How To Be A Man: Adventure

In this episode of The Manhood Tribes Show, host Don Ross discusses the crucial role of fun and adventure in building camaraderie among men. We explore how shared experiences and adventures form the lasting bonds necessary for becoming extraordinary men. 

Don also outlines the three pillars of Manhood Tribes: manhood, camaraderie, and freedom. Dive in as we emphasize the importance of balancing life's responsibilities with the need for adventurous, challenging, and fun experiences that help men grow together. 

Lastly, we present a 'Manhood Challenge' to encourage viewers to actively create adventurous experiences with other men.

00:00 Introduction: Are You Having Enough Fun?
00:38 Resource Highlight: How Manly Are You Quiz
01:11 Welcome to the Manhood Tribe Show
01:26 The Five Marks of Manhood
01:53 Introducing the Three Pillars of Manhood Tribes
03:12 Understanding Camaraderie
07:50 The Importance of Adventure
20:03 The Role of Fun in Adventure
26:39 Manhood Challenge: Cultivating Adventure

Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly.

Transcript

Don Ross: 0:01

Guys, if I asked you how much fun have you had in your life lately? I bet your answer is going to fall into one of two categories either too much or not nearly enough. And neither answer is really a good one. We need to talk about why let's do that today on the manhood tribe show. Guys want to know how you measure up as a man? I've got a great resource for you. It's called how manly are you? And it's a free quiz that you can take to figure out how you stack up against what it means to be a man. And when you take the quiz, you'll also get some free resources to help you figure out how you can get better as a man in the areas where you would like to grow. So go to manhoodtribes.com/manly to download your free. How manly are you quiz today? That's manhoodtribes.com/manly. All right, men, welcome to the Manhood Tribes show. My name is Don Ross. I'm the host here of the manhood tribe show. And it's really good to be with you as we continue along in our series, talking about how to be a man. Now, if you've been with us, we have spent the past few episodes kind of talking through the basics of manhood. As we like to talk about it here at manhood traps to do that, we use what we call the five marks of manhood strength, courage skill, honor, and allegiance. And we say that those things are what all men need to possess in order to demonstrate what it means to be a man. But we've covered those things pretty well and in depth. What I do want to talk about is the three pillars of Manhood Tribes and why these are important because the first pillar of Manhood Tribes is what we have been talking about. Manhood. But the other two pillars are where we're going to around the corner and what we need to spend some time on in these next few episodes. Because see here at Manhood Tribes, really our goal is all about helping you to become an extraordinary man. By building a transformational group of men around you. Now. We have been talking about manhood, but if I'm honest, the way that we've been talking about manhood is really kind of just setting the bar at what it means to be a man. But you you're watching or listening to this show and I can pretty much guarantee that you don't want to just be an ordinary man. You're not trying to just meet the low bar of what it means to be a man. I'm pretty sure that you would love to be an extraordinary man. You would love to be the best version of yourself. Right. You're really trying to figure this thing out. You're trying to crack the nut and to be the best that you possibly can be. That's great. That's what we're here for. That's why you should be watching and listening to this show. But in order to accomplish that, we're going to need those second and third pillars of Manhood Tribes. So the first pillar is manhood. The second and third pillars are camaraderie and freedom. And today in particular, we want to begin to take a little more of a look at camaraderie. What is it? What's it all about and why is it necessary for becoming an extraordinary man? Okay. So first of all, we just need to ask the question. What even is camaraderie? What are we talking about when we use the word camaraderie? Well, here at manhood Tribes the way that I'm going to talk about it is to say that camaraderie is adventuring together to form lasting bonds. Camaraderie inherently involves relationships with other guys. You've got to have other men around you. You can't have camaraderie without it. We often hear that word kind of associated often with guys who are in the military, right? We hear this kind of sense of like a spree decor or what it means to be part of a troop or a company. And this camaraderie that's shared among the people that are a part of that group because of their shared history, their shared experience, the things that they've been through together, the hardships that they faced, the trials and the leaders that they've had to deal with. All of those kinds of things go into creating camaraderie because you are adventuring. Together in order to form lasting bonds. And it's those lasting bonds that were really after. If you're going to become an extraordinary man. You need lasting bonds with other men around you. There's just no other way to accomplish it. Now, if you're a guy who's watching, who's listening in and you're thinking. I don't have any of those kinds of relationships in my life. I'm not in the military. Never have been, probably never will be like, what is that honestly, going to look like for me, how in the world would I begin to develop those kinds of friendships when I'm not going through any of those types of situations? So I want to begin to address that question. How do we accomplish that? How do we get after camaraderie in our lives as men, when the world around us, isn't built for us to experience that it's not going to naturally choose camaraderie for us. And so we're going to have to unnaturally choose it for ourselves. We have to begin to realize that camaraderie is necessary and because it's necessary for being an extraordinary man, we have to go after it. We have to. I say, okay, I'm going to be intentional to fight for this as a part of my life. I'm going to make camaraderie a priority because I know that it's necessary for me to become who I am absolutely meant to be. So let's say a little bit about then what camaraderie is not because we do have, as guys, we often have lots of friends in our lives or at least people who are around us. And so we need to address what we're talking about and really what we're not talking about. Okay. So as guys it's fairly common. That we might have some kind of group of sports buddies or drinking buddies, or, you know, the guys that we hang out with at the bowling alley or, you know, the club that we're a part of or whatever it is, we've got kind of this like, you know, pack of other men that we might tend to be around at times. Now that pack of men could evolve into something like a tribe, but by itself, it isn't that you're not developing camaraderie with that group of men because frankly you're not adventuring together. You're doing somethings together. You're maybe having some fun together. You have some shared experiences together, but there's not the kind of adventure that's necessary for building those lasting bonds. And that's really what we're after. So the guys that you knew from college that you maybe had some experiences with during college that led you to create some really strong relationships then, but now you're 10, 15, 20, 20 plus years out of college. And you rarely, if ever talk to those guys. You don't have a lasting bond with them anymore. So you don't have camaraderie in the sense that it's really needed for you to be the kind of man that you absolutely can be. But that's the point. We as men tend to fall back on the things that we once had and to assume that because we once had it, we can still benefit from it again, but camaraderie doesn't work that way. camaraderie is always about the present, who are the men who are around me right now. And what am I doing? Doing to adventure with them in a way that we are continuing to form a lasting bond with one another. If we don't keep working at that, that bond won't last. It's not something that we just established once and it stays around forever. In order for you to do that. You're going to have to have some adventure in your life now. That's such a fun word. I mean, even as I say it, I've, I've been so excited about this episode because I know just what a fun topic adventure is. It raises up something in a man. It causes a hunger and an enthusiasm and a eagerness within us to want to come out and play and to go explore and to find things that we haven't found before and to discover and experience things that we've never done. Men are hard wired for adventure. And it is through that kind of adventure when we are sharing it with other men that we begin to form the kinds of bonds we're looking for for camaraderie. So. Let's talk about adventure. Let's talk about why we need to have adventure. If we're going to be able to form the kind of camaraderie that we really want. I've said it already. Men are wired for action and adventure. This is just a part of the makeup that God has created us with. We are wired to move towards doing. We want to take action. We want to try things. We want to explore things. We want to discover things. We want to find things out. We wants to search things out. We want to test things. We want to experience things. We want to do things. And all of that is good. That's a part of what it means to be a man. And so because of that, we as men experience our world by adventuring through it, by taking action in it, not just by learning about it from a book or from another person, but from experiencing it ourselves, if you want to build a tribe. If you want to build a transformational group of men who is going to help you become an extraordinary man. You're going to have to adventure with them. You're going to have to try new things with them. You're going to have to have shared experiences that aren't true of other people that you have in your life. They're going to have to be things that are unique to your tribe, things that you've gotten to do together that you haven't done with other men. When men think about the greatest moments in their lives, what often comes to mind is some kind of shared adventure that they had with other men. It's some kind of story that they love to tell. Their eyes light up when they think about that memory. And when they think about the opportunity to share it with somebody who hasn't already heard the story, it's a great moment for a man to be able to relay the adventures and the experiences that he's had. And often the other men that he's gotten to be able to do it with. Those were the highlights of a man's life. And so of course, it's going to be a part of our most important relationships with other men. This is especially true for a group of men. You need to have these kinds of shared adventures and shared experiences. So, what is it then that it venture actually does for us? Why not just, why is this so important, but in having adventure in our lives, what is it going to accomplish? How is it going to help us become that extraordinary man that we're after? Anytime that men go through adventure together. We come out with a story, right? Anytime we experienced something that's cool or new or a little bit dangerous. Even anytime that we come through something that's kind of harrowing or that, uh, tested us in some way, that kind of pushed us to our limits or caused us to just do something that we've never done before. The best part about it often is being able to share that story with other people in the aftermath of it. That it venture becomes something that forms the camaraderie of our friendship. It becomes something really cool to not only be able to tell other people about, but to be able to recount it with the people we experienced it with to be able to look another man in the eye who shared that experience with you and that not only can you use words to describe that experience, but you know, that there's something in your hearts that you both shared together that has kind of knitted you together in that experience. For me, one of those experiences was a trip that I took in my twenties. I was working as something as kind of like an intern coordinator for the first organization that I worked with. And as part of this. Uh, role, we did an intern trip every year. That was just for guys. We did something separate for the girls, but we did a guys intern trip every year. And on this trip, uh, the guy who was kind of leading and directing the whole intern program had a connection where he got to take us out on a, a big old sailboat that we went out into the Gulf of Mexico. And we're out on the water for several days, slept on the boat, cooked on the boat, fished off of the boat and ate what we caught, you know, just an amazing experience sailing. We had an unbelievable time out on the water. Going into port at places that we'd never been to before checking out just really cool places that were cool to experience seeing what it was like to be out over the deep waters, uh, where you couldn't see land for miles. Ah, it was an incredible experience. But one day, I think it was actually the last day of the trip. I was, we were out sailing. We put up the big sale in order to be able to catch a pretty strong headwind. And we had turned the sailboat just right. So into the wind so that the sail would catch and we could turn off the engine and just let the boat go. And we were all just enjoying ourselves to the limit. We were having fun out on the boat. We were relaxing on the boat. There were hammocks. We were just kind of sprawled out enjoying the sun and the breeze and the beauty of the day out on the water. But we'd been going like this for probably an hour or more. And we'd all kind of been lulled into the gentle movement of the sailboat over the water. And finally, we got to got to a place where it was like, oh, maybe we need to turn and head inland. We might want to think about, you know, where we're going to stop for the night, get some, get some food, go to dinner, you know, whatever. And so the guy who owned the sailboat decided, okay, it's time to just kinda, uh, change direction, head towards a head towards land. But as he did that, he kind of forgot. And so did the rest of us that we had been turned into this really strong headwind the whole time that we've been going. And so as he turned the sailboat, the, the big sail just caught wind at just the right angle. And so as we turn the ship actually started to capsize. It went nearly sideways. I mean, I'm talking really like right angle over the water to where, you know, we all thought we were going in. Every one of us was scrambling on deck trying to grab hold of something while our bodies turned sideways, you know, over the water. When we really thought we were done for, and the, the guy who owned the boat just at the last second managed to crank up the engine. Turn the wheel really sharply. And the engine caught us just in time for the sailboat to come and right-side itself up. It was. So scary. We all thought we were going in. We had no idea what we were going to do, how we were going to manage ourselves. You know, if the boat took off without us, we were done for what were we going to do there in the middle of the water. But, uh, we caught it at just the right moment. And man, we were all high five and we were, you know, celebrating, oh my gosh, it was so such a close call. It was a fun, fun experience, but it was fun partly because we knew there was some real danger involved and we had just narrowly escaped it. But that was the kind of story that knitted us together. And anytime I still see those guys, that's something that we talk about together. We share that story and I love sharing that. Story with you guys, because it's a fun story to tell it's a fun adventure that I got to be a part of. And it knitted me together with the guys that were on that same trip. This is the kind of thing that I'm talking about. This is the kind of shared experience that just doesn't happen any other way. Men need to adventure together because it bonds us with one another. It creates the only kind of shared experience that creates those type of bonds. Now you can be a part of a sports team, or you can play video games with your friends, but those sorts of things, aren't really going to create those shared experiences that are going to knit you together. Yeah, they're fun. And you're going to enjoy the friendship and the time that you spend together with those friends, but that's not the. The same kind of shared experience, that's going to build camaraderie and that's really what we're looking for. Another aspect of this kind of adventure, this kind of shared experience is that we need to recognize that what we're looking for is something that's going to challenge us. It's going to push us in some way, it's going to force us out of our comfort zone or at the very least just cause us to try something that we've never tried before. It's going to challenge us, probably, especially in the area of skill. We talked about skill is one of the marks of manhood. And adventure is always going to push us in the area of skill it's going to cause us to use our skills or too. Uh, get us to learn new skills or to just try us in some ways that we've not been tried or maybe we have been tried, but we're going to have to teach those skills to other people who haven't tried them. And, you know, see how we do at training up others in some skills that we already have. All of that is a part of the adventure that we're looking for and the kind of shared experience that is going to sort of push us in a way that makes that adventure memorable. It makes it an experience that's worth recounting. An even better. Is when that kind of adventure becomes something that we couldn't have succeeded at, unless we were doing it together. When it becomes some kind of a group experience where all hands on deck was really necessary at some point in order to be able to get the most out of it. And maybe that just means it was necessary, necessary for getting the most fun out of it. But maybe it means that like to come out of the danger of it, we needed everybody involved. We need everybody chipping in. Other guys had to be there and had to have something to offer in order for it to be the kind of experience that we made it out of and could live. Live to tell the tale, maybe not live to tell the tale, but you get what the point that I'm trying to make. It's gotta be something that we couldn't have succeeded at it without the help of other mint. Let me give you just a simple example of that. So it doesn't have to sound, you know, it doesn't have to be like an Indiana Jones movie. You know, in order to count for what we're talking about here, it can be something simple, like for example, Uh, I went not too long ago with my tribe to a shooting range. Now, there were just a few of us that got to go to this one particular adventure, but for most of us, it was kind of a new thing. All of us had shot guns at one point in time or another, but only a few of us actually owned a gun and only one of us. Ever did any kind of regular shooting. So we were all novices to some degree, except for the one guy in the group. And we really had to kind of rely on his skill and his expertise to help kind of train us, to familiarize us, to get us acquainted with our own guns and with the type of guns that we were renting and with the ammunition that we were using, uh, you know, there were folks at the shooting range who were helping us as well. But the guy in our tribe was really the guy who we all kind of wanted to lean on to help us learn and grow and get better at this one skill that we were really enjoying. And by the end of our time there, we all felt like we had grown. And gained in skill. And this one guy felt like he had been effective at teaching us in some skills that really helped us to get better. And because of that, we had an adventure that we could share and recount with each other and tell our other friends about and talk about the ways that we really enjoyed our time together at the shooting range. It was a great experience. That's a simple story of what adventure can look like. And so I want you to hear that in my words as well. That adventure doesn't have to be grand. It doesn't have to be, you know, these like epic movie kind of sweeping experiences. It can also just be something fun that you can do in an afternoon. But it's the kind of thing that challenges you, that pushes you, that calls upon you to use your skills that relies on the other guys in the group. And you couldn't have succeeded at it without them being a part of it. Okay. So that gives us some ideas of, of what adventure is really going to look like. But lastly, and maybe most importantly, when it comes to what adventure is really all about is that. Adventure needs to be fun. It should go without saying, right. But it doesn't in our lives because we have often reduced adventure to what's the next goal that we can accomplish in the workplace for a lot of guys, that's the greatest adventure that we have these days. But that's rarely fun. Yeah. There's some thrill and accomplishing a goal that you really wanted to accomplish, but it's not usually fine. It's not the kind of adventure that's going to bond you together with the other men around you. And so that's where we really want to say, we need to incorporate some fun into our lives now. At the beginning of this episode, I asked the question, how much fun have you had in your life? And that you probably fall into one of two camps either. You're the guy who's having too much fun or more than likely for most guys. You're just not having much fun at all. So, let me talk about both of those camps and why neither of those things is healthy and what we as men need to do about it. Let's start with the guys who are having too much fun. And here's what I mean by that. I'm not just talking about the party animals, right? The guys who are out there kind of living a wild lifestyle, that's true. And that happens. Most guys grow out of that, or they get themselves into so much trouble that the trouble forces them out of that. So that's not really what I want to address. We're going to talk about getting into that kind of trouble in some other episodes, in some different ways. What I want to address is more of what I would call and our culture has kind of started to call Peter pan syndrome. It's sort of the adolescent inability to grow up. You know, the, the stereotype of this nowadays is the 20 some year old. Who's still living in their parents' basement and doing nothing but playing video games all day. Now, honestly, there's not a ton of guys that actually fit that stereotype. There's not a ton of guys who actually fit that stereotype. But there are a lot of guys and especially a lot of young men who are spending their time on way too much fun. But it's the type of fun that isn't really adventure. It is things like playing video games too much of your day. Not really having any kind of a social life apart from the people that you connect with digitally over your video games. It can also though be the guys who are really into sports or fitness of some kind. And all they seem to do is go work out or they're, you know, a part of three or four different basketball teams that they're playing on or. You know, they are watching sports all the time and they might have some friends that they watch sports with, but it is a regular and consuming part of their lives. They're really having too much fun, but it's not the kind of fun that's actually helping them to form lasting bonds. It's not really adventure. It's kind of a neutered form of fun because why. It's all these things that we've just talked about. It doesn't challenge you in any real way, even if it's something like playing sports, that's fun. But if you're the kind of guy who's playing on three or four teams of the same sport, or has. You know, you're always on some kind of sports team, no matter what season it is. That might be like, you know, good exercise, but it's not really pushing your limits. It's not challenging you to learn anything new or to try something new or to put you in a place where there might be a little bit of danger. There's no real challenge there. It's just about fun. It's just about pleasure. And pleasure is not the same thing as adventure. Okay. So if that's you, if you're the guy who has enough free time in his life at this point that you're able to spend most of it on just pleasurable fun. You're not really having the kind of adventure that men need to have. And so that's where you're going to need to take some steps to say, I need to get around some other guys where I can do some things that are actually going to challenge me. And they're going to help me form lasting bonds with this other group of guys. Now I say all of that to say, let's spend a little bit more time on the second group, because I think that's actually where most men fall. Especially as men begin to get married, have children have to sort of, you know, quote unquote, settle down a little bit. Um, life's responsibilities just kind of start to come in fast and heavy. And so, because of that, the thing that most gets pushed out of our lives is fun. And it often gets pushed out because in a lot of ways, our friendships get pushed out as well. As we start to get into those, you know, later part of young adulthood and into middle age. The responsibilities of being a family man of being a working man, I've just carrying on through life, get a lot harder. And frankly, our bodies get more resistant to the kind of activity that we were doing in our early years as young men. And so because of that, the time that we have for friendships and the time that we have for fun. I often just kind of gets cast aside. It gets pushed out of the way, because it just becomes a luxury that most men feel like they can't afford. And so when most men, especially middle aged men begin to look at their lives. The thing that is most missing. It's just fun. You need some fun in your life. Fun is a necessary part of being a healthy and especially an extraordinary man. If you're not sharing in some fun adventures with other men around you, you're not going to be the best man that you possibly can be. And so I just want to ask you guys, I want to ask you who are watching and who are listening right now? If you've gotten distracted, just come back. That's okay. Now's a good time to check back in. What kind of fun are you having in your life right now? When was the last time that you had some shared fun with other men in your life? And if it hasn't been recently, then guys it is high time for you to start prioritizing that aspect of your life. Now you might be thinking. What would I even do? I don't even have any hobbies anymore. I don't do things that are fun anymore. Well, the good news for you is that lots of people still do have So, what you need to do is try to figure out how you can join in on some other. People's fun doing some things that you might enjoy, and yes, that can be just as simple as a hobby. It could even be joining a sports team or picking up a video game. If that's something that you would enjoy and you haven't done it in a while, the point is not that you can't have fun. Like when we talked about the guys who were having too much fun, The point is that you need some balance there. And that type of fund needs to really advance and to the kind of adventure that we're saying that men need to share with one another. It can't just be all about pleasure. It needs to be the kind of adventure that is going to create shared experience. That's going to challenge you and is going to bring about some fun. So I'm going to now give you a little bit of a manhood challenge and how you can start to cultivate this kind of adventure in your life to begin developing camaraderie around that. So stick around for our manhood challenge segment. And I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that here in just a second. All right, guys, welcome to another Manhood Challenge segment here as a part of the manhood tribe show here at Manhood Tribes, we want to help you become an extraordinary man by building a transformational group of men around you. And in order to do that, you need to be getting better at what we call the five marks of manhood. The five marks of manhood are strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. And today's challenge is going to be an honor challenge. Now, if you've listened to the episode that this challenge is a part of, you know, that we've talked a lot about adventure and how necessary adventure is for cultivating shared experience and the kind of lasting bonds we really need as men in order to become extraordinary. So what I want to challenge you to do is just to pick something fun and go do it with another man. Okay. It sounds simple, but that really is, it's an honor challenge and it's going to help you develop the kind of adventure that you need to cultivate lasting bonds. Okay. So maybe it can be something like. You're going to go to top golf and together, the two of you are going to, you know, see who can beat each other scores, or you're going to go ax throwing together, or you're going to go, you know, take a hike at a local park or wilderness area, or, you know, if you're looking for something indoors, maybe you go to like a history museum and you figure out what's something that you can learn about or a man from history that you can learn about that inspires you. Okay, so go out, take care of this honor challenge by doing something fun with another man. and watch how that will help you cultivate the kind of relationships you need to become an extraordinary man. Go have fun.