What Every Man Needs to Hear When He Feels Like He’s Losing at Life

Do you feel like you're failing at life? You're not alone. Modern life can feel so challenging for men today. 

We discuss the pressures from social media, societal expectations, and the lies that make us feel inadequate. Learn how to recalibrate your focus, establish meaningful male friendships, and tackle the important priorities in life. 

00:00 The Struggles of Modern Manhood
02:30 Personal Stories and Common Challenges
03:32 Middle Age and Its Unique Challenges
05:47 Later Years: Navigating Retirement and Loneliness
08:29 Recalibrating Your Life
08:52 Addressing the Lies and Celebrating Small Victories
10:37 Building Strong Male Friendships
11:53 Refocusing on What Matters
14:33 Rebuilding and Moving Forward
16:29 Conclusion and Community Invitation

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Transcript

0:01

Guys, let me ask you an honest question. Do you feel like you're failing, like maybe at anything or just at life in general? Do you feel like you got more on your plate than you can manage and too many things that just aren't going the way that you would like them to? I think I can relate. I think a lot of guys can honestly, here at the Manhood Tribes Channel, we've been spending a lot of time recently talking about why does it feel so hard to be a man in our culture right now? And I think this is one of the things that many guys are kind of resonating with at the moment, is that life just kind of feels like it's throwing more at us than we possibly could succeed at. And yet. When we look around us, or we look at social media, or we look at the expectations, you know, in the world of the media around us, it kind of feels like as guys, like everyone else seems to be doing okay, so why aren't we like, shouldn't we be doing better at these things? We need to talk about this feeling of being a failure or at just being unable to succeed at the things that matter, because I think this is something that a lot of guys are dealing with at the moment. My name's Don Ross. I'm the host here at the Manhood Tribes Channel, and I like to say that my job is to try to do three things for you. I want to give you a clear vision of what it looks like to be a man. I want to give you a clear challenge to build strong male friendships, and I want to give you a clear path for how you can do both things now. When we're dealing with this feeling of being a failure, I think this speaks to that kind of core idea of what it means to be a man. What is our vision of manhood? Because if our vision of manhood is based off of social media and what we think we're supposed to be succeeding at, then gosh, guys, yeah. Every one of us is gonna feel like we're failing. Social media is notorious for just being everyone else's highlight reel, and yet we, we know that our lives don't look. Anything like what those lives on social media look like, but if that's what our standard of comparison is, or even if we're looking at like latest Hollywood action movie or superhero movie and just feeling like, do I measure up as the kind of man that I'm supposed to be? You're probably gonna be confronted with a no answer. You're gonna feel like, no you don't. Maybe it's not even those things at all. Maybe you're a guy who's in his twenties and thirties and you're just looking at life going, I can't seem to be able to get my hands around any of the things that I think I'm supposed to be able to do. I can't afford to buy a house. I can't seem to nail down the job or the position that I really want to be able to have. I. I don't have the confidence to start or to cement the long-term relationship that I want to have. I, I'm not really, like, I probably want to get married at some point in time, but I have no idea how to be able to move towards a woman in a way that is gonna yield that kind of relationship. Maybe you've already gotten into a family and you're just in over your head going, I have no idea how to relate to this woman. She seems so different than me. Or you've got young kids and you're just constantly exhausted. Yeah, I get it. All of those things are hard, difficult, and it can just kind of feel like compounded together. You're just sort of failing, like, can you actually accomplish any of the things that you're supposed to accomplish? Maybe you are like me and you're in more of a middle age stage of life, and at this stage it just kind of feels like the problems are never ending. Like the pile just keeps getting bigger. Yeah. You're, you're probably married with a family or maybe you're divorced with kids and you are trying to figure out like how to navigate. All of those complex relationships, your partner or your ex-partner is like in a place where you don't understand what's going on with them. Their world feels totally different than it once did when you got married and you don't quite know how to relate anymore. How do I connect with this person? All of this feels new in some ways that shouldn't feel new. And at the same time, you've got kids, likely teenagers who are going through. All kinds of changes that don't make any sense. They don't process the world in any way that feels logical or that you can relate to or actually talk to them about. And when you try to, they just throw it back in your face and so it feels like yet one more place where you just can't seem to get it right. Maybe your career isn't going where you want it to go. You've not reached or attained the status that you hope to be able to do. Maybe at the same time that all of that ha is happening. You've got aging parents and you're trying to deal with the health issues that they're dealing with and navigate all of the. Change in life that is facing them and therefore it's facing you as well. You're trying to maintain some kind of faith and just feel like, uh, this just feels like one extra thing on the pile. You're trying to maintain some level of health and fitness, right? You don't want to just give up. To the dad bod, but at the same time, like finding time for not just going to the gym but actually being healthy enough to not have to go to the doctor all the time. Like you feel like you're starting to have to take all these medications and you don't want to have to do that. Okay, look, I get it. I can keep going, but I think you get it too, like. All of this feels hard, and it just feels like, how can I get ahead? How can I actually feel like I'm succeeding and thriving in life when all of this is happening to me? I just feel like it's too much to have to hang onto. I'm failing all the time, even if I'm not failing at everything all at once. I'm failing at some things all the time, and it just feels like it's more than you can handle. Maybe you're a guy who's in your later years in life. You're either approaching or you're at retirement age, or you've maybe been in that stage for a while, and you might be just kind of feeling like, I don't know what to do with myself at this stage in my life. I'm lonely. I'm bored. I'm kind of frustrated because I, I just feel. Angsty and angry all the time. I'm not sure who I am and what I'm meant to be doing, and maybe this whole retirement thing isn't really all it's cracked up to be. If you found your identity in a lot of what you did with your work, that could be a feeling that you're having at the moment. You don't have your work anymore, and so you don't really know what to do to fill your days and how to compensate for your time. If you're still married, at this point in your life, you're not really sure how to relate to your wife at this stage, you've spent most of your life working, and so a lot of your waking hours were spent away from your spouse and now you're spending all this time together and you're not really sure, like, how do you make that work? How do you not drive each other crazy? You maybe wanna reach out to your kids, but you know your kids are grown and you don't want to just be a burden to them. You want to be involved in your grand grandkids lives, but you're not really sure what role you're supposed to play as granddad, how do you like be present in their life, but not overstep your boundaries? There's just some kind of like fine line there that you never seem like you can feel like you can master. You're kind of always stepping in the wrong direction as it relates to the important relationships in your life. You might even be at the age where a lot of those important relationships in your life are fading. The friends and the connections that you've had in your life are all disappearing for one reason or another. People maybe are moving away to be closer to kids and grandkids. Maybe you've moved away to be closer to kids and grandkids. You might even have friends that are passing away from health issues or just getting to the age where that happens. All of these things can make you feel like, am I. Doing anything right at life. Is my retirement gonna hold on long enough for me to be able to actually pay my bills, let alone to be able to pass something down to my kids? All of these things can leave us as men at this place in our world, in our culture, feeling like we just don't measure up. We don't have what it takes. We feel like we are failing at the things that are supposed to actually matter in this life. And I get it guys. All of that is a lot. In fact, it's probably too much, and that's really what I want to be able to say to you. It's time for us as men to just kind of recalibrate a little bit to figure out what are the things that I'm actually supposed to be succeeding at? How do I know if I'm doing well as a man to be able to evaluate what makes me feel like I'm winning or succeeding? When I get up every day, how can I know if I'm doing the things that I need to do? All right. Number one, you need to actually address the lies that are going on in your life. We talk about lies on this channel a lot because they're one of the easiest ways for men to buy into things or make agreements with things that are actually gonna point us in the wrong direction. So you need to examine the lies in your life. Those lies might be coming, like I said earlier, from social media, from comparing your life to every other man's highlight reel and trying to realize that you don't have it all together, there's no way that you're gonna live up to all of those standards because they aren't actually standards. They're just the things that occasionally another man feels like he's doing well at, and he needs to let everybody know about it. You don't have to be doing well at the same things that every other man is doing well at. In fact, that's impossible. That's a lie. Don't buy into that. Second. When you do get into those places where you just feel like you're failing, you need to actually kind of readjust that, recognize that, okay, that is a lie. I'm not failing at everything. I might be struggling at this thing, but there are other things that you might be doing well at. Celebrate some small victories and help yourself be able to see. Just because you're failing or struggling in one or even a few areas doesn't mean you're failing at everything. It just means that life is hard. You're facing more challenges than you possibly could, like knock out of the park all at one time, and that's. Okay, so figure out the things that you are succeeding at and remind yourself of those things. Let that be the truth that helps you confront the lie that you're failing at everything because you're not, you're just struggling. Life is a challenge, and that's okay in this moment. Third, you might be tempted with the lie of nobody else is struggling. The way that I'm struggling with, and look, that's why we have this channel, right? That's why Manhood Tribes exist, is so that we as guys can come out of the woods, get out of the dark, and start being honest about what's really going on in our lives. All of us are struggling, all of us are feeling like this. All of us are dealing with this in some capacity, and so it's time to reject the lie that no one else is dealing with these kinds of struggles. And in fact, you need to have some friends that you're opening up your struggles with. That you're talking about the reality of what your life feels like and how hard things are at the moment, you need to be able to deal with them, and you're not gonna be able to deal with those struggles alone. You need some other guys around you to help confront those lies and move you back towards the truth. Okay, so how do you begin to recalibrate to help yourself be able to get back to doing well at some of the things that really do matter? First, you need to reach out, like I talked about. You need to connect with other men who can help you focus on the things that are really gonna matter and just let you know and reassure you that it's okay that you're struggling. We're all struggling. Figuring out how to struggle well is what's important, and reaching out to other guys are gonna help you be able to do that. Next. You do need to refocus. You need to focus on the things that actually matter the most. Not every struggle is equal because not every problem carries the highest weight or priority in your life. Like I talked about, maybe your health and fitness. Isn't the biggest thing that you need to be focusing on if you're reasonably healthy. You know, measuring yourself against the latest Hollywood physique might not be the right thing for you to do, but if that's where you feel like you're failing and it's causing you to neglect other areas in your life that are actually more important than your physique, then it's probably time to refocus a little bit, refocus onto those things that actually matter. How do you know what actually matters? Well, I would say start with the five marks of manhood. Those are the things that we talk about on this channel that are traits that all men should exhibit as a way to demonstrate what it means to being a man. Those five things are strength, courage, skill, honor, and allegiance. You can go back and watch some of the other videos in this channel to help you get a better idea of what all of those things are. But if you're not clear on how you're doing those things well in your life, then it's time to get clear on those, focus on those things and how you can prioritize them. They're going to lead you probably to focusing on things like the most important relationships in your life. Right. Your wife, your kids, maybe your parents, depending on what stage of life you're in, you need to be able to focus on those things and making sure that those things are healthy and doing well if they're not, everything else in your life is gonna feel out of kilter, and so figuring out how you can shore up those relationships is gonna be really important. Important. Those five marks of manhood are also going to try to encourage you to focus on building strong male friendships in your life. That's a big part of what honor is all about. You can't have honor if you don't have a close group of peers around you. You need that tribe of men who's going to help encourage you to uphold those values and to be the kind of man that you were meant to be, but without a group of men around you, you actually can't live that way. And so you need some other men. I know it can feel like. Gosh, that's a chore. That's just one more thing on the list. But the truth of the matter is, guys, is that you're not going to get to all the other things on your list unless you have a tribe of men around you who are supporting you and challenging you and encouraging you to be able to do those things. You've got to have those friendships in place. Okay, so remember I talked about that One of my jobs is to give you a challenge to build strong male friendships. There it is. You need those male friendships in your life in order to be able to refocus on the things that are actually most important. Lastly. From there, once you've got your focus clear, then it's time to start rebuilding. It's time to just try to figure out, okay, of the things that are the highest priorities of the things that matter the most, what of those things am I actually failing at? And having some guys around you who can help you evaluate that is gonna be really important. Maybe you're giving everything you can to those primary relationships in your life, and they're still just not going the way that they need to go. Maybe some guys around you would be able to help say to you, Hey, dude, you're doing everything right. This isn't on you. You don't need to keep busting your balls, trying to make all of this work, because there's more people than you involved in these relationships and you can't control their choices, but you are making all the right choices, and it's time to give yourself some grace. It's time to be able to say to yourself, you're not actually failing. You're fighting well. The battle just isn't going yet the way that you want it to go, and you need some men to encourage you to be able to hang in there and keep doing the right things. But there might be some places in your life where you really are failing and you do need to refocus and rebuild and start taking some steps in those directions. A good tribe of men around you will help you craft some manhood challenges, some things to focus on, to make some appropriate next steps to be able to move in the directions that you want to move in. So again. Use those relationships around you to help you make the next steps. Guys, you're not failing. You're fighting. You might not be fighting well in every area, and maybe you need to figure out some ways to do that better. But you are fighting and figuring out that you need to fight for the right things and to stay in the battle is what it's really all about. You're not failing. Life is just hard, and you need to fight and fight well. And here at the Manhood Tribes Channel, I wanna encourage you to do just that. Okay. If you're enjoying this kind of content, guys, I would love it if you would like this video and subscribe to the channel, and I would also encourage you to consider checking out our Manhood Tribe's community. If you are looking for some like-minded men to be around, this is the place to be able to do it. If you're wanting to get better at being a man, if you're wanting to get better as a follower of Jesus and you wanna find some other like-minded men to connect with and encourage you along the way. The Manhood Tribes community is gonna be the place to do that. So go to manhood tribes.com/community and you can figure out how to sign up for that community when it's open, and when you can join and be a part of the things that we are doing there here at Manhood Tribes. Alright, I would love to end by encouraging you to comment on this video. Just put down below in the comments, what's the place in life where you most feel like you're failing? I look forward to reading your comments and to connecting with you, and I look forward to seeing you again here on the Manhood Tribes channel. Next time we'll see you then