December 27, 2025 • 22 mins
Let me know your thoughts on the show and what topic you would like me to discuss next.
2025 didn’t break you—it revealed you.
In this powerful year-end solo episode of The Revolutionary Man Podcast, Alain Dumonceaux closes out the year with an honest reckoning for men who started strong, faced pressure, and were forced to confront who they really are.
This episode isn’t about perfection or finishing the journey. It’s about ownership, alignment, and the quiet transformation that happens when a man stops avoiding the truth and starts leading himself with integrity.
You’ll hear:
- Why misalignment always demands payment—and how 2025 collected
- How pressure exposes the cracks men try to hide
- The real turning point where ownership replaces excuses
- What it actually means to become a stronger man without pretending you’re finished
- How pain, when faced honestly, becomes purpose
If this year challenged your marriage, your business, your body, or your sense of direction—this episode will help you close the year grounded, clear, and ready for what’s next.
🎯 Your challenge: Identify one area where you’re being called to live with more integrity—and act on it.
👉 Ready to take the next step? Visit The Revolutionary Man and take the Integrity Challenge.
The strongest men don’t drift.
They decide.
Thanks for listening to the Revolutionary Man Podcast. For more information about our programs, please use the links below to learn more about us. It could be the step that changes your life.
👉To join our movement:
⛰The Integrity Challenge
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_01 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary Man Podcast.
It's a show where men stopdrifting, start choosing, and
learn to lead with integrity inevery area of life.
And I'm your host, Alan D'Monzo.
And as we get started to thisepisode for our final one of the
2025 year, I want to ask you acouple of questions.
And the first one is who wereyou at the beginning of 2025?
(00:22):
Really?
Who were you?
And who are you now aftereverything this year has
demanded of you?
Because if we're truly honestwith ourselves, this year maybe
didn't go quite as planned.
You started with some goals andran into issues with resistance.
Maybe you started with someconfidence and then you started
to meet your edges.
(00:43):
Maybe you even started strong,and somewhere along the way,
life applied pressure to you.
And so here's the truth most ofus choose to avoid, and that is
2025 didn't break us, itrevealed who we are as men.
Today's episode is not aboutperfection, it's about progress.
It's about the man who showedup, even when he was stumbling
(01:06):
throughout this year.
It's also about how pain, whenwe decide to face that honestly,
becomes our purpose.
If you've been tested this year,maybe through your marriage,
your business, body, faith, yoursense of direction, I'd really
like you to stay with me becausethis episode is about closing
the year as the man that youearned on this portion of the
(01:26):
year.
And so this isn't going to be ahighlight reel, but I think it
is going to be a reckoning.
Today we're going to look atwhere you started, what tested
you, and who you're becomingright here in this moment.
Subscribe to the podcast anddrop me a comment about one word
that you would use to describewhat 2025 taught you.
When we get engaged, other mencan find this message and they
(01:49):
get an opportunity to start todo the work that you and I have
been doing this past year.
As this movement continues togrow, we're going to change more
and more families, communities,and lives.
Thank you so much forsubscribing and doing that work
this year with us.
It's been a great pleasure.
With that, let's get on withtoday's episode.
SPEAKER_00 (02:22):
Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his
cluttered mind, misguidedbeliefs, and values that no
longer serve him.
It's time to rely on yourselffor greatness.
It's time to become arevolutionary man.
Stay strong, my brother.
SPEAKER_01 (02:41):
Welcome back, everyone, to the Revolutionary
Man Podcast.
My name is Alan DeMontso and I'mthe host and the founder of our
Band of Brothers Group mentoringprogram.
We've established the challenge.
We've also asked some prettyhard questions.
And so now it's time for us toget into some mindset shifts,
the systems that we're going toneed to use, and the practices
that have built discipline on adaily basis.
(03:03):
Because we all know that adisciplined man doesn't have to
rely on willpower.
We know how fleeting willpoweris.
And so when we can buildstructure, that's going to carry
us when our emotions start tofail us.
So the first point I'd like usto look at is the man that you
were at the start of 2025.
Let's be honest, most of usdidn't begin the year right.
(03:25):
We excited, we set New Year'sresolutions, but it did begin
unexamined.
And it's that distinction thattruly matters in today's
conversation.
When we think about that, theweakness means that maybe we've
lacked capacity, but that's notreally true.
Because if it was trulyunexamined, then it means we had
(03:46):
our power.
We were just a bit out ofalignment.
And so it's a subtle shift forus to make.
Most men started the year in afunctional state, right?
We were capable, responsible,and very productive.
But underneath that competence,something was slightly off.
It's why we fall off on our NewYear's resolutions.
It's why at some point, when wehit our edges, we tend to fall
(04:08):
back to old habits.
If you weren't necessarilyfalling apart, but trying to
hold everything, it cost youdearly, didn't it?
We could be strong at work andpresent enough at home, and
maybe we were reliable toeveryone else.
But internally, where were weat?
Were you tired?
Did you become irritable?
(04:30):
Were you disconnected from yourown signal?
Or did you get trapped in thenoise of life?
Here's the hard truth that mostmen just don't want to admit
that we didn't have a motivationproblem and we didn't have a
discipline problem, but we didhave an avoidance problem.
And how did that show up?
Maybe if you're like me, itshowed up like this.
(04:52):
This is just a season.
I'll deal with it later or nexttime or next week.
And when I think about it, othermen have it much worse.
See, isn't that just a changingperspective?
It was the thing that wasdelaying us.
And when we delay, guess whathappens?
Delay starts collectinginterest.
(05:13):
And what we were really doingwas confusing endurance with our
strength.
And because you just couldn'tcarry all this load, because we
kept delaying, it didn't meanthat load that you were carrying
was right.
Just because we don't collapsedoesn't mean that nothing is
truly misaligned.
Because misalignment doesn'tannounce itself loudly, right?
(05:36):
It shows up so quietly, justlittle pieces for us.
It shows up when we have a shortfuse about life.
In the numb evenings after along and hard day's work.
In the sense that we were livingbeside our life instead of in
it.
Maybe like an NPC.
And so this is the part I reallywant you to hear clearly from
(05:58):
me.
That 2025 didn't arrive topunish you, but it did arrive to
reveal you.
So the pressure didn't createyour struggle.
It just exposed where you hadoutgrown your level of
self-honesty.
That showed up for me aroundJune this year when I looked at
myself and how I was managing myphysical health.
(06:19):
I made a decision to hire aprofessional coach to help me
get on track because I knew thatif I kept lying to myself and
doing the I'll get better onMonday or I'll start again next
week, nothing was truly going tohappen.
So I was completely out ofalignment.
And so when we can recognizethat the year of 2025 truly
(06:40):
didn't break us, didn't breakme, but it did reveal to me
where I was out of alignment.
And so whether we like it ornot, this is where real
transformation begins.
And so misalignment always isgoing to demand a payment.
And in 2025, at least for me, Iknow it sent the invoice.
(07:01):
And so that's going to lead meinto our second point that I
want to talk about today.
And that's the pressure reallyexposed the cracks in my life.
And maybe some of this willresonate for you as well.
The misalignment is when thatbill finally came due for me.
It didn't show up all at once.
It wasn't really dramatic, butit was persistent.
And for most of us, the pressuredidn't arrive as a total
(07:23):
catastrophe, but it arrived asfriction.
The friction for me was leadinga group of men in a theme this
year of living with integrity.
How can you lead others aboutliving a life of integrity when
there's one aspect thateverybody can see and you know
in your heart that you're notliving with integrity?
(07:43):
It doesn't mean that I'm tryingto be the next Mr.
Universe, but it does mean I cantake steps to take better care
of who I am.
And so when we recognize thatwhat used to work has stopped
working is when we can trulycreate change in our lives.
Maybe it was the conversationsthat you avoided, but they just
kept coming back louder andlouder.
(08:04):
And maybe these were habits thatyou justified and stopped
numbing the discomfort that youwere having in your life.
Maybe the pace that you hadrelied on stopped producing the
same results.
A lot of times for us men, wethink that if we just work
harder, go at it with more gritand determination, then things
change.
(08:25):
But that's how pressure trulyoperates for us.
See, it doesn't just attack uswhat we're really good at and
targets what we've beencompensating for.
And for some of us, it shows upin our marriage.
Maybe there's shorter patiencein your marriage.
Maybe there was less presence,more distance started to creep
(08:46):
in between yourself and yourwife, yourself and your
children.
And always that is surroundedwith more justification for it.
I have to pay the bills, I needto go out and do the work
harder.
Yet we've avoided having theconversation and doing the deep
work that is truly necessary.
If you're in business, maybethere was the idea of more
(09:08):
effort, but then you weregetting fewer returns.
The ROI wasn't quite as good.
More control and started puttingin more processes in place.
But that also gave us lessclarity on the direction that we
(09:31):
were going.
And so what looked like successon the outside, it was truly an
erosion on the inside becausethings were starting to get
unraveled.
Just couldn't controleverything.
For me, it was truly starting toshow up in my body.
No, there was so much tensionthat I just couldn't find ways
to release it.
(09:52):
There was fatigue that sleepjust couldn't fix.
It was more about insomnia.
I was lucky to get five and ahalf to six hours sleep on a
daily basis.
It can't function for a longtime that way.
And so the nervous system wastotally on edge.
It's also a big reason why westruggle to lose weight because
when we're in a high stresssituation, that cortisol levels
(10:16):
never seem to come down.
And so here's the assumptionthat many of us make, and I'm
going to tell you that it'swrong.
We think that pressure meanssomething is going wrong.
But pressure doesn't mean thatwe're failing.
Pressure means the old way can'tcarry you anymore.
That was a hard pill for me toswallow to recognize that what
used to be true may not be trueany longer.
(10:39):
And so this is where men startto split.
Some of us will double down onour control.
We're going to work harder, staybusier, and then we're just
going to get numbed out, just doit more efficiently.
When others will do somethingfar different.
We're just going to stop asking.
We're going to stop asking, howdo I get out of this?
(10:59):
And instead, we start asking,what is this exposing in me?
Because pressure isn'tpunishment, it's about being
more precise and precision.
It's going to reveal for uswhere discipline replaced
awareness, and where strengthreplaced intimacy, and where
performance replaced our truth.
(11:31):
Many of us realized that whiteknuckling life isn't going to be
in leadership.
Endurance without alignmentisn't strength.
And avoidance, no matter howrefined, always collects
interest.
So the pressure didn't come todestroy you, gentlemen.
It was here to strip you downand to bring to you what is
(11:53):
actually real in your life.
And once a man realizes thatthis pressure isn't leaving,
then there's only one move left,right?
And I talk about it lots, andthat's about ownership.
And so that truly leads me intomy third point.
And this is what I call theturning point.
It's when ownership replaces allof our excuses.
(12:14):
Because eventually, every one ofus is going to reach that
moment.
It's not a breakdown and it'snot a dramatic failure, but it
is the reckoning.
And it's going to be maybe thatquiet moment where pressure
stops feeling external andreally starts feeling personal.
This is where most men reallyget the story wrong for
(12:36):
themselves.
They think that the turningpoint is when life changes, but
actually it's not.
The turning point is when a manstops asking, why is this
happening to me?
And starts asking, What is thisasking of me?
That's a question that changeseverything, doesn't it?
Up until that moment, excusesstill feel useful.
(12:58):
You can blame it on the timing,the workload, the economy, your
partner, your past.
Pick your excuse.
But when ownership arrives, allthese excuses lose power.
Ownership doesn't show up asconfidence, it shows up as
sobriety, a clear-eyedrecognition that, you know what,
(13:19):
some of these patterns areself-created.
And some wounds areself-maintained.
And some suffering is the priceof avoidance.
This is the moment we canrealize that no one is going to
come and save us, but no one isstopping us either.
With that one realization, whenI had that, then I realized that
(13:41):
it's going to cut really twoways for me.
It's first off, it's veryterrifying.
But on the other hand, it's alsoso freeing.
Because when we stop outsourcingthe responsibility, we can
reclaim agency.
Agency means we have control andthe opportunity to make
(14:02):
decisions in our life.
And so that is when truetransformation begins.
I speak on a weekly basis withmy fitness coach, and we were
having this conversation, andreally the idea of decision
making was what do I want toprioritarize more?
Do I want to prioritarizegetting that workout in, getting
my steps in, planning mynutrition, or do I just want to
(14:25):
continue to wing it?
It didn't take long to realizethat I'm the one preventing the
growth in my life.
It's the decisions that I make.
And so when I realized that it'sfreeing, more freeing to be able
to make the decision to do whatneeds to be done versus making
excuses.
Life changed dramatically.
(14:46):
And so this is where for metransformation trutely changed.
See, it's not with a plan,although I had a plan, and it
was not with a promise, althoughI did make commitments, but it
was with truth.
It is totally grounded in truth.
And truth is where I've beenhiding.
It's probably where you've beenhiding.
The truth about where you'vebeen dishonest with yourself,
(15:08):
and it's the truth about the manthat you've been versus the man
that you respect.
The part that matters most isthat ownership doesn't mean
self-attack that was challengingto get through.
It's not about self-attack, itis about self-leadership.
It's the moment we can stoptrying to feel better and
(15:29):
instead start to choose to bebetter.
It's not about perfection, it'snot about being public and
posting everything on Facebookand Instagram, but it is about
consistency.
This is the line that most of usjust never cross.
The men that did do that in 2025didn't escape any pressure, they
(15:50):
just used it.
And that's when the pain stoppedbeing the enemy and it started
to become the instructor.
Once we accept our ownership,the question is no longer who we
are, it's about who we'rebecoming.
And that brings me to my fourthpoint.
The man that we are becoming.
Here's the truth.
Most men, when they talk aboutgrowth, don't become the new man
(16:13):
all at once.
We become the truer one slowly.
And that's exactly what began in2025.
We didn't wake up one daysuddenly feeling healed and
confident.
What changed was much moresubtle and far more powerful.
We became aware, didn't we?
We were aware of our patterns,became more aware of our
triggers, aware of where we usedto avoid vulnerability,
(16:37):
discipline, and the truth.
This awareness changes how wemove, doesn't it?
We still feel the pressure, butwe must respond differently.
We still feel fear, but we don'tlet it drive us.
We still feel pain, we listeninstead of trying to numb this
out.
Gentlemen, that is true growth.
(16:59):
It's not loud and boisterous,it's not performative, but it is
grounded.
And we stop pretending that wehad to have it all together.
When we did that, we actuallystarted putting things together
much better.
This is the man we are becoming.
He's the man who choosesresponsibility over resistance,
who values alignment overappearances, who understands
(17:22):
that integrity is not intensity,it's about consistency.
You don't have to announce thisbig change.
You don't need to prove it toanyone.
It shows up in how we speak, itshows up in what we tolerate and
what we no longer chase.
You may not have completed thejourney, but you did cross the
line.
(17:43):
The line between drifting inlife and deciding.
Between enduring and leading,between pain as a punishment and
pain as purpose.
That doesn't make you finished,it makes you dangerously honest.
And that honesty sets the stagefor everything else that's going
to come next.
(18:04):
Let me show you what that lookslike.
Not in theory, but of a life ofa man who actually lived it.
At the start of 2025, he lookedlike he was doing just fine.
From the outside, his life wasfunctional, respectable even.
He handled his responsibilities,he showed up, he stayed busy.
But inside there was a quiettension, it wasn't a crisis or a
(18:28):
disconnection.
He felt like he was constantlycarrying weight without ever
setting it down.
As the year unfolded, thepressure increased.
Work demanded more focus, butdelivered less performance.
He felt quieter, but way moredistant.
His body stayed tense even as herested.
(18:48):
He tried to push through it,told himself that this is gonna
pass.
But none of that happened.
Because the problem wasn'tcircumstances, it was
misalignment.
The more that he avoided truth,the heavier everything felt.
And the turning point didn'tarrive with noise.
It came in a moment ofstillness, a realization that
(19:09):
the pain wasn't random, it wasinstruction.
And so this frustration wasn't aflaw, it was his feedback.
And for the first time, hestopped asking how to escape
discomfort and started askinghow to learn from it.
That question changed hisposture.
He didn't need a new identity,he needed integrity.
(19:30):
He started small and was honest.
He told the truth where he'dbeen avoiding it.
He owned the patterns he used tojustify, and he chose
responsibility over excusesdaily.
Not perfectly, but deliberately.
Over time, something shifted.
The pain didn't vanish, but itgained meaning.
Pressure became guidance,struggle became structure, and
(19:54):
purpose began to emerge.
Not as a destination, but as adirection.
By the end, 2025, he wasn'tfinished, he was forged.
This man was me.
And so the key takeaway I'd likeyou to have for today's episode
is that the year is almostcoming to a close.
(20:15):
And 2025 really wasn't aboutfixing your life, it was about
telling you the truth about it.
You didn't become perfect, butwe did become aware, didn't we?
The awareness is the beginningof our strength, gentlemen.
We learned that pressure is inthe enemy, it's avoidance that's
the enemy.
We learned that endurancewithout alignment is
unsustainable.
That real power doesn't comefrom pushing harder, it comes
(20:38):
from choosing more honestly.
If you take one thing from thisyear, let it be this.
You don't need to finish ajourney to be a different man.
You only need to stop lying toyourself about where you are.
That alone is going to changehow you lead, how you love, and
how you decide.
Your challenge is simple.
(20:59):
As you prepare to step into nextyear, ask yourself one question,
and answer it without flinching.
Where am I called to live withmore integrity?
Then act on it.
Not loudly and not perfectly,but for sure to be consistent.
As this year ends, I want you tounderstand this.
(21:19):
You're not behind, you are notbroken, and you are not
finished.
You are truly becoming.
The men who live with integritydon't wait for clarity to
arrive, they create it.
Through ownership, alignment,and through action.
If you're ready to begin thenext phase of your journey with
intention, I'm going to inviteyou to take our integrity
challenge.
It's your first step towardaligning who you are with how
(21:42):
you live.
Just go to members.net and takeour integrity challenge.
Because the strongest men don'tdrift into the future, they
decide.
When you do that, life starts tochange.
Thank you so much for spendingtime with me this year in 2025.
Whether that was through thepodcast and actually joining our
(22:03):
program, our programs, all thebest to you in 2026.
SPEAKER_00 (22:15):
Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary
Man Podcast.
Are you ready to own yourdestiny to become more the man
you're destined to be?
Join the Brotherhood that is TheAwakened Man at theAwakened
Man.net and start forging a newdestiny today.
Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary Man Podcast.
It's a show where men stopdrifting, start choosing, and
learn to lead with integrity inevery area of life.
And I'm your host, Alan D'Monzo.
And as we get started to thisepisode for our final one of the
2025 year, I want to ask you acouple of questions.
And the first one is who wereyou at the beginning of 2025?
(00:22):
Really?
Who were you?
And who are you now aftereverything this year has
demanded of you?
Because if we're truly honestwith ourselves, this year maybe
didn't go quite as planned.
You started with some goals andran into issues with resistance.
Maybe you started with someconfidence and then you started
to meet your edges.
(00:43):
Maybe you even started strong,and somewhere along the way,
life applied pressure to you.
And so here's the truth most ofus choose to avoid, and that is
2025 didn't break us, itrevealed who we are as men.
Today's episode is not aboutperfection, it's about progress.
It's about the man who showedup, even when he was stumbling
(01:06):
throughout this year.
It's also about how pain, whenwe decide to face that honestly,
becomes our purpose.
If you've been tested this year,maybe through your marriage,
your business, body, faith, yoursense of direction, I'd really
like you to stay with me becausethis episode is about closing
the year as the man that youearned on this portion of the
(01:26):
year.
And so this isn't going to be ahighlight reel, but I think it
is going to be a reckoning.
Today we're going to look atwhere you started, what tested
you, and who you're becomingright here in this moment.
Subscribe to the podcast anddrop me a comment about one word
that you would use to describewhat 2025 taught you.
When we get engaged, other mencan find this message and they
(01:49):
get an opportunity to start todo the work that you and I have
been doing this past year.
As this movement continues togrow, we're going to change more
and more families, communities,and lives.
Thank you so much forsubscribing and doing that work
this year with us.
It's been a great pleasure.
With that, let's get on withtoday's episode.
SPEAKER_00 (02:22):
Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his
cluttered mind, misguidedbeliefs, and values that no
longer serve him.
It's time to rely on yourselffor greatness.
It's time to become arevolutionary man.
Stay strong, my brother.
SPEAKER_01 (02:41):
Welcome back, everyone, to the Revolutionary
Man Podcast.
My name is Alan DeMontso and I'mthe host and the founder of our
Band of Brothers Group mentoringprogram.
We've established the challenge.
We've also asked some prettyhard questions.
And so now it's time for us toget into some mindset shifts,
the systems that we're going toneed to use, and the practices
that have built discipline on adaily basis.
(03:03):
Because we all know that adisciplined man doesn't have to
rely on willpower.
We know how fleeting willpoweris.
And so when we can buildstructure, that's going to carry
us when our emotions start tofail us.
So the first point I'd like usto look at is the man that you
were at the start of 2025.
Let's be honest, most of usdidn't begin the year right.
(03:25):
We excited, we set New Year'sresolutions, but it did begin
unexamined.
And it's that distinction thattruly matters in today's
conversation.
When we think about that, theweakness means that maybe we've
lacked capacity, but that's notreally true.
Because if it was trulyunexamined, then it means we had
(03:46):
our power.
We were just a bit out ofalignment.
And so it's a subtle shift forus to make.
Most men started the year in afunctional state, right?
We were capable, responsible,and very productive.
But underneath that competence,something was slightly off.
It's why we fall off on our NewYear's resolutions.
It's why at some point, when wehit our edges, we tend to fall
(04:08):
back to old habits.
If you weren't necessarilyfalling apart, but trying to
hold everything, it cost youdearly, didn't it?
We could be strong at work andpresent enough at home, and
maybe we were reliable toeveryone else.
But internally, where were weat?
Were you tired?
Did you become irritable?
(04:30):
Were you disconnected from yourown signal?
Or did you get trapped in thenoise of life?
Here's the hard truth that mostmen just don't want to admit
that we didn't have a motivationproblem and we didn't have a
discipline problem, but we didhave an avoidance problem.
And how did that show up?
Maybe if you're like me, itshowed up like this.
(04:52):
This is just a season.
I'll deal with it later or nexttime or next week.
And when I think about it, othermen have it much worse.
See, isn't that just a changingperspective?
It was the thing that wasdelaying us.
And when we delay, guess whathappens?
Delay starts collectinginterest.
(05:13):
And what we were really doingwas confusing endurance with our
strength.
And because you just couldn'tcarry all this load, because we
kept delaying, it didn't meanthat load that you were carrying
was right.
Just because we don't collapsedoesn't mean that nothing is
truly misaligned.
Because misalignment doesn'tannounce itself loudly, right?
(05:36):
It shows up so quietly, justlittle pieces for us.
It shows up when we have a shortfuse about life.
In the numb evenings after along and hard day's work.
In the sense that we were livingbeside our life instead of in
it.
Maybe like an NPC.
And so this is the part I reallywant you to hear clearly from
(05:58):
me.
That 2025 didn't arrive topunish you, but it did arrive to
reveal you.
So the pressure didn't createyour struggle.
It just exposed where you hadoutgrown your level of
self-honesty.
That showed up for me aroundJune this year when I looked at
myself and how I was managing myphysical health.
(06:19):
I made a decision to hire aprofessional coach to help me
get on track because I knew thatif I kept lying to myself and
doing the I'll get better onMonday or I'll start again next
week, nothing was truly going tohappen.
So I was completely out ofalignment.
And so when we can recognizethat the year of 2025 truly
(06:40):
didn't break us, didn't breakme, but it did reveal to me
where I was out of alignment.
And so whether we like it ornot, this is where real
transformation begins.
And so misalignment always isgoing to demand a payment.
And in 2025, at least for me, Iknow it sent the invoice.
(07:01):
And so that's going to lead meinto our second point that I
want to talk about today.
And that's the pressure reallyexposed the cracks in my life.
And maybe some of this willresonate for you as well.
The misalignment is when thatbill finally came due for me.
It didn't show up all at once.
It wasn't really dramatic, butit was persistent.
And for most of us, the pressuredidn't arrive as a total
(07:23):
catastrophe, but it arrived asfriction.
The friction for me was leadinga group of men in a theme this
year of living with integrity.
How can you lead others aboutliving a life of integrity when
there's one aspect thateverybody can see and you know
in your heart that you're notliving with integrity?
(07:43):
It doesn't mean that I'm tryingto be the next Mr.
Universe, but it does mean I cantake steps to take better care
of who I am.
And so when we recognize thatwhat used to work has stopped
working is when we can trulycreate change in our lives.
Maybe it was the conversationsthat you avoided, but they just
kept coming back louder andlouder.
(08:04):
And maybe these were habits thatyou justified and stopped
numbing the discomfort that youwere having in your life.
Maybe the pace that you hadrelied on stopped producing the
same results.
A lot of times for us men, wethink that if we just work
harder, go at it with more gritand determination, then things
change.
(08:25):
But that's how pressure trulyoperates for us.
See, it doesn't just attack uswhat we're really good at and
targets what we've beencompensating for.
And for some of us, it shows upin our marriage.
Maybe there's shorter patiencein your marriage.
Maybe there was less presence,more distance started to creep
(08:46):
in between yourself and yourwife, yourself and your
children.
And always that is surroundedwith more justification for it.
I have to pay the bills, I needto go out and do the work
harder.
Yet we've avoided having theconversation and doing the deep
work that is truly necessary.
If you're in business, maybethere was the idea of more
(09:08):
effort, but then you weregetting fewer returns.
The ROI wasn't quite as good.
More control and started puttingin more processes in place.
But that also gave us lessclarity on the direction that we
(09:31):
were going.
And so what looked like successon the outside, it was truly an
erosion on the inside becausethings were starting to get
unraveled.
Just couldn't controleverything.
For me, it was truly starting toshow up in my body.
No, there was so much tensionthat I just couldn't find ways
to release it.
(09:52):
There was fatigue that sleepjust couldn't fix.
It was more about insomnia.
I was lucky to get five and ahalf to six hours sleep on a
daily basis.
It can't function for a longtime that way.
And so the nervous system wastotally on edge.
It's also a big reason why westruggle to lose weight because
when we're in a high stresssituation, that cortisol levels
(10:16):
never seem to come down.
And so here's the assumptionthat many of us make, and I'm
going to tell you that it'swrong.
We think that pressure meanssomething is going wrong.
But pressure doesn't mean thatwe're failing.
Pressure means the old way can'tcarry you anymore.
That was a hard pill for me toswallow to recognize that what
used to be true may not be trueany longer.
(10:39):
And so this is where men startto split.
Some of us will double down onour control.
We're going to work harder, staybusier, and then we're just
going to get numbed out, just doit more efficiently.
When others will do somethingfar different.
We're just going to stop asking.
We're going to stop asking, howdo I get out of this?
(10:59):
And instead, we start asking,what is this exposing in me?
Because pressure isn'tpunishment, it's about being
more precise and precision.
It's going to reveal for uswhere discipline replaced
awareness, and where strengthreplaced intimacy, and where
performance replaced our truth.
(11:31):
Many of us realized that whiteknuckling life isn't going to be
in leadership.
Endurance without alignmentisn't strength.
And avoidance, no matter howrefined, always collects
interest.
So the pressure didn't come todestroy you, gentlemen.
It was here to strip you downand to bring to you what is
(11:53):
actually real in your life.
And once a man realizes thatthis pressure isn't leaving,
then there's only one move left,right?
And I talk about it lots, andthat's about ownership.
And so that truly leads me intomy third point.
And this is what I call theturning point.
It's when ownership replaces allof our excuses.
(12:14):
Because eventually, every one ofus is going to reach that
moment.
It's not a breakdown and it'snot a dramatic failure, but it
is the reckoning.
And it's going to be maybe thatquiet moment where pressure
stops feeling external andreally starts feeling personal.
This is where most men reallyget the story wrong for
(12:36):
themselves.
They think that the turningpoint is when life changes, but
actually it's not.
The turning point is when a manstops asking, why is this
happening to me?
And starts asking, What is thisasking of me?
That's a question that changeseverything, doesn't it?
Up until that moment, excusesstill feel useful.
(12:58):
You can blame it on the timing,the workload, the economy, your
partner, your past.
Pick your excuse.
But when ownership arrives, allthese excuses lose power.
Ownership doesn't show up asconfidence, it shows up as
sobriety, a clear-eyedrecognition that, you know what,
(13:19):
some of these patterns areself-created.
And some wounds areself-maintained.
And some suffering is the priceof avoidance.
This is the moment we canrealize that no one is going to
come and save us, but no one isstopping us either.
With that one realization, whenI had that, then I realized that
(13:41):
it's going to cut really twoways for me.
It's first off, it's veryterrifying.
But on the other hand, it's alsoso freeing.
Because when we stop outsourcingthe responsibility, we can
reclaim agency.
Agency means we have control andthe opportunity to make
(14:02):
decisions in our life.
And so that is when truetransformation begins.
I speak on a weekly basis withmy fitness coach, and we were
having this conversation, andreally the idea of decision
making was what do I want toprioritarize more?
Do I want to prioritarizegetting that workout in, getting
my steps in, planning mynutrition, or do I just want to
(14:25):
continue to wing it?
It didn't take long to realizethat I'm the one preventing the
growth in my life.
It's the decisions that I make.
And so when I realized that it'sfreeing, more freeing to be able
to make the decision to do whatneeds to be done versus making
excuses.
Life changed dramatically.
(14:46):
And so this is where for metransformation trutely changed.
See, it's not with a plan,although I had a plan, and it
was not with a promise, althoughI did make commitments, but it
was with truth.
It is totally grounded in truth.
And truth is where I've beenhiding.
It's probably where you've beenhiding.
The truth about where you'vebeen dishonest with yourself,
(15:08):
and it's the truth about the manthat you've been versus the man
that you respect.
The part that matters most isthat ownership doesn't mean
self-attack that was challengingto get through.
It's not about self-attack, itis about self-leadership.
It's the moment we can stoptrying to feel better and
(15:29):
instead start to choose to bebetter.
It's not about perfection, it'snot about being public and
posting everything on Facebookand Instagram, but it is about
consistency.
This is the line that most of usjust never cross.
The men that did do that in 2025didn't escape any pressure, they
(15:50):
just used it.
And that's when the pain stoppedbeing the enemy and it started
to become the instructor.
Once we accept our ownership,the question is no longer who we
are, it's about who we'rebecoming.
And that brings me to my fourthpoint.
The man that we are becoming.
Here's the truth.
Most men, when they talk aboutgrowth, don't become the new man
(16:13):
all at once.
We become the truer one slowly.
And that's exactly what began in2025.
We didn't wake up one daysuddenly feeling healed and
confident.
What changed was much moresubtle and far more powerful.
We became aware, didn't we?
We were aware of our patterns,became more aware of our
triggers, aware of where we usedto avoid vulnerability,
(16:37):
discipline, and the truth.
This awareness changes how wemove, doesn't it?
We still feel the pressure, butwe must respond differently.
We still feel fear, but we don'tlet it drive us.
We still feel pain, we listeninstead of trying to numb this
out.
Gentlemen, that is true growth.
(16:59):
It's not loud and boisterous,it's not performative, but it is
grounded.
And we stop pretending that wehad to have it all together.
When we did that, we actuallystarted putting things together
much better.
This is the man we are becoming.
He's the man who choosesresponsibility over resistance,
who values alignment overappearances, who understands
(17:22):
that integrity is not intensity,it's about consistency.
You don't have to announce thisbig change.
You don't need to prove it toanyone.
It shows up in how we speak, itshows up in what we tolerate and
what we no longer chase.
You may not have completed thejourney, but you did cross the
line.
(17:43):
The line between drifting inlife and deciding.
Between enduring and leading,between pain as a punishment and
pain as purpose.
That doesn't make you finished,it makes you dangerously honest.
And that honesty sets the stagefor everything else that's going
to come next.
(18:04):
Let me show you what that lookslike.
Not in theory, but of a life ofa man who actually lived it.
At the start of 2025, he lookedlike he was doing just fine.
From the outside, his life wasfunctional, respectable even.
He handled his responsibilities,he showed up, he stayed busy.
But inside there was a quiettension, it wasn't a crisis or a
(18:28):
disconnection.
He felt like he was constantlycarrying weight without ever
setting it down.
As the year unfolded, thepressure increased.
Work demanded more focus, butdelivered less performance.
He felt quieter, but way moredistant.
His body stayed tense even as herested.
(18:48):
He tried to push through it,told himself that this is gonna
pass.
But none of that happened.
Because the problem wasn'tcircumstances, it was
misalignment.
The more that he avoided truth,the heavier everything felt.
And the turning point didn'tarrive with noise.
It came in a moment ofstillness, a realization that
(19:09):
the pain wasn't random, it wasinstruction.
And so this frustration wasn't aflaw, it was his feedback.
And for the first time, hestopped asking how to escape
discomfort and started askinghow to learn from it.
That question changed hisposture.
He didn't need a new identity,he needed integrity.
(19:30):
He started small and was honest.
He told the truth where he'dbeen avoiding it.
He owned the patterns he used tojustify, and he chose
responsibility over excusesdaily.
Not perfectly, but deliberately.
Over time, something shifted.
The pain didn't vanish, but itgained meaning.
Pressure became guidance,struggle became structure, and
(19:54):
purpose began to emerge.
Not as a destination, but as adirection.
By the end, 2025, he wasn'tfinished, he was forged.
This man was me.
And so the key takeaway I'd likeyou to have for today's episode
is that the year is almostcoming to a close.
(20:15):
And 2025 really wasn't aboutfixing your life, it was about
telling you the truth about it.
You didn't become perfect, butwe did become aware, didn't we?
The awareness is the beginningof our strength, gentlemen.
We learned that pressure is inthe enemy, it's avoidance that's
the enemy.
We learned that endurancewithout alignment is
unsustainable.
That real power doesn't comefrom pushing harder, it comes
(20:38):
from choosing more honestly.
If you take one thing from thisyear, let it be this.
You don't need to finish ajourney to be a different man.
You only need to stop lying toyourself about where you are.
That alone is going to changehow you lead, how you love, and
how you decide.
Your challenge is simple.
(20:59):
As you prepare to step into nextyear, ask yourself one question,
and answer it without flinching.
Where am I called to live withmore integrity?
Then act on it.
Not loudly and not perfectly,but for sure to be consistent.
As this year ends, I want you tounderstand this.
(21:19):
You're not behind, you are notbroken, and you are not
finished.
You are truly becoming.
The men who live with integritydon't wait for clarity to
arrive, they create it.
Through ownership, alignment,and through action.
If you're ready to begin thenext phase of your journey with
intention, I'm going to inviteyou to take our integrity
challenge.
It's your first step towardaligning who you are with how
(21:42):
you live.
Just go to members.net and takeour integrity challenge.
Because the strongest men don'tdrift into the future, they
decide.
When you do that, life starts tochange.
Thank you so much for spendingtime with me this year in 2025.
Whether that was through thepodcast and actually joining our
(22:03):
program, our programs, all thebest to you in 2026.
SPEAKER_00 (22:15):
Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary
Man Podcast.
Are you ready to own yourdestiny to become more the man
you're destined to be?
Join the Brotherhood that is TheAwakened Man at theAwakened
Man.net and start forging a newdestiny today.
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