Stop Wasting Time in Men's Groups That Don't Work

Machine transcribed from the episode audio, lightly cleaned. Timestamps are approximate.

0:00
it is likely that you have more friends than most men will ever have. And there is not one of them that you would call at two o'clock in the morning to tell the truth to. Look, and I got a little bit of proof behind that. Let's just say that you're in a small group. Maybe you have an accountability partner. There's a text thread with the guys in it and you actually like all the guys in that thread, in that group. And if your life came apart tonight, you already know exactly what you would do. You would handle it alone. And you'd clean it up before anybody else saw it. That is not a friendship problem. You have plenty of friends. That is something else that nobody has ever named for you.

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Look, I spent 28 years of my life living exactly like that. My name is Ryan James Miller, if you're not familiar. I helped faith-driven men who are winning on paper and they're drifting underneath. I mean, you know that feeling, right? The one that you get when you're accomplishing a bunch of great stuff and you still feel like something is off and you can't seem to shake it. Yeah, that's the drift. See, for the first 28 years of my life, I was hiding in plain sight with more friends than most people would ever dream of. It was so ridiculous. And it all started because of a call that I didn't make. At least the recognition did, that is. So it was April of 2019.

1:34
I'm in my office. I'm in the midst of serving the biggest client that I had ever landed. It was a monthly five-figure contract. And yet here I was on the floor, curled up in a ball in a full-on anxiety attack. I didn't know it at the time, but that's what it was. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't stand up. My body spoke for me when I was not man enough to speak for myself. I had one call in me, just one. I called my wife and I begged her to pray for me. Now sit in this with me for a second so you can understand this. At that point, I had been a Christian for 13 years. I'd helped plant a church.

2:20
I'd served as a pastor. I was in a men's group. I had good friends around me. I was coaching other high-performing men. I was even in a mastermind. And yet not one man on that entire list was the call that I made. But it's worse than that. You see, I didn't even consider that being the call I made. It's not because that I lacked men in my life. It's because I lacked a man who was close enough to have already seen it coming. So here's a big idea that I really want you to take grasp of if you're resonating with this story. Here's what I've learned since. And it is the thing that almost nobody says out loud, definitely not in the context of church.

3:06
Most men, they don't have an isolation problem. They have a rooms problem. You see, you're in rooms. You're probably in good rooms. And you're in rooms full of good men who really love Jesus. But every one of those rooms is built for you to report. Not one of them is built for you to be seen. A report, it's a summary. And it's a summary oftentimes of things that you've already edited. Being seen is a man watching you long enough to notice what you left out when that report gets delivered. So what you are feeling right now is not loneliness. Loneliness, it's having nobody around. And again, that's probably not your problem because you have people around.

3:53
You've got good men around you. This is an exposure problem. Nobody is close enough to see the drift and call it out. And here's why every single room that you're in keeps missing it. You see the small group? You bring the version of you each week to that group that's already finished processing what you're going through. The accountability partner, he asks questions that you've both agreed on. So you are never once surprised with what's about to come. The text thread, there's some real friendships in there. There's some real affection, but that text thread has never asked you the pointed hard question. So hear me clearly when I say this. These rooms, they are not bad.

4:39
And your church and your church group, they are not the enemy. Look, I'm a former pastor and I will defend the local church all day long. It's just that those rooms were never built for this. And nobody told you that before. So here's three reasons why the room that you're already in cannot do the job and then an opportunity to do something about it. So the first one is this, is you control the agenda in those rooms. Nobody catches this because it doesn't feel like hiding. It feels like you're being appropriate. You have this belief that you step into this room and if something were wrong, you'd bring it up. Just like you would expect that the other guys, if there was something wrong with them,

5:24
they would bring it up. The truth of the matter is though, is that you decide what walks into that room before you walk into that room. Meaning that that room, that group, that context only ever meets the version of you that you have already finished processing. You've already decided how you're gonna show up in that moment. You don't walk in and get examined. You walk in and you present. Everything that you step in with has been filtered first. Is this too much? Is this the right room? Will this change how they see me on Sunday or any other day of the week? So what do they hear? They hear your conclusions. They never hear your middle. And you know how I know this?

6:10
Because when we're asking questions, a lot of times in these small groups, especially small groups, I hear, I think, or this is how I would approach it. Not, this is what I'm experiencing. This is what I'm going through. This is what I'm dealing with. So again, they're hearing your conclusions or your assumptions, but they never hear your middle. And the middle is exactly where your drift and every other man's drift lives. So catch this. Catch this edit. This week, I want you to notice the moment you decide what not to say and write down what you cut out. Because you being in rooms that you can control is equated to

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you being in rooms that cannot reach you. Okay, second reason. The second reason is about time. And it is why nobody has told you where you're headed. When you step into these rooms, they see a snapshot. They don't see a slope. You see, the drift that I talk about often, it's not an event. That's the whole problem with it and why it comes up and bites us when we don't even feel like we see it's come. If I were really off track, somebody would have to have said something to me by now. That's what I think. Right? That's what you think. Like, I mean, you've done well, you've accomplished a lot, and all of a sudden you get to this place, you're like, man, something feels off. What is wrong with me?

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Well, if something was really wrong with me, somebody else would have definitely said something to me. My small group, my accountability partner, my buddies. But the truth of the matter is, is nobody can call a slope from a single dot. A man who sees you twice a month, every single week, he has no line to measure it against. You did not get to this place of being unsettled, of being uncomfortable, of being doubtful of where you're at. You didn't get here by one decision. You got here by one distraction, by one compromise at a time. Every individual Wednesday morning, you looked fine. It's the stack of them that moved you. You see, to see a slope, a man has to watch the same man over months on purpose

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with something to compare it to. Nobody in your life right now is doing that for you, and neither are you. This is akin to you running your business, looking at a snapshot of a P&L and saying, man, we're doing amazing right now. And you may be, but if you look back at a trend over the last 12 months, it may tell a completely different story. So I want to challenge you if you're like, man, Ryan, I'm jiving with this, then I want to consider, or I want you to consider, asking one man this week what he has noticed in you over the last year. Not what he notices in you right now. What has he noticed in you over this last year? So powerful if you get somebody that's willing

9:07
to be honest about that with you. Right? I want to be clear here. Men who only ever see dots will never tell you that there's something wrong. They will almost always tell you that you look good, that you look fine. Third reason is a critical one here. So the third reason is the one that I think keeps this whole thing locked down and it really creates a lot of struggle from us getting out of it. There's no cost to you lying about it. You may be saying to yourself, whoa, strong word, I'm not a liar, but the reality of the matter is is sometimes it's just easier to tell people what they want us to hear, what we want them to hear,

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or what we think they want to hear. The real reason that the honest version never comes out, even in the room you call safe, is because you have been led to believe that if I need to, I'll tell them. I just haven't needed to tell them anything. But the truth of the matter is is you will never say the hard thing in the room where saying that thing costs you something dearly. Look, I hear all the time, hey man, how you doing? I'm pretty good. Oh, it's just a busy season. Nobody checks up on that. Nobody follows up. Nobody asks another question. Nobody's there next month to see if you use the exact same words

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that you used last month. even in the midst of the most protected, confidential, comfortable, safe environments, men are very, very slow to show cracks in the armor. They may show the surface level crack, but they are not willing to go deep to the root of why they are in the place they were in in the first place. And that armor, I've talked about this before, that armor that we have put on, it was not always armor. It started as discipline. It started as wisdom about what a leader, a man of influence, can say or can't say to everybody else in the room. But before long, it became armor that is impenetrable.

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It hardens. And now, you can't get out of it. And people can't get into you. You cannot be known and be armored up at the same time. One of those two has got to go. And so my challenge to you, if this is you, is to stop waiting to be asked what is wrong. To stop waiting to be asked the deeper question. To stop waiting to be asked the follow-up to, yeah, man, there's just a lot going on right now and I'm just stressed. Nobody's coming to ask you that question. You got to do something about it. Until staying quiet. costs you something, you will continue to stay quiet.

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So the question is, what is it costing you? Well, probably a lot. Because you're listening to me talk about this right now. You're in a place where you've accomplished a lot. You've made a lot of progress. And you start thinking, it's just something that just doesn't seem to make sense. I just, I can't hone in on it. I can't zero in on it. But I'm just not as happy as I thought I would be right now. Well, there's something that you can do about it. And this is free. All you need to do is take action. And it's this. Pick one man. Because I don't know your wife. If you need me, maybe that's me. Pick a buddy in your small group. Pull him aside. Text a friend.

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and say one true sentence. One thing that you have never said out loud, maybe ever, to another man. This isn't a testimony. This is not a cleaned up version of the lesson that you've already learned. This is the middle. This is the struggle. This is the real feeling of doubt, of insecurity, of frustration, of stress you can't seem to shake, of sleepless nights, of a lack of a belief in who you are, struggling with your own self-worth even though you've achieved so much. Go tell that man that. Go tell that friend. Go tell that brother in your community.

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Watch what happens when you go to pick that man. because here's the feeling that I have. I have a feeling that you're going to open up your phone or you're going to go through your list and you're going to start thinking about all the guys. John, Jeff, Alan, Brett, Steve, Ryan, and you're going to keep scrolling and you're going to get all the way to the end of that list. And for the honest answer, a lot of you, you're going to get to the very end of that list and there's going to be nobody on it that you're willing to tell that to. You're going to find a reason. Really,

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you're going to make an excuse all the way down that list for why none of those men is ready to hear what you have to say. That is not a failure, gentlemen. That is a diagnosis. And that diagnosis proves all three of the reasons on yourself that there's a problem that needs to be solved. So back in October of 2008, it had been seven years since I had spoken to my biological father. I was at a men's retreat. It's up in Lake Arrowhead. There was, I don't know, 150 guys in the room and we had been worshiping, we had been

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receiving from the teaching of the guest speaker who, as best as I can recall, was doing an incredible job. And I remember he got to the end and he asked every single guy to stand up and yell out what he needed God to heal him from. He looked at us all. What do you need God to heal you from? Stand up and yell it out. And I remember it didn't take but a second and I stood up and I yelled out unforgiveness. and I broke. My knees started to cry and a few guys came around me. It was awesome, man. They took me outside. They prayed with me

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and they listened as I said out loud that I finally felt compelled for the first time in seven years to forgive my dad. And I came off that mountain at the end of that weekend, man, and I was done. Forgiving my dad in my heart. I felt like that was enough. But I was wrong. And the only reason that I was wrong was because as I would continue on in the small group that I was in, a few of the older men in that group would continue to pry on my story. I was telling them how amazing my experience was and how good that felt and they wouldn't

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let it stand. I mean, they celebrated with me but they also kept telling me that it needed to not just be in my heart. And they kept pressing on me over and over. I would celebrate wins in business and they kept reminding me of that. I kept talking about all the restoration that was happening in my marriage and they kept reminding me of that over and over and over again for months until they finally helped push me to a place where then between their encouraging and God just clearly stoking something in my heart, I wrote my dad a letter. And that would change the trajectory of my relationship with now one of my best friends in my entire life,

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my dad. Two different rooms, one up on the mountaintop, one down in the day-to-day. One room saw me break but the other room, it refused to let me stop at a feeling. It wasn't that one was bad and one was good. I believe that you need both. I need both. But chances are in reality you have neither. That's one of the reasons why stepping out of pastoral ministry I could not shake this feeling to continue investing into Christian men that were succeeding and desired to ensure

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that they would not destroy their faith or their family in the process. And over years and years and iterations this is what birthed the aligned man. Twelve weeks, twelve men, a room small enough that the guys in there couldn't hide in it but they were fixed together long enough that somebody could finally see the line instead of the dots. This is happening right now in one of my cohorts. A man who was on the verge of divorce and and he's holding on for dear life and man in one of our group calls he cried out to the I already knew of the struggles but I told him that he had to be comfortable sharing them in the group and he did. And afterwards

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I got multiple text messages from guys that just wanted to reach out to him and they did. And now they're starting to trace that line with him and step through his challenges to hopefully help him fight to restore his marriage. The aligned man is about showing up and doing the work. about being honest in the room. I've said to every single guy that participates and I'll say the same thing to you. If you come into that environment if you do those three things if you show up every single week if you do the work every single week and if you are honest in every room that we come into together and you are not clear on exactly where your life has drifted and you aren't clear on what steps you need to take

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to start closing that gap to stop the drift once and for all I'll refund every single dollar that you invest. That is how confident I am that this calling that God has put on my life fits the men that are in the drift that are in the gap right now. So if you are done being the strongest man in the room if you are done being the most alone man in the room head over to Instagram DM me the word aligned or DM me a conversation and I would be more than happy to share with you the opportunity to participate in the aligned man and maybe start this journey for yourself. Look you guys I spent

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so many years trying to be the man the reality is I just want to be a man. kwested