You Can't Fix What You Haven't Named

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

0:00
If you're winning on every external metric, but something underneath it still feels off, you probably don't have a performance problem. What you likely have is a diagnosis problem. So not too long ago, one of my clients, I walked him back from the very edge, toes off the cliff, edge of divorce. But it wasn't by fixing communication between he and his wife. It was by rebuilding the foundation that his marriage was sitting on. He told me afterward that the gap that we filled was something that no therapist he'd ever worked with, he and his wife or him individually, had ever been able to touch. So in this video, what I want to do is I want to show you the four symptoms

0:45
that every high-capacity, high-performing man feels but can't name. And why treating them as separate problems is exactly why he, maybe you, continue to stay stuck. Before we go any further, though, if you want to know right now, which of the four areas I'm going to talk about is the one most out of alignment in your life, I built a free tool called the Gap Check. It's a custom GPT. It's seven questions, under 10 minutes, and it's going to give you a clear answer as to the area or areas that are most out of alignment for you. So go do that right now. Link's down in the description. And then come back here, and then you can follow along in the video. It's going to be a lot more practically applicable to you if you do that.

1:31
Totally up to you. All right. So let's dig in. First symptom that I see is around their marriage. I see this a lot with high-performing men. Their marriage, it functions. But deep down in their gut, they know that it's just not alive in the way that they want it to. There's a lot of quiet. There's a lot of things that aren't discussed. You're just kind of like going through the motions. But it's really hard to name what the real problem is. And that gap is just something that is so costly, not just to your marriage, but to every area of life. I see this show up in a few different ways. So one of them is everything looks fine from the outside.

2:18
Everyone thinks you're happy, like you're the good couple. But inside, you just know that something is just eating at you. It's kind of, it's slowly dying. A lot of times in this situation, your wife, she's in love with you. I mean, madly still in love with you, but she's starting to question, really to lose belief in whether or not you're present. I mean, she sees you there, but she's just not sure if you are actually there. I also see that most men in this situation, they are giving everything at work. I mean, they are just going all in. And yet they come home and they are just dead.

3:04
Plop on the couch. It's not for a lack of desire. It's just because they have nothing left inside of them. When this happens, like the distance between them and their spouse, it just becomes normal. And that becomes so dangerous when anything less than amazing, incredible, 10 out of 10 in a marriage is normalized. That just is so dangerous. And what I find more often than not is this is not a communication problem. It's not a breakdown of communication between you and your wife. It's a bigger issue, which is a root issue, which is a foundation issue. And I'll get more to that in a little bit. I mean, this was my wife and I's story. We got married in 2001.

3:51
I had bought a house weeks before that. I had a baby about a year after that. And we were off and running. I was becoming more successful in business. It looked like things were going well. But little by little, we were just starting to drift apart. And we weren't communicating as often. We weren't being intimate as often. And I knew there was an issue, but I just couldn't really pinpoint what it was. And so if that's you, if this is something that you feel, I want to give you three moves and then really land on something very specific. And I'll work this all the way through in each of these four areas. But I want you to start off, if this is you, if you feel like this is the issue for you, this is the gap for you, maybe the gap check showed or revealed to you that this was for you.

4:36
I just want you to write on a scale of one to 10. One being functional, 10 being alive. You could replace that with amazing, great, whatever you want. But how would you rate your marriage on a scale of one to 10? It is alive. It is thriving. It is incredible. So one to 10. Then I want you to ask this question. What is your wife slowly losing that she used to see in you? I mean, what is one thing that your wife fell in love with that she just no longer sees? And then I want to encourage you to consider that you need to stop trying to fix your marriage. And instead, you need to understand the foundation, the root cause of what's wrong. So right now, maybe literally right now, before you even finish this video,

5:21
I want you to look at your marriage and I want you to name honestly whether or not you've been leading your marriage or if you've just been managing it, literally just existing. So that's marriage. Let's move on. There's something that's even quieter that can be a lot more devastating. And that has to do with self-doubt. And this is a tough one to talk about with high-performing men because a lot of men, they don't want to say this one out loud. They don't want to admit it. They believe they've got everything together. Their performance speaks for itself. But that's just not the case. Because internally, and I fought this battle too, you're doubting yourself. I see this show up in a lot of different ways.

6:05
Sometimes it's that your decision-making, your leadership, you're doing all of these things to cover up or compensate for the fact that internally you're doubting yourself. So much so that you're actually starting to ask yourself, am I enough? Am I doing enough? And then worse than that is you start to think like, man, what if they find out? What if they realize that this is all fake, that this is not real? Some people call this imposter syndrome. I don't actually think that's a thing. I've recorded other videos on that. But what I do believe is this is a fracture of identity. The problem with this is most ways guys try to solve this is to become more successful, to work harder, to achieve the next thing.

6:52
But all that does is it just creates more heaviness. It puts more weight on our shoulders. And it actually casts more doubt. And you get to this place where you've arrived, succeeded. You're at the top of your industry, of your business, whatever. And you don't feel like you can trust anybody. I felt this in business. I felt this when I was a pastor of a church. Man, you start to look around. You're like, I don't even know who I can talk to about this. Most high-performance men have impressive buildings with cracked foundations. And I'm going to show you an illustration of that here in a little bit. But that is something that I want you to think about. And I also want you to think that from that building's perspective, that if the foundation is cracked, the higher you build, the more you build on top of it.

7:39
More business success. More investment into your fitness. More time on hobbies and activities. The more that you do, that thing gets heavier in that cracked foundation. It becomes harder and harder for it to hold it. So the building looks taller. It looks great from the outside. But that foundation, boy, oh boy. It is just ready to crumble that entire building. If that's you, if you feel this level of self-doubt, even if you don't want to admit it to anybody else, if you feel this level of self-doubt, here's something that you can do. Take out a piece of paper. Open up your iPhone notes. And I want you to write this question down. Am I enough? And then maybe a second one.

8:25
Am I worthy? Am I enough? Am I worthy? And I want you just to stare at that question. And then think about this. When did you, in your life, start to believe that your worth was equated to your performance? That the more you achieved, the better you were? When was that? Here's the truth of the matter. You cannot out-achieve this. You cannot out-work this. You cannot out-hustle this, out-grip this. This is only fixed with a settled identity. Hold on, because I'm going to get there, and I'm going to help you to kind of unpack that a little bit more. So, okay, so just write down. Write down that one private question. Am I enough?

9:10
Am I worthy? Do that for me. Okay, if what I just described right there is the loop you're running privately inside of yourself, and you have not done that gap check. Again, description. Go down there. Link is down there. Check that out. This is going to show you exactly where that is rooted, and it's going to start to give you some ideas on what you can do next. Or you can just keep watching the video, and I'm going to explain a little bit more there. But that gap check will be a little bit more personal for you. Okay, third symptom that I see is around faith. What's interesting is most Christian guys don't see this one as being a real problem, because they believe in Jesus. I believe in God, Jesus.

9:54
They attend church. Maybe they even go to men's groups. I've been in all these environments. I've pastored them, and I've participated in them. But here's the interesting thing that I find with so many guys. If they are not operating from their deep-seated, Christ-centered faith on Monday, then what they do on Sunday is nothing more than decoration. And that's not even about what it means for people out there. It's actually about what it means for us. It's like we're showing ourselves to be faithful, but man, internally we are faithless, and it is destroying us. It's lonely. I mean, we succeed and have access to so much, and yet we're drawing on nothing as the result of that. This shows up as a distinction, not a belief.

10:39
I'm Christian, but I'm not really living it out that way. I see this a lot with guys where on Sunday when they're in church, they're communicating with God. They're praying. They're worshiping. But then when Monday comes, their lead consultant is the fear-based narrative that they have been sucked into. They're going to everything but Jesus to fill that gap that is really causing them to struggle. This is not a belief issue, by the way. This is an identity problem. It's where I am rooting myself that's causing me to have this issue with faith. It shows up so much.

11:26
Let me give you just a brief illustration. I'm just going to do this with my hands. I should. Taki Moore this. If you don't follow Taki Moore, you totally should. He would have an amazing drawing here. But just think of two boxes. Box one is Sunday. Box two is Monday. So this is the box I operate on Sundays. This is the box I operate on Monday. Really, Monday through Saturday. In the middle, there is this gap. That's the problem. They need to be one and the same. And yet, yours are far apart. And this gap in between is what is causing you this tension, this symptom of really a faithlessness, even though you have a deep-seated belief in Jesus. You're like, Ryan, what do I do here? How do I fix this one?

12:12
Well, a couple of things that you can do. First of all, audit the last three, four, five significant decisions you've made. A purchase, a business decision, a family decision. What actually drove those decisions? Was it faith in Jesus? Was it going to the Lord in prayer, opening his word? Or was it something else altogether? And I just want you to understand that closing this is not about more discipline, which again, is another thing that we as high-performing men love to do. I've done it my whole life and it doesn't work. I've got to go back to the foundation. So figure out that decision, that decision-making process. How are you making decisions? That's going to tell you a whole lot about whether or not this is the gap that you need to close.

12:59
Look, faith is the inner life, but there's also the outer life. And that one is just as broken. So even if you have your faith inside the heart, if it's not affecting you outwardly, it's crushing you. It's actually not helping you. Last one is the leadership symptom. Again, I see this one a lot with high-performing guys. This hits the guy that believes he was made for more, that he should be accomplishing so much more. I've got so much potential in me, but I just can't quite hit it. I'm not failing by conventional standards, though. A lot of people around me look at me and they're like, man, you're so successful. And yet, I don't feel that way. I'm literally paying like this invisible tax on the success I think I should be achieving.

13:50
And you're doing this alone more often than not. Look, the higher you climb, the fewer people actually know you. That's by nature. It's just what happens, and that becomes more and more dangerous. You are surrounding yourself with a lot of people, but the more successful you become, the higher of a leader you are. Those people need things from you, but it is hard to get anything from them. That is not selfish. That is wisdom you need to be poured into as well. That gap, it's real. You know you were made for more. But look, you can't close that by yourself. You need to close that with brothers. You need to close that with like-minded individuals that are going to help you get there. You've been doing it by willpower, and that is not going to work.

14:37
And I know that's not going to work because you've been doing it year after year, and it's not helping any. If you want to fix this one, here are a couple of things you can think about as it relates to stepping through this. First of all, I want you to be honest. Do you have a man in your life who knows the real you, every bit of you? And are you regularly engaged in deep-seated conversation with him, sharing your highs, sharing your lows, and allowing him to pour into you? And then you doing vice versa. If that's not the case, then you have chosen that. And I feel this one because I want people like that in my life. I've got three men in my life that do that. I meet regularly with them. I meet weekly.

15:22
But I've lived in seasons of my life where I've found myself like on this island. And as much as I want to blame everybody else, it's because I wasn't actively pursuing it. I recognize that brotherhood, deep-seated, Christ-centered brotherhood is a necessity in my life. It is the necessity of every high-performing Christian man. You've got to go seek it out. So if you want to do one thing here, name the one man closest to you that if he was the brother that walked this journey with you, it would absolutely change your life. Put that down and start thinking about what that's going to take for you. So four systems, I mean, sorry, four symptoms, one root problem. But here's what's underneath it all.

16:09
And I've spoken about this multiple times already. But I want to be clear here. The root issue is an identity issue. Look, without understanding this, you've got four problems that compound into far more things that you have to create. And you've got no path to solve any one of them. And that's why you're in the situation that you're in. But if you understand this, if you understand this one thing, you have a diagnosis and you have a direction that you can set off in. Everything that I've been saying has been building towards this one thing. So again, four symptoms, four expressions of the exact same fracture. When a man does not know who he is, it leaks into every part of who he is.

16:58
Identity fracture is the outcome of building on performance and approval. Look it, this is not a flaw. This is the reality of growing up in a society that is pushing us to be more and more and more. Even when we know that that is not going to fulfill us, it's just what ends up happening. You can't fix identity fractures like this by just improving the symptoms. That's why I said you can't just go fix your marriage. You can't just go fix your leadership style. You actually have to attend to the root cause. Okay, I've got an illustration for this. So I'm going to pop this one up on the screen so you can see this. Probably right about here. So in this one, as you'll see, the first house, it's built on wounds.

17:41
It's built on performance. It's built on fear. It looks amazing from the outside, but it is unstable. And you can see that. The second house, it's built on sonship. It's built on a settled worth. It's built on a calling. It holds under pressure because the foundation is on the identity that we have in Jesus Christ. And then it builds from there. Every man, every man watching this right now is standing inside one of those two houses. Which one of those is yours? I know what you think, but I want you to deeply explore and understand. So if you're looking at that and you're like, man, I've got to do something about this.

18:28
Then I want to ask you, where is your identity anchored? Where is who you are anchored? Is it in something you've done? Something that's been done to you? Or is it in someone? Look, the work ahead of you is not self-improvement. It is identity reconstruction. We have to diagnose this. We have to get clear on what this is. You can't just hack your way into this. You can't just discipline your way into this. You can't just will your way into this. This is why I've created the gap check. Link down in the description. I've said it before. I'll say it again. You don't even have to put in an email address. I mean, this is absolutely free and frictionless for you to get involved in.

19:14
What are you going to do about it? If you've watched this and you're like, okay, I see it. Then this is for you. We can go one step further. We do a gap audit, which when you get to the end of the gap check, it will link you to a video. You can learn a little bit more about that. But it's basically, it's two sessions. We write out your gap closure plan. And it offers you a clear path forward. This is by application only. I review all these. If I believe that I can help you through this process, then we can move forward together. So again, complete the gap check. Watch that video and then determine whether or not it's a right fit for you. Let me close with this. You cannot fix what you haven't named.

20:01
Hopefully now you've named it. Hopefully now you understand. The question is, what are you going to do about it?