Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, Warrior Kings and welcome to the Warrior Kings podcast. I'm your host, Michael Riggs, here to assist you on your journey to unlocking masculinity, manliness and the warrior spirit within an overall leveling up your life. So again, welcome. It's good to have you here today. I'm feeling good. I've been listening to a lot of Frank Sinatra, so my mood is up. Today on the Warrior Kings podcast, we're going to be talking about how to value yourself as a man. And this relates to your acceptance of yourself as a man in both the world and in your relationships. Because many men these days feel very undervalued in their day to day lives. So that's what we're going to be getting into today. If it's your first time here, my name is Michael Riggs. I'm a full time author, artist and entrepreneur. And I say all of the things that most men don't want to hear. So if that's not your thing, definitely don't subscribe to this podcast. But if it is, definitely stick around. Because I have attained tons of valuable information over the years to level up my own life that I'm here to share with men all over the world, to inspire them to live better lives, to level up their lives, to level up their success, to level up their relationships with women, and to overall level up your life. So definitely stick around if that's something that you're into. And let's dive right into this topic of the day, which is how to value myself as a man. Do we live in a world where men are less valued? And the answer to this question for yourself might come directly from your experiences in life as a man. But many would argue that many men are less valued in our modern world, in this modern setting, in this modern way of life. In many cases, many men feel that it's not even okay to be a man anymore. It's something shameful, it's something wrong. You have to suppress those masculine traits about yourself in order to fit in with society and people. And this sparks the debate. Is there a war on masculinity or is there a crisis in masculinity? And I've been in this debate with masculine men with both viewpoints. On one side you have the crowd that says you can be as manly as you want and nobody's going to care. There is no war on masculinity. There is no crisis on masculinity. It's a very small, isolated thing that nobody really cares about. Like you can just be as manly as you want. And on the other side, you have the crowd that sees that there is this huge push, especially in media and entertainment and in the stuff that's put right in front of us, all of the dist actions of the world, that there is this huge push to make men less manly and that views masculine traits and traditional masculine traits as toxic, like there's something wrong with them. And I've even heard the argument that masculinity is one of the causes of all the problems that we've had in the world. And I interpret these two viewpoints as one. The men who are comfortable and okay with being men and their experience in life as a man has been comfortable, and they've lived a mostly fulfilling life as a masculine man. And there might be some level of not having ever experienced a lot of the things that men struggle with these days. They've had the blessing of being around the right people. They've been around people that accept them for who they are as a man. They've been around people who are still living traditional lifestyles and that sort of thing and their schools and their communities and wherever. You know, maybe they had a strong dad growing up who influenced them and taught them what it meant to be a man, which is something that's very lacking in our society these days. They had support in their lives and in their communities and in their workplaces, and they were generally accepted as a masculine man. And then the second crowd you have the men who grew up with no positive male influence in their life. They were always around the wrong people who shamed them and broke them down for their masculine traits. And most of the time, they might not have even had a dad growing up, a strong male influence in their lives at all. And because of this, they are broken down by a world and by a society that tells them that it's not even okay to be a man and that they should be more feminine, leaving them lost, unfulfilled, and without a purpose or even an understanding of who they are, or even an acceptance of who they innately are as a man. And what is the consequence of the latter? Lost, broken men who have no value for themselves. And they succumb to and accept those who have no value for them either. Because if you don't value yourself, you will normalize other people not valuing you as well. And you'll get stuck in these horrible situations where, you know, you feel like you're being walked on, you feel like nobody respects you. You feel like you don't even know who you are. You're kind of lost and broken as a man. And if you feel undervalued by the world and by the people around you, it could be a direct reflection of you not valuing your. Imagine living in a time hundreds or even thousands of years ago, when you're having to fight every day for your survival and the survival of your family and all the people around you. You have a specific trade that you work on tirelessly, some kind of craft. You have to hunt and provide for your family. You have to fight off invaders to your village or people who would threaten to harm you and your family. You would have been constantly protecting and providing. And this is the way of men innately. It would have been very clear to everyone around you that you had value and what your value was. And because of that, you would value. Because of that fulfillment, that purpose, that sense of purpose, you would have strong value for yourself. It would have been very clear that you were valuable. Every day of your life you would have felt strong, right? And every day you would have had to be stronger. You and everyone you know and loved would have died. Everyone around you would have valued you for this. They would have valued you for your masculine traits and for your value as a man. And this is the dilemma of this comfortable modern age. Depending on what you do for most men, it isn't clear that you're providing value. Many men don't feel fulfilled in their work and they feel this sense of a lack of purpose. They feel like they have no purpose. The crafts and trades have been replaced with desk jobs and screens. The hunt has been replaced with food from delivery services and grocery stores. The invaders to your village are out of sight and out of mind. The protecting and providing has been replaced with security systems, direct deposits and auto pay. And this way of living makes many men feel lost and complacent because we still have that warrior spirit that wants to be showing our value, protect and providing, fighting off invaders to our village, going out into the forest to hunt and drag our kill back home to our family. And there is this sort of giving up that is taking place. There's this widespread of complacent apathy within men. So with all of that being said, how do you value yourself as a man these days when after all that, it might sound a little bit impossible, but it's not. And we're going to get into it right now, dude. And I'm going to share with you five actionable things that you can do to begin valuing yourself more as a man and number One is to be the best possible version of yourself that you be. Because you can't value yourself if there is nothing to value. If you're just living every day in apathy and complacency like a lazy slob, not pursuing any higher version for your life, just waiting for things to get better, not practicing self care at all or self improvement. There is nothing for you to value in yourself. So if you feel undervalued in the world and in your relationships and in your friendships and in your workplace, it could be because you don't value yourself. You need to become the best possible version of yourself that you can be. And this starts with self care. You need to practice self care every day. You need to level up every aspect of your life. Never stop researching and learning how you can be better. Nobody is ever going to be perfect and everybody has things that they can improve in their lives. And if you feel like you don't value yourself as a man, you need to start creating things that you value in yourself. Practice self care every day. Begin with physical fitness and exercise. Pursue mental clarity in your life. Pursue toughness and resilience in your life. Get better every single day, whatever that means for you. You must constantly, consistently be pursuing growth in your life, self improvement. Develop a continual growth mindset and make yourself better and better and better every single day. Like, did you ever play World of Warcraft back in the day or any RPG MMO like that where you had to level up a character and it took some time. When you first got started, it was like, I want to be level 70 so bad, but I'm only level 10 and it's going to take forever. I'm like grinding away, doing these quests, you know, trying to get all the gear along the way, doing the raids and instances, and it took a lot of time. And then once you were level 70 and you're the most badass dude standing in town, you know, it was like it took some time, you had to get better little by little. Life is the same way. You have to level up your character, which is you, a little bit every day until you get to the point where you value yourself as a man and you value yourself as a person. Level up the character and the avatar that is you and your life. But like I said, it's going to take some time and it's going to be a journey and you need to be okay with that. But if you're not pursuing growth in your life, if you're not making yourself better, you're not going to have the confidence to feel good about yourself. You're not going to have any confidence at all. Because there's nothing to be confident about. There's nothing to value. Begin viewing yourself as a Warrior King and start treating life as a Warrior King would. And level up every aspect of your life. Practice self care every day and begin doing things that make you love you. Begin doing things that make you value you. Do things that make you cheer for yourself, accomplish things, build value for yourself. That's number one. What's wrong, man? I just can't seem to get my life together, dude. You should read my book, Warrior King. It's packed full of wisdom that I attained over the years to level up my own life as a man. I don't read books, bro. Why does that not surprise me? What? Nothing. But hey, good news. Warrior King has an audiobook now. No way. Yeah, you can listen to it anywhere. Whoa. Get your shit together today with the Warrior King audiobook by Michael Riggs. Then I can learn the ways of the Warrior King. You can, my son. Then I can be cool like you.
[00:09:20] Number two on this list is adapt. Sure. Light is different now and the world is going crazy. And what I talked about before, about surviving in the wilds and fighting off invaders to your village and going out on the hunt and all that. Things aren't like that anymore. We have to adapt. The world is different and life is different. Becoming complacent because people don't value men anymore and our masculine traits and then just giving up is like artists being scared that AI is a thing now and that everybody can just type in a prompt in a image or a video or whatever the artistic thing is just pops up in a few seconds. AI is a thing and it's here to stay. You have to adapt and move forward. World is different now. You have to adapt and move forward. You have to show your value as a man and adapt to this new modern world. And there is still a place for strong masculine men. It still exists. In fact, we have a huge need for it. So if you can accept yourself as a man and begin living your life as a man, you're actually contributing in a really great way. Because we're lacking in strong men in this world at this point in history. So that's number two. Adapt to this new world and move forward. And all of this stuff about masculinity being toxic and being a man is wrong. Being masculine is wrong. The world not valuing men for their masculinity and wanting them to be more feminine don't even pay any attention to that. Just be okay with yourself as a man. Adapt and move forward. There's crazy people everywhere, and that's never going to change. There is value in you still as a man. You just have to find it. The number three on this list is pursue greatness in everything that you do. You have to have a purpose for your life. You have to have a calling. You can't value yourself if you don't have a purpose your life. If you don't have purpose in life, you need to find your calling. You need to find out why you're breathing and then pursue that thing relentlessly. Pursue greatness. And I'm a strong believer in stepping outside of the checklist of life. And the checklist of life is like, go to school, get the career, get the dog, marry the wife, get the cars. You know, it's the checklist of life. And many people are just checking boxes on this checklist. And then they get about halfway or three quarters down the way of that list and they realize that they're not fulfilled in their lives. They're like, I have all of this stuff, but something is missing here. Like, what? What, what is missing? I did everything right. Why do I feel so miserable? And that's because the checklist of life is you have to do your own thing. You have to find your own calling, your own purpose, your own fulfillment. You need to do something great with your life. If you're just going to work every day to a job that you hate, coming home every day is a repeat of the last day. You're going to start devaluing your life. You're going to feel lost and complacent. You're going to feel unfulfilled, right? You need to find your purpose, your calling. I believe that there is a purpose and a calling for every person. And it's just a matter of finding that thing and pursuing it relentlessly, even when it seems like it's not working, even when the numbers are low. You know, maybe you're still working that job that you hate while you're building this thing up, while you're watering this plant. But you need to find something to give your life purpose and fulfillment if you're going to value yourself. Because pursuing something, pursuing greatness gives you value to yourself. It increases confidence, it increases self love, it increases, most importantly, fulfillment. Because if you're not feeling fulfilled in your life, you're not going to value yourself as a person, because what are you valuing? You know, I keep going back to that, like if there's nothing to value, of course you don't value yourself. You need to level up your life and you need to be pursuing greatness. Maybe you are at that job that you hate and you hate that job because you want to move up in that company. You've never really stepped out to do that yet or had the confidence to step out and do that yet. You need to pursue greatness in everything that you do and everything that you pursue in order to have value for yourself. So maybe step out and begin working your way up that ladder. Start having conversations, start being more assertive in your life. Start pushing forward, pressing forward, because that's what strong men do. You can't just sit around apathetic, lazy and complacent in your life and then be like, why don't I feel good about myself? Why don't I value myself? Find the purpose and calling for your life and pursue that thing relentlessly. And number four on this list is pretty obvious, but it's practicing self acceptance as a man. What does it mean to be a man? Explore that. Dive into the literature. There are tons of great books. If you want some book recommendations about masculinity and being a man, definitely reach out to me. I have a ton of great titles for you to read to begin this journey, but you need to explore self acceptance as a man. If the question that you're asking is, how do I value myself as. As a man? A great place to start is what does it mean to be a man? Begin exploring that. What is masculinity? You know, it took me 30 years of my life to get to the point where I even asked that question. And it was after my whole life fell apart. I had to level up my life from ground zero and explore what that meant. You have to do some inner work. You have to explore yourself, Find out what you love about yourself. Explore acceptance for those masculine qualities about yourself. Practice self love. You need to dive in, do the inner work. Explore what it means to have value for yourself as a man. And this is a starting point. Thank you for being here today. But this is just a starting point, you know, but you need to constantly and consistently be exploring what it means to be a man and having value and acceptance for that. And this isn't the only podcast either. Like, if you can't get enough like me, and you want to consume as much of this content as possible, there are tons of other podcasts out there as well that talk about this same kind of stuff. You have to be weary of wolves and Sheep's clothing. You know, there are a lot of guys who teach a false masculinity, one that disrespects women, one that is more concerned with cars and money than it is about personal growth and the things that actually matter. But there's tons of content out there. There's videos, there's books. Begin exploring self acceptance as a man. Because it's something that I had to do to level up my own life as well. Like I said, it took me 30 years of my life before I realized that I even needed to do that. I did all the wrong things. I hurt a lot of people and yeah, it was pretty horrible. Until I started leveling up my life as a man and I began the process of accepting myself as a man and made myself more of a masculine man in my life. Every aspect of my life began to level up. So that' that's number four. Practice self acceptance as a man. Make it a priority in your life to explore all of that. Explore what it means to be a man and make it a huge part of your journey. And number five on this list of thingies about how to value yourself more as a man is get around the right people. And if you listen to every episode of this, you definitely have heard me talk about this just recently, but I feel like it's super important. And hey, maybe everybody didn't listen to that episode. But you need to get around the right people. You cannot value yourself if you are around people that break you down and make you feel dumb and silly all the time. For every everything that you do, your value for yourself and who you even are is directly correlated to who you spend the most time with. And you can look this up. This isn't just me saying this. Like there's this old saying that goes something like, if you hang out with five millionaires, you'll be the six and if you hang out with five losers, you'll be the six. That is very, very true. You need to get around the right people. You need to change and shift your environment. If you're hanging out with a bunch of low level goons all the time who just make you feel like crap about yourself and crap about your life, you're not going to value yourself either. It's like being brainwashed all day long by nonsen. That's probably not even true. Like you're probably a super awesome dude. You probably have way more going for you than they ever would, right? If you're seeking personal growth, if you're here today listening to this, you are Taking steps towards being a better person in your life. I bet they haven't even thought about doing that yet. You need to get around the right people, get around success minded men, get around masculine men who will boost you up, truly masculine men who will boost you up in your life and encourage you and teach you and inspire you to be better in your life. You cannot be around people who are breaking you down all the time. Like even if you have a roommate or, or you're living with your parents and maybe your parents are breaking you down all the time and making you feel ashamed about yourself, or your roommate breaks you down all the time, or even your friend group. Like I said, if you're hanging out with a bunch of low level goons all the time, you need to get away from these people. You need to make a plan to step outside that circle. I'm not saying write everybody off and, you know, disown everybody. You can still have contact with these people, you know. I don't know what your situation is. In some situations though, it might be a good idea to get rid of some of these people forever. Obviously not your parents and your family, but if they're losers, man, just drop them and get some new friends or move, move forward, move out of town, man, I don't know. But if you want to level up your life, you have to get around the right people. Because if you feel undervalued in your environment and in your life and in your relationships, it's probably because the people around you don't value you. And while that might be your fault on a certain level because of the way that you have presented yourself in your life as a unvaluable person, it's still not good for you. If you want to value yourself to continue to be around these people who do not value you. So get around success minded people, people who are focused on self mastery, self personal growth, personal development. They want to go somewhere in life and want to take people along with them just like you do. You can't value yourself if you're in an environment that doesn't value you. Humans naturally want to be accepted by the people who are around them. It's like a human thing. Because like I said back in the old days when we were fighting for survival, like there were certain things that we had to do. And getting along with the tribe, getting along with the community was one of those things. Because if you offended the tribe, if you pissed them off, you would have been probably banished or killed or something like that and left to your own Survival, right? Like it was very important to stay cool with the community, to get along with the community, to kind of people please. Because community was way more important back then when you had to fight for survival. And I feel like as humans, we have held on to a lot of that. That's still a part of us. That's why we care so much what people think about us. That's why we try to fit in, is because back in the old days, if we didn't, it would have been bad news. If you're being broken down in your life, you might not even be standing up for yourself because you're naturally wanting to people please and be a part of the community. Right? You need to get away from who are breaking you down. That's just what it comes down to. You need to get away from people who are breaking you down and making you feel less about yourself. And you have to begin valuing yourself and be around people who value you too. Get around people who love you, support you and accept who you are. And definitely get away from people who are shaming you for being a masculine man, because nobody's got time for that. That's crazy. And most importantly, when it comes to this get around like minded men, you have to have a group of brothers to support you in your life and boost you up, build you up. And you need to do the same thing for, for them. Strong men need to come together. There's a huge need for that. I could use some friends myself. I have a huge lack of friends in my life, but it would be great to have a group of strong guys to come together and encourage each other to be better every day of our lives, to level up every aspect of our lives. That's what we do here on the Warrior King podcast. So definitely stick around, subscribe to this podcast because we're building a huge community of like minded men. Everyone is welcome to listen, of course, but this podcast is made for masculine men. So if that's something that you're into, definitely stick around, become part of the community, part of this strong community, this strong army of warrior kings that we are building here. It was so good to have you here today. I hope you got something out of this episode. If you did, definitely reach out to me. I love hearing from you guys. It helps me to keep doing this. If you want to support this podcast, there's a link down in the description called Buy Me a Coffee where you can donate money towards this podcast. I'm doing it for free right now. This isn't monetized. I'm not sponsored or anything like that, so it definitely helps me keep doing this. It gives me that inspirational boost to know that people are listening when I hear from you and when you donate to that page. So thank you guys so much for doing those things again. It was so awesome to have you here today. Get out there and level up every aspect of your life. You're a warrior king. You're awesome. You're killing it. You're going to do great things in this life. I really, truly believe it. You just need to get up off your to make it happen, bro. Thank you guys again. I'll see you on the next one. Bye.
