You Reached the Goal. So Why Do You Still Feel Empty?

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

0:00
You are not failing because of a lack of discipline. You're failing because you've been solving the wrong problem with everything that you have. By 2020, I had finally gotten to this place where I did not have to think about spending money anymore. I mean, obviously within reason. But that was an incredible milestone for me. I'd fought so hard to get there. And yet, I was still anxious. Not about survival anymore, though. I was anxious about missing the next goal, about not making enough money, about losing what I had built. The number changed, but that feeling, the emptiness, like something was off, it hadn't left me. In this video, I want to show you exactly what you've been solving, what's really broken,

0:46
and why the gap between those two lists is the reason why nothing is stuck and you continue to feel that same emptiness inside yourself. But before we get there, I want to help you with something that I think could be very valuable as you're watching this. So I've created something called the Gap Check. The link is down in the description. It's down in the show notes if you're just listening to this via audio. This is the fastest way for you to know which layer of this problem is most active in your own life. It's seven questions. It's only 10 minutes long, and it's completely free. You don't even have to put an email address in to participate. So drop down. Take that now. Do that. Hit pause and take that now, and then come back before we go any further.

1:34
This is going to make a whole lot more sense and be a whole lot more practical if you do that. Okay. So what I want to talk about first is what we've been trying to solve, what you've been trying to solve. And I'm going to illustrate this talking about a treadmill. So on one hand, we would say that if you run a marathon on a treadmill and you run a marathon on the road, that the same effort is being put into it. And that's very well true, right? That's very much the case. Obviously, there's some factors that could affect that. But by and large, you've put in the same amount of effort to run a marathon, whether it's on a treadmill, on the road, on a trail, whatever it is. But when you run on the treadmill, you don't go anywhere.

2:21
You stay in the same spot. Whereas if you run on the road or on a trail, you're actually covering distance. This is illustrative of a lot of us where we are continuing to make effort after effort, accomplishment after accomplishment, and yet we seem to be hitting the same ceiling. It's not a lack of capability. It's actually a problem of aim. It's cost us years, sometimes decades of the effort that we're putting in that we're not getting peace from. We're missing the whole point. So there are five things that I see men do in this area that create big struggle for them.

3:06
One is around work. So they'll work harder. When they feel that sense of emptiness, when they feel that sense of struggle, the default response is to just keep working harder. I feel off, so I'm just going to go get after it. The second one is around behavior modification. I mean, like, lookit, if I just fix the behavior, somehow I'll feel better about it. But it's surface level at best, and it never sticks. Another one? Let me just read another book. I'm going to read another book, and I'm going to gain some level of knowledge that I don't have. That's going to fix it. That's just information without foundational change. It doesn't help. Maybe I'm going to go to a conference. That's one I see guys do a lot.

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Or some kind of industry event or event in the communities that we spend time in. So attending another event is nothing more than temporary motivation, and it's external. And you know as well as I do that we feel good for a couple of days. We come back, and we feel the exact freaking same. The last thing that I see men doing to try and fix this is they just try to push through it. I'm going to push through the hollow, and they call it discipline. But the reality of the matter is, yep, you know the story. The emptiness is still there. So this was me. 2020, man, this was the year that I finally crossed an income threshold that allowed me to stop thinking about where every single one of my dollars was going.

4:34
For the better and for the worse. But really, I had no more daily money stress. I mean, it was real. It was earned. I was working hard. I was enjoying my life. My family was enjoying their life. We were buying a few little cool things, nothing extravagant. And yet the anxiety, it was still there. Different address, same feeling. Whether or not I was missing goals or hitting goals, I had this fear of losing what I had built. And I had to continue pursuing more in hopes that I would, I'd be able to fill that gap. The scoreboard actually said that I was winning. But in the quiet, before I went to bed, when I woke up in the morning, sometimes when I woke up in the middle of the night, when I was by myself in my office, that quiet, it just said something so different.

5:27
That is the moment that, for me, I stopped asking myself how to earn more money and I started to try to figure out what I was building my whole life on. So there are three things that you can do here if you want to help yourself if this is starting to resonate you. So the first one is, is I would encourage you, write down the three to five things that you've tried in the last couple of years to close your own gap. And then for each one of the things that you list, write this down. Was I solving for behavior or was I solving for foundation? You may be saying to yourself, Ryan, I don't know what foundation completely is yet or what you mean by that. And I'm going to get there. Don't worry about it.

6:12
And finally, with that, then look for a pattern. Name what you see across those attempts. That pattern can become a diagnostic for you. Okay. But before you add one more strategy, before you add one more system, I want you to name what you've already tried and why it did not hold. And if you don't know why, you need to better ask that question. That is part of the reason why the gap check is so important is it can help you to start unearthing some of those things for yourself. So my question before I move on is, what have you been trying to solve? What's actually broken? I mean, those aren't often the same list. They can actually be really, really different. So secondly, I want to talk about what's actually broken.

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This is super helpful because this starts to open up our eyes to maybe a new way of thinking. So why is this important? Why is it important to start here? Well, it's because when we see the real problem, we stop feeling like a failure. And it is ironic for myself, for so many of my clients earning high six, low seven figures that feel like failures, even though outwardly they look like they're doing so well. But it's because they haven't been able to see the real problem. And so they just start to feel like a failure. That's crazy, right? A failure making that kind of money, a failure with what seems to be a pretty happy marriage. I mean, it's just, it's crazy. But when we're able to uncover what's actually broken, we start to feel relief, relieved or relief.

7:42
And it's because we start to recognize that everything we were trying before wasn't wrong. It was just misdirected. And that we're not weak. That this isn't an indicator or an accusation that we just don't have what it takes. This is also helpful because it shows us that we were just aimed at the wrong thing. And that's actually good news because then that gives us some hope and a little bit of freedom to go out there and pursue what we really need to. Okay, so here are five real problems around what is actually broken. The first one is around identity. So if your identity is misaligned, that's really this idea like, do you know who you are apart from what you do?

8:35
Do you know who you are apart from your roles, apart from your output, apart from your achievements? If you don't, it starts to get really hard to build a life off of that because you're chasing all kinds of things, not even knowing whether or not they're actually in alignment with who you were created to be. So identity is the first real problem I see around this kind of issue of brokenness. The second one is worth. So we don't have a settled understanding of what our worth is because our value has long been tied to outcomes and approval. When we're not approved, when we don't achieve, we feel less than. And that's so broken and so backwards, but that's what's been preached at us.

9:21
That's how we feel. And so that becomes really real. The third problem that I see in this area of why brokenness exists is because of our wounds. We are still operating from what we have done or what's been done to us. And so therefore, we don't know how to operate as anything other than that. That past hurt, heartache, tragedy, it's coming back to haunt us day in and day out. And by the way, the enemy uses those things to further try to drive us into the ground and prevent us from being all that God has created us to be. The fourth problem I see is foundation. When it is wrong, we are building on what we can prove, not who God says we are. And this is the cracked foundation. If you watched our last video, the first one in this series, you would have seen me talk about this a lot.

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And so we're building on, oh, I can prove this. I can prove this. I can prove this. And we feel this emptiness because that's not how God desires us to live our lives. And lastly, the last problem I see is just one where we're out of sync. Like our beliefs and our behaviors, they're running in two totally different directions. And that completely screws us up. So if that's you, if this is an area for you that you're like, man, Ryan, that's it. Like I just, I need to really figure out what's broken. Okay. Three questions that are super, super helpful for you to ask. Around identity, I would encourage you to ask yourself this question. Who am I when my success is stripped away? When it's non-existent, when it's not around.

10:59
The second one is around worth. What would have to happen today for me to finally feel like I'm enough? And thirdly, around wounds. What story do I keep telling myself about who I am and where did it come from? Okay. Super duper helpful. If you resonate with any one of these three questions, then these three things can help you through that. The first one is if it's an identity issue. If you're, if who you are shifts with your outcomes, then it is your foundation that's the issue. It is an issue of identity. If the answer to feeling like enough is producing another outcome, like I don't feel like enough, so therefore I need to produce more, then it's an issue of worth. And lastly, if you start to recognize that you have an origin story that is dictating how you live, believe, then that's probably a wound.

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So what I would do here, if this is the area that's really resonating with you, is to pick one of those three questions and write out your honest answer. Like, which one is it? How did this get here? And then am I willing to do something about it? So those three questions, identity, worth, and wound, those are exactly what the gap check walks you through in a very structured way. Again, it's less than 10 minutes. If you haven't done it already, pause. Go do it right now and then come back. There's no reason why you can't just insert yourself back in. Pause is a great thing when it's going to help us to gain some more clarity. So it's going to give you a clear picture of where your fracture is the deepest.

12:36
Again, so links down below. Make sure that you check that out. Okay. Third thing here that I want to talk about is why the gap between these two lists is such a big problem. So why there is this huge gap between who I am right now and who God is ultimately calling me to be. Who I am right now and where I feel I can go and why there's this emptiness. It is there because for men specifically, this cost has become very personal to us. We can understand that there's misalignment, right? Intellectually. But for some reason, we still go home when we do the same things. And that's just kind of the nature of the beast.

13:23
That's how we've been shaped. That's how we've been molded. But the point here is, is we want to make this personal. We want to have a deep, truthful understanding of why we are the way we are so we can begin to fix it. This is why it's really important for us to name our gap in real terms that makes sense to us. Look, I'm not trying to scare you into this. You're like, I'm a tough guy. I'm not going to get scared. But I'm not trying to fear this into you. I'm trying to tell you the truth because the truth is what will set us free. The truth is what will get us on the road to glory that we all desire. The road to greatness that I preach so often to every single man that I coach.

14:09
Okay, there's five realities to this as it relates to this gap that I want to share with you very, very briefly. So the first one is this. There is this gap between solving and broken. It's a misdirected effort. But that's where the hollow lives. So there is this gap. Like, I feel broken. I'm going to go try and solve it. But they're not even in the same zip code. We're trying to solve things that aren't actually helping us heal what's broken. It's misdirected effort. And honestly, it makes us feel really empty and hollow inside. Another thing that I see that creates this gap that causes it to fester even more is that we focus on the wrong problem.

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I mean, this would be like going in for an issue with my hip and taking medication to cure my heart. Like, it's just not going to fix it. And the real problem ends up being made worse and worse because we're addressing the wrong thing. It just compounds day after day, week after week, year after year. Another reality of this gap is it's just not going to heal. Wounds, identity, foundation. The good news, bad news is they just don't reset. They will live with us forever until we heal them, cure them, and grow from them once and for all. The fourth thing I see is that this is a structural challenge. If you watched my last video again, you saw me illustrate these two houses.

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One was built on a cracked foundation. One was built on a solid foundation. What we've been doing often is we've been building floor after floor after floor after floor, like this mansion of sorts, on a cracked foundation. And it's starting to lean. And the more that we try to build on it, the more dangerous it gets. And eventually, the whole dang thing is going to come crashing down. And the last reality I see here is around honesty. Men who close the gap are not more disciplined. And yet, this is the place that most men go. Most men that close this gap are more honest about the problem that they're needing to solve and the way that they solve it as they move forward.

16:32
This brings me back to 2019. I mean, I was moving. I was growing. This was previous to this income place that I hit that I shared with you earlier. But man, I was on it. Like, things were so good. But this fear of losing one client, it was a substantial client for sure, but this fear of losing one client ended up having me finding myself in the corner of my old office, not here, my old office. I was in the corner of my office, curled up in a fetal position, crying. Literally crying. I couldn't function. The thought of that loss was going to ruin me, is what I thought. That the thought of that loss was going to wreck everything that I had gained so much momentum to build.

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What were other people going to think? What was I going to say to my family? I mean, all these things were just, like, crushing me. It wasn't the reality. I had lost a sense of who I was. And as I was building my business, and it was getting better and better and better, the thought of losing a part of that made me feel like I was losing a part of myself. And after some prayer, some support from my wife, getting back on the saddle again, I realized that I just needed to honestly confront it. And what I did and what you can do if you feel like you're resonating with this gap, this hollowness, is think about it in three ways. Number one, am I?

18:06
Am I working on behavior or foundation right now? That's the first thing. The second thing is, what has staying in misalignment cost me over the last 12 months? And you may not want to admit that you've been misaligned, but you have if you're here and this is resonating with you. If there's a gap between who you are right now and who you believe you've been called to be, there is a gap. And that means you have been misaligned. You've been pursuing some or all of the wrong things. What has that cost you? There is a compounding effect to it, and it may be costing you far more than you've actually measured. And lastly, are you willing to make a decision? Stop solving the visible problem. Address the foundational one.

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This is not about a program. This is not about some new posture. This is about the truth. This is about honesty. This is about digging in once and for all to the very thing that is going to help you like nothing has ever helped you before. Look, if you've taken the gap check and you want to know what to do with it based on what it's shown you, I'm more than happy to help that. We've got a great community called the Men of Greatness. And even in there, you're going to see there's almost 200 guys in there. And not everybody takes their stuff seriously. And they actually probably need to get kicked out of our community. But there are men in there that are very transparent about where they've struggled,

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how they're rebuilding, and how they're rebuilding the right way. So if you're looking for a place to welcome you in, like-minded Christian men, in the pursuit of success without destroying their faith or their family in the process, this is a great way for you to do that with other brothers. Down below, you can check out the link, and we'd be more than happy to walk through that with you. And by the way, if you hop into the community, you can DM me in there, and I'd be happy to answer some of your questions around what you have found with your own Gap Check. And by the way, it's free to join. There's a seven-day trial in there. You get access to everything in there free for seven days. So again, if you want a place with other faith-driven men like yourself

20:05
pursuing similar things to you, not pretending or not performing, but actually really trying to get after the thing, that could be a place for you. Okay, here's what I want to say to you. If this is resonating with you, if this is something that you're like, man, Ryan, yes, yes, I'm doing, I'm going to start trying to do the thing. I want to encourage you with this last thing, because oftentimes this can feel very dejecting. It can feel very depressing. And so I want to encourage you to this. Because as a high-performing man, effort is everything to you. You're like, you know, put in a bunch of effort, work really hard, and you have. And so I want to tell you this, because this is what I needed to hear when I felt like,

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man, I felt like I did everything and it's not enough. Here it is. The problem was never your effort. It was your aim. Now that you know the difference, you can actually do something about it. My question to you is, what are you going to do about it?