized that there's no growth in your life. If you recognize there's no growth, imagine all the people around you that depend on banking on your competence, your ability to grow, and they can grow with you. If you stop becoming a man who's growing, Then the world has nothing to depend on you for. So being someone that recognizes this, the greatest accountability that's going to come from it is you can lose a lot if you stop becoming someone that, you know, doesn't have it anymore.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

I think you said it, Justice, you lose opportunity, bro. If you become that overlooked man who's always muted and always safe, that no one sees the uniqueness and that spark that he has as an individual. No one ever thinks about you. And, you know, I think one of the simple things that I would share with our viewers that I think would help is just when you're trying to become the unmuted man and really show up for yourself and start to exude a little bit more of your personality in different circles. Start with not over explaining yourself. Like I know some guys that start conversations with like, oh, this might be corny, or I know this sounds stupid, but you know, they're prefacing their opinions with like a safe word, almost like, uh, I don't know if they're gonna like what I have to say, but this might be corny, this might be stupid, but and then insert opinion, insert joke, insert statement, right? Stop doing that, bro, because you're not delivering the message with the confidence that you need, and you're not delivering it with your true self, right? Like with your ultimate personality uh involved.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

Yeah, the notes and the research have a word for what you just said, Rich, and it's called pre-rejection. Pre-rejection is when you're sitting in a meeting at work or you're sitting in a classroom, and you have a thought, an original thought, something that you feel is right in that moment, and it it bubbles up to your brain, but you psych yourself out when you're letting the other person speak, you're thinking to yourself, like, damn, I have a crazy idea, I want to share it. Damn, but do I want to share it? Because my coworker that always teases me is here, and I don't want them to say anything about me. So in your mind, you draft up an idea, you go to fire it off, and then you stop yourself. But why do you stop yourself? Why the pre-rejection? The pre-rejection comes from a lack of confidence, and the lack of confidence comes from knowing that if I create friction, I get friction. So if there's no friction, I have no problem. If I create a moment to speak, then I'm gonna get judged. But if I don't speak, there's no judgment. If I speak up and I say something wrong, I'm gonna get teased. But if I don't say anything, I won't get teased. So that feeling is all a feeling of, again, not wanting to be judged by the tribe, playing it safe. And you know what the body tells yourself when you shut down that idea or that thing you wanted to say in a meeting? It says, you know what, you're good. Don't worry about it. We like being safe. And that right there is what the problem is because you could have said something that could have changed the opinion about you to the entire room. If you're in school, what you could have said something could have got the attention of the teacher, could have raised your GPA, or you could have got the attention of the pretty girl in the room, the girl you're attracted to, where she's like, oh shit, I didn't realize that guy was funny. I didn't realize how much attention that guy was paying. He seems pretty charming. You don't get an opportunity to brush against the world and show them your personality. Yeah, if you got some edges, sparks will fly when you brush up against people. But what you're doing is you're vetting out the people who don't like you and making room for the people who do like you. But when you delete that whole mental conversation and you don't say anything, you don't do anything, you just keep it chill, that's where the problem lies. Because safe is safe, but safe doesn't create progress.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Yes, bro. And listen, you have to find the ability to be unapologetically you, right? At the end of the day, just if you really think about it, you have to free yourself from that external validation, from that external judgment of people. That external judgment might not even be necessarily bad, right? They might not even be judging you negatively, they might be judging you positively, like, oh, damn, Eddie spoke up in a meeting. We didn't know he was very articulate. We didn't know that he had some great ideas to share, right? So that judgment could even be something positive, but you never allow that opportunity to happen if you don't become unapologetically you, right? You have to free yourself from that external judgment because overcoming that fear of judgment and rejection is what's going to allow you to have a little bit more opportunities in your life. 100% agree with you, bro.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Rich, there was a section that I feel like we have to get to right now because it naturally flows. It's a premise. I want you to follow me here. Yep. It's maturity, naturally becoming more mature, naturally going into your late 20s, early 30s, and in our situation, our 40s. There's a difference between maturing and slowly fading away into the grayness of life, the adulting phase of life, the life that is a bit boring and monotonous, but you keep using the word grown or maturity as a cope for it. I got a few quotes for you, Rich. I want to know your feedback immediately. And you probably know people that have told you this. Bro, you're grown. What do you look like starting a podcast? Bro, you're grown. What do you look like watching MMA with your boys knowing that you gotta be paying bills? Bro, you're grown. What do you look like asking a girl for her phone number? You're a grown man, bro. That's little kid shit. Bro, you're grown. What do I look like begging for a promotion at work? They should know I'm good. When I read those quotes, what comes to mind when you think about maturing versus slowly fading away?

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Yeah, listen, just I don't subscribe to that. I've heard those phrases before, even amongst family. I've heard family say it to like other people in my family. And I feel like that's just them projecting their fears on those people, right? Because if you really conceptualize it, like what is grown? Like, is it when you turn 18? Is it when you're 21 and you can have your first drink of alcohol? Like, what makes you grown and what qualifies another human being to tell another human being, hey, don't do XYZ because that's not grown? It's just it's weird how we place these labels upon people and then shrink them to make them small so that they don't go out to do the things that they really want to do. Bro, at the end of the day, if you love playing video games and you're 21 years old, go out and play video games. Don't overdo it and play video games 12 hours a day, but carve out that time because that's your hobby. That's what brings you pleasure and joy and excitement. Don't lose that spark, man. Play your video games.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

So you're saying when another adult in your experience has told a younger man that is slowly getting a little mustache in their life, something like, oh, you're grown, you shouldn't be doing that. You're saying that is a reflection on the person who's saying it, that they've lost their own meaning and purpose and spark in their lives, and they're trying to dull somebody else's light.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Oh, absolutely. And our community, the Latin American community, is infamous for telling the children in the family, oh, don't do that. Like you're grown, you don't get to play video games. Um, or my son is 13. Sometimes he plays tags with younger relatives.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

The game tag? Tag, tag, like oh shit.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

Yeah, I love that. Tag. I don't know. People are still playing tag. Old school tag, like freeze tag, the whole nine. And I would never tell my son to not play tag because he's too grown for that. That is a spark of innocence in him that he feels like exuding in that moment. And yeah, he may not be six or seven years old to be playing tag with the full joy, but for that moment, he's experiencing happiness, right? It's bringing a childhood memory back to him, even though he's 13, about to be 14 years old. I will never let him lose that spark. So I encourage everyone out there and all of our listeners to bro, don't lose that spark. If there's something that you like to do that may seem kiddish to other people, to your significant other, to your parents, to your coworkers, like let them talk, but don't lose that spark of things that bring you happiness and joy.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Rich, I'm so happy you mentioned happiness and joy and and passion and spark because that's something that I feel very blessed at 40 years old. I still have that in me. I still feel it. And I think it's because I've lived a non-traditional life in the sense that if you do A, you're supposed to do B. And if you do B, then you got to do C. I wouldn't say I'm a rebel. I wouldn't say I'm someone that is trying to go against the grain, but I do find happiness in knowing that I personally have looked over every rock of what is considered the perfect life, and I've vetted it for myself, and I may have tried it even, but then I put it back and I'm like, that's not for me. I don't think I want that at this point in my life. But there is something very toxic. We have a whole episode about this the perfect life trap. And I want to say what I'm saying right now is probably the cousin to the perfect life trap, which is the perfect life script. And that's people saying, Oh, that's Rich. He has the perfect life. Oh, that's Justin, he has the perfect life. Rich, when people say that about you, what do you think that they don't understand about life or your life that is pushing back on this idea of perfect?

SPEAKER_00 31:43

I think people only know of you what you allow them to know at the end of the day. What are what are they judging you for? The 12 beautiful tailor-made pictures that you put on Instagram that looks like you're having an amazing life. That's an external validation of you, right? You're posting the best versions of yourself on the internet, and this becomes the image that the external world views you in, right? They don't see that you were struggling 10 minutes before you took that image of you being on a yacht or et cetera, et cetera, right? And listen, people I think are a linchpin in this conversation just because depending on who you surround yourself with is how you either become the muted man or the unmuted man. And I'm of the mindset as an individual that you can't possibly think that you are for everyone and everyone is for you. And you should always try to gravitate to the people that allow you to be your truest self. I work with a team of over 12 guys, but there's like two that I connect with on a personal level because they speak my language. Yep. I could be more honest with them. They naturally, you know, we flow in conversation, and there's a little bit of uh mutual respect and trust. Like you build all that over time with people, but definitely have the ability to find who those people are. Like weed out the people you feel like you need to perform around and find the two or three guys that you really connect with because those guys would allow yourself the freedom to be your true and honest self.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

How do you avoid yourself from dulling in maturity, dulling as you become older, dulling as you go from 25 to 30, 30 to 35? How do you avoid that inevitable decay of your personality as you get older? Is you find a flock. You find a flock of weird and interesting people that are kind of like you. And it's almost like this weird game of uh where's Waldo in a world where everyone looks exactly the same, you'll see your fellow flock member by being like, this dude laughed at some dark shit that happened today at work. And I wanted to laugh, but I didn't laugh. But this guy laughed. I think we have the same kind of like weird humor. This guy's a sports guy. I'm in a company where there's not a lot of sports guys. I'm gonna see if this dude wants to go hang out and watch sports after work because the NBA playoffs are on or the MMA fight is this weekend. You find your flock by flocking. And in order to flock, you have to go outside in the world and do things that are not atypical. This is how you reverse entropy. This is how you reverse the slow decay of getting older and losing your purpose, losing your spirit, losing that good youthful energy that you used to have. And it's crazy because we see a lot of young men, even in their late 20s, Rich, to me, and that's still a young, like a really young guy. We already have seen young men in our community admit, man, I feel like I'm losing myself in the day-to-day. I feel like I'm losing myself in my nine to five. I don't even know who I am anymore. Bro, I saw a picture of myself in high school. I don't even know who the fuck that guy is. That right there is what we're talking about. You can't stop yourself from growing older, maturing, and becoming wise. And the more smarter you become, the more cynical and negative you become because you stop saying a lot of the lies in the world. But that doesn't mean you have to destroy your inner child. And I think that's what we're fighting for in this episode. When you mute yourself, you've officially tapped out. And we don't want to talk about what comes after that. And we have episodes about what comes after that. But the muting of a man is the beginning of the end.

SPEAKER_00 35:35

Yeah, bro. The lost of your inner innocence, just that's really what this episode is about. Is there a freedom when you see your son playing tag that you feel in yourself? Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

You're like, bro, he's just having a good time. Would you be mad if somebody tried to rush his maturity?

SPEAKER_00 35:49

Absolutely. I mean, I'm I get mad at him for trying to rush his maturity because I tell him, Jensen, everything takes time, right? And eventually you will mature into things that you're allowed to do. There's a lot of movies that he wants to watch that are R-rated. And I'm like, dude, there's a time in your life where you're gonna be able to watch all these movies, but right now, at 13 is not the right time.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

What is it about that, Rich? Is just the innocence? Like, what is it about that that you're trying to preserve for him as someone that is obviously older than him?

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Yeah, I mean, listen, I think the content that you consume ultimately cultivates your worldview, right? So there's certain things that I'm just not ready for him to see yet, right? Like we try to watch Game of Thrones, and I forgot in the first episode of the first season, somebody gets beheaded, and I'm like, oh shit, I forgot that happened. Oh man, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

Bro, Buddy is fucking his sister in the first episode.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

Yes, bro, yes. And I was like, okay, turn off. Yeah, my bad, you're not ready for this yet. So just like that example, there's a lot of things that I'm not ready for him to see yet. But I want to get back to a point that you touched on because I think it's super important. There gets to a point in a man's life where you allow the world to happen to you, right? And it's such a weird nuance, right? Like you graduate college or you graduate high school, you enter the workforce, you're around new people, new coworkers, you build a new group of friends, you're going to different events and afterwork events and doing different activities. You have different responsibilities, and you slowly start to morph into this like numbers of just someone who just is going about life day to day and is becoming robotic and very systematic. And bro, you used to be the fitness guy, but now you no longer go to the gym. You used to like draw cartoons and anime. Now you're not doing anything creative, you're not going to museums and looking at art, right? There's a lot of things that life will do to your inner innocence that will separate you more from that inner child that you have, from that personality that you once had. And I think that's a super interesting nuance just that we should unpack because it's also the life that you've built for yourself, right? That changes, that also alters your personality and how you show up.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yeah, Rich, there's a simple question that I ask myself whenever I feel like I'm in a funk or I'm in a negative state of mind or I'm not being myself, is I'll just ask myself when was the last time I really enjoyed myself and I felt safe when I was enjoying myself? When was the last time I felt like the most me? And I was able to just dive into whatever I was doing and let my personality loose, let my energy loose? It's a very simple question you can ask yourself. And while I'm asking it, if you're listening, pause the podcast right now. Pause the YouTube video right now. Rich, ask yourself that question. When was the last time you felt like the most you? When was the last time you felt unhinged, like you were having a good time and you were free of judgment, free of people peer pressuring you? Well, when was the last time you felt that?

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Just a couple months ago, I was at a work trip in Aspen, Colorado, and I did a four-hour snowboarding session, like one-on-one, and I busted my ass so many times, and I made a fool out of myself, and I was holding hands with the instructor because he was guiding me like a little kid. Yep, yep. But it was so liberating being on that snow mountain, just like breathing that brisk cold air, no worries, not worrying about bills or responsibilities, just doing something for me that feels fun, and I'm learning something new in that moment. That felt so liberating. Man, you got it.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

That is essentially the little shining light that is in the dark cloud of this episode. You got it. That's it. There's nothing else that needs to be said. You were doing something challenging. You were doing something freeing. You were doing something so different that you were having an out-of-body experience. And most importantly, and I got to give you credit for this in your late 30s, you were being judged, but you were free of whatever the fuck anybody thought about you, and you were freeing yourself of the judgment from the tribe, probably because everybody else was falling. That right there is a microcosm of what we're talking about. When was the last time a young man has done that? Outside of going to work, hanging out with his girls' family, making sure he's the best person he can be for everybody else. When was the last time he was happy about being himself?

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Yeah, well, I I needed to hear that from you too, bro. When was the last time you felt uh that feeling?

SPEAKER_01 40:37

Well, I I have a long story, and I and I'll make it short for the sake of the podcast, but it was a new girlfriend. Life is great, life is amazing moment of my life. And Rich, you know about this. You've been my friend for a long time. There was a good two or three year period where I was absolutely lost in the sauce of love and hanging around different people. I remember being with someone that was so culturally different than me that it took me completely out of the realm of who I was on the day-to-day into a whole new world of being around people that I had no clue culturally how they lived. I'm talking about people that were in the world of banking. I'm talking about going to different countries during the summer when you have a four-day weekend. I'm talking about spending a lot of money in a time where I didn't have a lot of money, so I'm putting everything on my credit card. I'm talking about visiting a girl's family that didn't like joking around, they didn't like music, and they had no idea what it was to look at the world from a lighthearted perspective when you grow up broke. These people had a lot of money. And all they spoke about was investments and your career. Which by the way, there's nothing wrong with that. Oh, and politics. They love talking about politics and they hated sports. If I lined all those things up and I told you, do you see Justin doing this? You're rich as my best friend. Does that seem like a place I would be living in or a place people I would hang out with? No, absolutely not.

SPEAKER_00 42:06

Especially the sports part.

SPEAKER_01 42:07

Yeah, yeah. You know my mom, you know my family. We're lighthearted, we're funny, we like dancing, we like teasing each other, and we love sports. We love competition. My family is very adrenaline-driven. We like to party, we like to dance, we like to be competitive. I found myself in a relationship with a girl that did none of the above. And that relationship ended very tragically. Not because the relationship ended, because I didn't even know who I was when the relationship was over. Bro, in that relationship, no lie, in three years, not that it was her fault or anybody's fault. I gained about 30 pounds. I stopped hanging out with my friends from college and high school, and I was peer pressured to move in with my girl because her father said a real man moves in with their partner and they figure it out. But I didn't have a lot of money at the time. So immediately I just literally took who I was to that moment and I turned myself inside out to try and accommodate, to try to be somebody I wasn't. I had all these opinions about politics. I had all these opinions about how her family was living that I didn't agree with. But I just stood quiet. I turned the knob down every time I had an opinion because I didn't want to be disruptive. I turned that knob down so much that I muted myself. And I just became a dude sitting in the passenger seat of my own life. And I'll never forget that time of my life because that was some of the saddest moments of my life. Because I remember being in the shore with her and her family doing shit that they wanted to do, playing games that they like playing, and thinking to myself, like, I hate swimming, I hate being out in the sun, I hate playing this fucking horseshoe game that these guys play all day. I hate talking about politics. What am I doing here? I remember thinking that. What the fuck am I doing here? But I was just Mr. Go with the flow. I was Mr. It Is What It Is. I was the Sigma male, I was the guy who was just calm. I was detached. I was I was removed from everything. And I had to pay the price of being that guy. And Uncle Sam came for that tax when we broke up because I let go of all my friends. I let go of my body. I didn't take care of my body. I did not prioritize myself. I had a lot of debt because I was trying to keep up with the Joneses in this relationship. And when Uncle Sam came for my taxes, I had to start from scratch. And that was a fucking rude awakening. And I will never, ever, ever fall for that again because I muted myself to the point where my life was miserable. And I will never do that again, Rich. And I had to learn that lesson the hard way. And that came from having the perfect life. I had the life is good syndrome. I had a new girlfriend. I changed my whole identity just to fit into a world that wanted nothing to do with me. That's really what this episode is about, man. That shit comes at a tax. You're not going to get away with not being yourself and hiding who you really are.

SPEAKER_00 44:56

Yeah, I agree with you. Man, I love you sharing that honest moment, bro, because I think it speaks to directly what this episode is about. And one aspect just that we haven't touched on, but is the end result and how this topic becomes extreme for the guy who's muted is there's some guys that create this new profound identity that they've cultivated because of content they've consumed on the internet. And now they present themselves as the stoic guy. Like, bro, I'm just stoic. Like, not I can't be bothered by anything. I am numb. Uh, nothing affects me. My posture is is upright, right? Like, I don't let outside forces affect my emotions. So we definitely gotta speak directly to this guy who became stoic when he really wasn't, because he feels like that's how he should show up in the world.

SPEAKER_01 45:53

Yeah, Rich. When we think about the real word stoic, not the commercialized barcode, I'm selling you a course to become more removed from your life problems. Those are two different things. Understand that you're being sold a prescription when somebody has a YouTube platform or a TikTok platform that only has stoic content, that is an AI voice with a video of Abraham Lincoln and a video of Roman gladiators. They are tricking you into believing that if you reduce yourself and you remove yourself from the world, that the world will come to you. That's not how this shit works. Stoics are people that are definitely calm under fire, but they are very capable of protecting themselves. They are very capable of having personalities. When you think about all the stoics that are in all that literature that people like to use as references, do your research. These guys weren't removed. They were very much involved and they were very much charismatic. When I think about the Romans, these guys were politicians. They were good at bringing people together, they were good at getting people to believe in their mission. You can't do that if you're working under the current model of stoicism. Being removed, being unbothered, being dejected. I don't care. I'm Mr. I don't care. Bro, why would I even care about that? That's typically someone that thinks they're operating under the idea of a stoic or a sigma male. A sigma male is, you know, a guy that has no labels. I don't have any labels. I just go with the flow. I'm masculine, I'm unbothered. I find a problem with those prescriptions, not necessarily the young men that want to live that way, but my problem is not with them. My problem is with the people that peddle these labels that these young men have to live in. And to me, it's a jail. Now you live in that jail and nothing in your life is changing. And you're watching your life fade away slowly, and you're not actually solving any of your problems. And we have the research, Rich. We have the research. We can see that more men are falling into this life theory. But on the other end, we're noticing that more men are speaking, the same men that claim they're they're stoics, the same men that claim they're Sigma males. These are the same guys that are on AI chatbots 90 to 120 minutes a day talking to an artificial intelligence chatbot that is speaking them through their problems, and they're just venting to them like a form of therapy. Why would someone that claims they're unbothered speak to an AI chatbot for 90 minutes a day? To me, something's wrong. Something's off. Somebody's lying. And I wanted to end this episode with this segment because I feel like this is the beginning of the end. When you keep muting yourself, you end up in this paradox where you say you're unbothered, but you go online to either self-medicate, you use cheap dopamine, or you're somebody that's always talking to a chat bot trying to find a solution to your problems. It's simple. Do you want the answer or do you not want the answer?

SPEAKER_00 48:59

Yeah, that's an interesting concept. It's like you mute yourself for the world, but then when you go home, you're in this self-made hell of mental gymnastics by you trying to find solutions for the way you feel via chatbots who are not really real. They're just regurgitating the average of what it thinks that you want to hear, right? So you're medicating yourself with content or information that's self-validating. That's what the chatbots are partly what they're designed to do. They're designed to validate whatever insecurities you may be presenting them. They're designed for you to feel good so you keep coming back for more answers of the things you have questions for. And, you know, you you end up becoming in this loop of just like gathering information from a biased piece of artificial intelligence. And I don't think that's the answer either.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

Yeah, I think again, the paradox is pretty simple. You think you're being one thing, but the truth is your actions. The truth is, what do you do on the daily? What is the reality that you're living in? You think you're operating under this label, stoic. I'm operating under this label, Sigma male, but your actions tell me everything about what you really want. You could claim you're vegan, you operate under vegan or pescatarian, but every now and then when no one's looking, you're having a piece of filet, steak, pork. What you do tells me everything. And what the research shows me is that if we have 50% of Sigma males, 50% of Stoics, but yet the numbers for AI chatbot companions, that's what they're called, chatbot companions, those numbers are astronomically high. Ever since this thing was invented, motherfuckers have been mashing the buttons to make sure they get as much advice out as possible. Why do you think they choose that option, Rich? Because it's free of judgment.

SPEAKER_00 50:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 50:57

They know nobody is on the other end that could judge them. Why do you think they indulge in AI porn? Why do you think they indulge in OnlyFans? Because they know on the other side is no friction. So either you're one or the other, I'm confused, but there's a difference between prescription and reality. There's a difference between what you say you do and what you actually do. And what I'm calling bullshit because a lot of these young guys are doing something that tells me that these guys want love, these guys want friendship, these guys want to be a part of something. These guys want to express themselves. They want to be unmuted.

SPEAKER_00 51:29

I agree. And if you take all those concepts and put them in a melting pot, think about how if you're someone out there who's trying to find the solution for this, right? And you're consuming a lot of different content and you're in practice talking to people and trying to see which version of yourself works best with other people. Think about how much shape-shifting you're doing. Yes, and how much confusion you're introducing to the world about you. Like one day you show up stoic, the next day you show up safe, the next day you're expressive. Like people become confused about you, and they're like, bro, like, is this guy real? Is this guy performing every time he comes around? Like, no one can process like your personality because you're just figuring things out for yourself and just showing up a different way every time people interact with you. And I think the cautionary tale with that is people start to lose respect for you, just yeah, when you come to them with a different personality every time they communicate with you.

SPEAKER_01 52:32

Well, let me give you a scenario, Rich. You're hanging out with your friend, he's single, he's been single for five years, and he tells you, I'm single by choice. You guys go out for drinks, obviously, you're in a relationship, you're just hanging out with him. You see a pretty girl at the bar, she sparks a conversation with him. She basically does everything but touches his thigh to tell him she's interested. You notice that. She walks away, he doesn't ask her for his number. You know what the Sigma male will say? He'll say, eh, it's fine. I'm calculated. I'm not invested in women. The thirstier you are, the more aggressive you are, the more vulnerable you'll become. I don't want to be that. I uh I'm someone that's unbothered. I'm calculated. What is your response to that, Rish? If you were sitting with him there. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

So what someone else is going to uh indulge in the beauty of uh of a woman caressing his thigh. Yeah. You stay stoic all you want. Um you're going to get passed up, my boy.

SPEAKER_01 53:31

Yeah. I mean, when I see someone say they're unbothered and calculated, they're removed, they're detached, they're expressing their sigma male, their hypermasculinity. To me, that just translates into I am afraid to get rejected. So if I don't do anything, nothing happens. And I have given that a title. And now I live under that title. That feels like sour grapes. That feels like cognitive dissonance. That feels like somebody that wants something. They know they need to be vulnerable and risk rejection to get it. So they use all these other things as a cope. Rich, I've been watching the FX series, Shogun. I don't know how you watched it. I haven't watched it. I heard about it though. Bro, incredible show. But in Shogun, it's all about samurais, warriors, and shoguns, which I just learned about. But in the show, there are samurais that are very active. They get to it, they get to the swords, they get active, they gotta protect their village, they gotta protect their family, they gotta protect their people, their pride, their honor. Nowhere in that show is the samurai who is the most dangerous, the most lethal samurai. Nowhere in that show is a guy that sits on top of a mountain and meditates all day. Meanwhile, there's a war going on at the bottom of the mountain, and they just sit up there and say, I'm unaffected by everything around me. Even though I can kill everybody, I choose not to opt in. I'm unbothered. That's not reality. There is no character in history that lived that way, that was truly effective, influential, or put a dent into the universe, let alone change his own destiny. And that's all we're really asking when we bring up this topic. And this is not the first time we brought it up. We're calling bullshit. We're calling cat. You guys are scared. There's nothing wrong with hopping off the porch and getting active and trying to figure out your life. Saying that you're unbothered and removed is not a strength. That's cool if you want to live that way, but don't make it a thing that's a strength. Those are just labels and prescriptions that people that sell you shit have given you. And they're gonna sell you a course and they're gonna put barcodes on everything. They're gonna give you an energy drink that's gonna make you feel more stoic than you were what the day before you got up. I just want to give that precautionary tale because I feel like a lot of young men are falling for this shit. And we're seeing it in the numbers, Rich. A lot of these guys are finding other outlets to get that energy off. And what they really have to be doing is addressing their issues dead on because you've muted yourself to the point where you don't even know who you are, and now you have this fake identity. Stop giving your fear cute labels.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Yeah. Listen, I think at the end of the day, going down the stoic rabbit hole ultimately becomes performative, and you continue to detach yourself from who you truly are. I can't emphasize this enough, just like there's more respect and more praise for the guy who's like naturally goofy, charismatic, being silly. Bro, I remember one time we I was in LA and you took me to like uh do improv and I was so embarrassed, bro, because I'm like, I'm the serious guy, I'm serious, Rich, and you had me doing all these like weird reenactments and acting out. And bro, it was a version of myself getting out of its shell, which I do like, but you have to find different ways to put yourself in situations like that where you might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but guess what? That moment is gonna extract that inner kid in you, and then you start to feel alive again, and then you start to feel like, damn, I need more of this. Like, this is actually part of my personality, right? Like, you're the guy who stopped dipping his toes into the pool, but the one time you jump in the pool, you're like, damn, I forgot how much I love swimming. Like, I should do this more often. Like, great point. This is what we're saying to people is remove yourself from the external validation, external judgment, that hard fucking turtle shell that you've built for yourself. Like, nah, I can't do this because I'm mature, I'm grown, I'm this. Bro, remove yourself from all those labels and get back down to the brass tacks of who you are as a person, what your personality is, and ultimately what brings you happiness and joy in life.

SPEAKER_01 57:50

Yeah, Rich, I do want to read some of the terms that came up when we were doing research for this episode. And this is what hundreds and thousands of people are Googling as it relates to this episode. These are SEO terms. I'm gonna read them and I want to know your response because this is what real life humans are punching into their computers or asking Chat GPT these questions. How do I stop losing myself as I get into my 30s? Why do older men become more silent as they get older? I'm finding it hard to get my dad to react to anything. How do I get my voice back in a relationship? Losing yourself trying to fit in. Why does this keep happening? What do I gotta do to be my real self? Why do men go quiet in long-term relationships after a while? How do you stop losing yourself at work or in a relationship? How do you find yourself again? These are search terms in the last year that have over a hundred thousand queries. What comes to mind when you hear that, Rich?

SPEAKER_00 58:51

Like I said before, you're letting the world happen to you, bro. And I think that that's the safe life plan. Because if you don't contest anything, if you don't rattle any feathers, if you don't share your opinions, if you don't show up as your true self, you build a world around you that you feel people accept better, right? And that place is comforting and that place is safe, and I can never get into any trouble. I'm free of judgment, I'm free of rejection because I've built this safe life plan. But at the end of the day, that's the cautionary tale is you've removed yourself from your truest and most honest self, and this is why you feel empty and broken and ultimately a muted man.

SPEAKER_01 59:34

The question we started the episode with, and we can end with it, Rich, is would you rather be liked by everyone, or would you rather be respected by yourself? That's really what this whole thing comes down to.

SPEAKER_00 59:47

Let us know in the comments. It's for you to answer. Facts. Facts. There you have it, man. Failures podcast. Listen, as we always say, we're not selling you anything, we're not selling a course or ebook or pretend to be these internet gurus. We're just two guys in their late 30s that want to share information to the younger generation. And if you like this episode or any other episodes, please share it with a friend, man. It's the only way we get the word out. Rich, I'm 40 now.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:17

Yeah, not late 30s, early 40s. All right, we're out of here. Failure podcast. Share this with somebody who you think it'll help. Peace. Peace.