I remember when you were a kid and we always would receive those participation trophies.
And then here somewhere along the way, the adults, typically the Gen Xers,
all of a sudden we're like, yeah, that's not such a good thing.
Those participation trophies are not good.
And why are they not good?
Why are they something that distracts from American exceptionalism?
How does it keep us playing life safe?
Because we actually were onto something with throwing a fit about the participation
trophies, except for the fact that we still accept, even as adults,
even as we're entering into our 50s and 60s,
we're still accepting those participation trophies in our relationships,
in life, almost every single day.
How are we doing that? We're going
to be talking about that this week on episode 220 of The Relaxed Male.
This is The Relaxed Male, a show that comes to you each week,
helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live
their life on their terms.
Music.
Join the host, certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their
heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.
Hey, man, hello, and welcome to The Relaxed Male. I am your host,
Brian, and I am a certified men's relationship coach who assists men who who
are just neck deep in the suffering of their life,
suffering in the troubles they have with their relationships with,
and that's not just the wife type of relationship, the girlfriend type of relationship,
but also the relationship with your sons,
your daughters, your next door neighbor, your community,
your church, the church congregation, the people you work with,
everybody around us, we have relationships with them.
And when we don't nail those relationships down, we're going to just,
we're going to destroy them. We're going to be, find ourselves suffering.
And a lot of times those problems come in, come at us in ways that we're just not expecting it.
And so I help men get through that day-to-day struggle, change how they're looking
at different circumstances,
look at the, at the, the thoughts that we're having and helping you to understand
And just changing that one little thought, changing the thought just slightly.
And all of a sudden, things start looking a little better. Things start becoming,
falling into place a lot easier.
And we don't have as much trouble.
We don't have to fall into the victim mindset. We don't have to play the victim.
We don't have to sit there and even lean on our different buffering techniques.
We don't have to indulge in ourselves with food and alcohol and pot and all
the other things that we do to
keep us from being able to have the relationships that we actually want.
And each episode, we'd stop and we'd take a look at what needs to be changed.
How do we look at life so that our life can be better, stronger,
more successful, so we can live our life on our terms without,
again, without playing that victim.
Them and we're doing that today because sadly i
got to thinking about the participation trophies that we were and when i was
younger we used to not have participation trophies whenever i was back in like
peewee baseball and then somewhere along the way all of a sudden we started getting.
Participation trophies and i i get
it it caused the kids allows it feels
good about it at the time but as we
as us kids became adults and our and us adults started having our own kids we
realized wait a minute that participation trophy yeah it feels nice for the
kid okay all of a sudden you You don't have to deal with the awkward feelings and,
and thoughts that you're having because little Johnny isn't good enough to actually get a trophy.
He came in seventh. All right. He he's not fast enough, but yet because we have
given so many participation trophies out, a lot of people think that they are
deserving of these trophies.
Of whatever, in whatever fashion it is. i you
know i think i'm worth you know a hundred thousand
dollars a year no actually you're not
dude you're not worth a hundred thousand dollars a
year if you're working at mcdonald's
no if you're working at mcdonald's you're worth maybe 30 000 they may have decided
to up it up at a little bit to where it's maybe 40 maybe maybe maybe 45 000
i don't think you can make 50 000 until you become like a regional manager or something like that.
And the reason is because there's no real big set skill.
You have to be able to provide the value, enough value that the other person
perceives that you're worth whatever amount you're demanding.
If you're thinking you're demanding and you're worth $100,000,
you're not the one who gets to call that.
You're the one who gets to do the work and show evidence. Yes.
But if the other person is like, you're not worth a hundred thousand dollars,
I'm not paying a hundred thousand dollars, then you're not going to get paid
a hundred thousand dollars a year.
And so our participation trophies through our life have really impacted on us.
And though we, even though now we still are throwing fits about participation trophies. Wow.
You know, we got the participation trophy generation out there,
the millennials and the, and the, and the, and the, uh, zoomers out there.
These guys are, you know, they've grown up receiving participation trophies.
And it, like I said, it sounds good. It sounds okay.
It's not what, what harms making the kids smile, except we're not serving the kids.
Really, we're giving the kids participation trophies, not so that they learn,
but so we don't have to deal with the uncomfortable thoughts when Johnny starts
crying because he came in seventh.
Because we think his confidence in him, his self-confidence,
his self-esteem is so severely damaged because he is not a fast runner.
But we've taken this whole participation trophy thing.
And though we have turned our backs to the children, and we don't want them
to have a participation trophy, we still actually want participation trophies.
And we give ourselves participation trophies daily, regularly, all the time.
Don't believe me? You get home. boom, you had a really crappy day.
So you sit down, pop open a can of beer. I deserve this.
Do you really? Do you really deserve that can of beer? Do you really deserve getting drunk?
Do you really deserve checking out of the rest of your family because you had a hard day?
That can of beer, my good friend, is a participation trophy.
We give ourselves participation trophies all the damn time.
And I get it. It's an easy bump of satisfaction.
It feels so satisfying to be able
to crack open a beer after a relatively rough day and kick a few back.
But the problem is the same thing as what you had when you were a kid at baseball
and you got a participation trophy because you came in, your team came in fifth.
It's an empty victory. All right. You really didn't get better.
You don't have a reason to get better when you just and start chugging,
dipping into a 12 pack. And we give ourselves participation trophies all of the time.
I feel bad. My wife, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to,
to, uh, to irritate my wife.
I don't want to annoy my wife. So I go and watch porn, watching porn,
vlogging the dolphin, all of that.
Is giving yourself a participation trophy. Why can't they come up with a word
that doesn't bounce as much as that word? We're going to have fun with this.
Participation trophy. The real win would be if you got to do the horizontal mambo with your wife.
But you have to, again, like the gold medal, you have to work for it. You have to earn it.
You have to have that emotional connection with your wife. And it's easy.
It's easier just to go to Pornhub.com.
All right, there we go. We have got boobs and ding-a-lings flopping all over
the place, and it makes life a whole lot easier.
I get you. I was there.
It is so much easier to look at porn than to look at your wife and go,
how can I turn her on today? day. How do you do that?
That's the, that's the trick. That's the rub, isn't it?
Had a rough day at work. Well, you're bored. Well, let's do a participation trophy.
Let's watch, you know, watch porn. Let's play a video game instead of taking
steps needed to further our, our, our goals.
What is our dream? What do we want to do?
How do we, how are we not making the phone calls that that we need to make.
What are we doing instead?
Maybe you're staying busy for the sake of staying busy.
So at least you feel like you're doing something. You're not furthering your goals at all.
You're just writing blog posts for blog posts sake.
You're finding other things that need to be done than what actually needs to be done.
Again, watching porn, overeating, smoking, drinking, you know,
taking a big draw on a bomb.
All of those are aspects of buffering. Anything that we do, sitting and watching
television is buffering. Anything that we do to prevent ourselves from having
to feel the discomfort of whatever it is we need to learn, we're buffering.
We're putting a buffer between our goal and us.
There's a big old gap and we add some more buffering. So there's a bigger gap now.
Our goal in life is to become better. Our goal is to have a better relationship.
Those relationships mean you have to do the stuff that's going to cause some discomfort.
Comfort you're going to kind of have to hang your heart out there
and have other people see it you're going to have to
hang it out there and let people judge it and you're going to have to be okay
with people judging your attempts the more you try the better you're going to
get the better you get the closer you are to getting third place trophy and
you keep trying you're going to get the second second place trophy.
And then you keep trying, you're going to get the gold, the gold trophy.
You're going to get the big trophy. You're going to get the championship,
but you're not going to want to for the very same reasons that we don't want
to give our children participation trophies either, because why try harder?
No need to try harder. Hey, we, we get, we do all right. We get, we get a little trophy.
It's not as big as the first place trophy, but I got a trophy.
Nonetheless, less. Look at this little thing.
It's got a little angel-looking thing that's holding an olive wreath in its hands.
But it takes the effort.
When you fail trying to get to that third place, third place becomes really freaking sweet.
That's a third place win. That's not bad. Better than fourth by a long shot.
But then And, you know, he keep trying, you know, like, all right,
well, that was a third place.
That was a hard fought, uh, battle right there.
Let's try for second place. Let's get that silver trophy.
We got the bronze trophy. Let's get the silver trophy. And, oh, not quite.
And we have to, what got us to the third place isn't going to get us to the second place.
And we have to learn more to get that second place trophy because the results,
the satisfaction, the fulfillment that you're going to get from the second place
is going to be twice as much as the third place.
Third place is so wonderful because it's above everything else.
There is not really all that much satisfaction, but,
From fourth on down, you get a little, like I said, you get that participation
trophy and it's a really hollow, empty victory.
It's like a, Hey, yeah. Okay.
Put it in the, in the pile with the rest of them instead of taking and enjoying
and savoring the wins, allow those cries, allow those disappointments to happen.
Cause yeah, you're going to be disappointed because you wanted that first place
spot and And you got sixth, man.
You've got a lot of work to go. I thought I worked hard until I saw someone
who does twice as much work as I do in half the time and saw how much was possible.
And then you want to stand back and you wonder, well, why are they so successful?
Because they're doing what they need to do.
You're standing around with your thumb up your tail end going,
well, it's just not fair. I want to have that too. I want to have success.
Then you have to give up on the buffering.
You have to give up on the participation trophies. You want a good relationship.
You have to actually start doing the work that will earn a good relationship.
You want a wife that is seductive and loves you and is excited to see you. you have to do the work.
You want kids who turn to you for advice.
You want kids to turn to you for, you know, for the affirmations of,
am I doing good? Am I good enough?
You have to show them that, yeah, you're willing to let them know what good
enough is and to help them become good good enough.
That's all work. That's all hard work that you have to do. Till you do that,
you're going to struggle.
We're going to have those problems. You're not going to reach the successes
and the fulfillments that you want.
And that's because you're too busy collecting those participation trophies.
You're not reaching out, going for the gold. You're not reaching out,
going for at least the silver.
Reach out, snag that brass ring when you can.
Because if you don't, someone else is going to snag it. And then you're just
going to think, oh, well, I've had a hard day and I need to reward myself with
a beer because I didn't succeed.
Start using those buffers as rewards.
What would happen then? Say you're going to get 10 calls into 10 prospect calls this week.
Until you do that, you can't touch the video game system.
You can't watch whatever show you want to watch.
You can't work on your car.
If you've got a project car that you want to work on, whatever your hobby is,
you can't touch that hobby until you get those 10 calls in. You start doing
that, and you'll start finding you got third place.
Third place happens to be a lot easier than you thought.
Still not as good as first place, but by God, you're a lot closer than you were
when you were coming in at fifth.
So what are you doing in taking the participation trophies?
What are your thoughts? What are your plans of action on dropping those participation
trophies, getting rid of those participation trophies?
Whatever that idea is, I would ask you to leave a comment down in the comment
section below of the show notes for here.
And that's going to be over at relaxedmail.com forward slash 220.
When you do that, you'll be able to go and down at the bottom, just leave me a note.
Tell me what your participation trophy is and how you're going to remove that.
How are you going to stop reaching for the participation trophy and start reaching for the gold?
And we'll talk about that for a little while. If I have any,
any responses, I'll talk about that on, on, on, on next week's show.
So guys, I want to say thank you very much for listening.
Thank you so much for taking the time. This is going to be a little bit shorter
than, than some of the others, but sometimes we just need to say,
just stop with the participation.
Stop just participating and start winning.
Start getting out there. Start doing the things that you talk about doing instead
of just, I would like to one day.
No, not one day. There's Monday, there's a Tuesday, there's Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Not one of those days in the week is a someday, one day.
Do it today because that's just you accepting that participation trophy.
All right? so guys thank you much so much
for listening if anything i said resonated with
you and sound and it's something that you caused you
to think of a buddy of yours that might need to
hear this then share this episode out all of our all podcast apps out there
today have a share button hit that share button send it to them via text send
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send it out to those social media sites and let folks know that there is this
podcast out there called The Relaxed Male.
And I am changing, working hard to change the thoughts and the hearts and the
minds of men so that they can actually start having rich,
fulfilling relationships. relationships.
Till we do that, we're going to be standing around collecting those participation
trophies. So guys, with that, I want to say thanks again for listening.
Music.