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I remember when you were a kid and we always would receive those participation trophies.

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And then here somewhere along the way, the adults, typically the Gen Xers,

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all of a sudden we're like, yeah, that's not such a good thing.

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Those participation trophies are not good.

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And why are they not good? Why are they something that distracts from American exceptionalism?

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How does it keep us playing life safe?

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Because we actually were onto something with throwing a fit about the participation

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trophies, except for the fact that we still accept, even as adults,

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even as we're entering into our 50s and 60s,

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we're still accepting those participation trophies in our relationships,

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in life, almost every single day.

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How are we doing that? We're going to be talking about that this week on episode 220 of The Relaxed Male.

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This is The Relaxed Male, a show that comes to you each week,

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helping men to remove the nice guy from their life so they can actually live

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their life on their terms.

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Music. Join the host, certified coach, Brian Goodwin, as he helps men step out of their

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heads and become free from the thoughts that bind them.

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Hey, man, hello, and welcome to The Relaxed Male. I am your host,

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Brian, and I am a certified men's relationship coach who assists men who who

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are just neck deep in the suffering of their life,

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suffering in the troubles they have with their relationships with,

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and that's not just the wife type of relationship, the girlfriend type of relationship,

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but also the relationship with your sons,

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your daughters, your next door neighbor, your community,

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your church, the church congregation, the people you work with,

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everybody around us, we have relationships with them.

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And when we don't nail those relationships down, we're going to just,

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we're going to destroy them. We're going to be, find ourselves suffering.

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And a lot of times those problems come in, come at us in ways that we're just not expecting it.

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And so I help men get through that day-to-day struggle, change how they're looking

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at different circumstances, look at the, at the, the thoughts that we're having and helping you to understand

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And just changing that one little thought, changing the thought just slightly.

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And all of a sudden, things start looking a little better. Things start becoming,

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falling into place a lot easier.

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And we don't have as much trouble.

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We don't have to fall into the victim mindset. We don't have to play the victim.

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We don't have to sit there and even lean on our different buffering techniques.

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We don't have to indulge in ourselves with food and alcohol and pot and all

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the other things that we do to

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keep us from being able to have the relationships that we actually want.

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And each episode, we'd stop and we'd take a look at what needs to be changed.

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How do we look at life so that our life can be better, stronger,

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more successful, so we can live our life on our terms without,

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again, without playing that victim. Them and we're doing that today because sadly i

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got to thinking about the participation trophies that we were and when i was

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younger we used to not have participation trophies whenever i was back in like

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peewee baseball and then somewhere along the way all of a sudden we started getting.

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Participation trophies and i i get

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it it caused the kids allows it feels

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good about it at the time but as we

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as us kids became adults and our and us adults started having our own kids we

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realized wait a minute that participation trophy yeah it feels nice for the

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kid okay all of a sudden you You don't have to deal with the awkward feelings and,

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and thoughts that you're having because little Johnny isn't good enough to actually get a trophy.

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He came in seventh. All right. He he's not fast enough, but yet because we have

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given so many participation trophies out, a lot of people think that they are

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deserving of these trophies.

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Of whatever, in whatever fashion it is. i you

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know i think i'm worth you know a hundred thousand

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dollars a year no actually you're not

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dude you're not worth a hundred thousand dollars a

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year if you're working at mcdonald's

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no if you're working at mcdonald's you're worth maybe 30 000 they may have decided

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to up it up at a little bit to where it's maybe 40 maybe maybe maybe 45 000

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i don't think you can make 50 000 until you become like a regional manager or something like that.

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And the reason is because there's no real big set skill.

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You have to be able to provide the value, enough value that the other person

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perceives that you're worth whatever amount you're demanding.

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If you're thinking you're demanding and you're worth $100,000,

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you're not the one who gets to call that.

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You're the one who gets to do the work and show evidence. Yes.

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But if the other person is like, you're not worth a hundred thousand dollars,

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I'm not paying a hundred thousand dollars, then you're not going to get paid

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a hundred thousand dollars a year. And so our participation trophies through our life have really impacted on us.

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And though we, even though now we still are throwing fits about participation trophies. Wow.

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You know, we got the participation trophy generation out there,

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the millennials and the, and the, and the, and the, uh, zoomers out there.

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These guys are, you know, they've grown up receiving participation trophies.

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And it, like I said, it sounds good. It sounds okay.

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It's not what, what harms making the kids smile, except we're not serving the kids.

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Really, we're giving the kids participation trophies, not so that they learn,

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but so we don't have to deal with the uncomfortable thoughts when Johnny starts

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crying because he came in seventh.

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Because we think his confidence in him, his self-confidence,

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his self-esteem is so severely damaged because he is not a fast runner.

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But we've taken this whole participation trophy thing.

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And though we have turned our backs to the children, and we don't want them

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to have a participation trophy, we still actually want participation trophies.

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And we give ourselves participation trophies daily, regularly, all the time.

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Don't believe me? You get home. boom, you had a really crappy day.

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So you sit down, pop open a can of beer. I deserve this.

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Do you really? Do you really deserve that can of beer? Do you really deserve getting drunk?

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Do you really deserve checking out of the rest of your family because you had a hard day?

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That can of beer, my good friend, is a participation trophy.

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We give ourselves participation trophies all the damn time.

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And I get it. It's an easy bump of satisfaction.

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It feels so satisfying to be able

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to crack open a beer after a relatively rough day and kick a few back.

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But the problem is the same thing as what you had when you were a kid at baseball

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and you got a participation trophy because you came in, your team came in fifth.

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It's an empty victory. All right. You really didn't get better.

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You don't have a reason to get better when you just and start chugging,

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dipping into a 12 pack. And we give ourselves participation trophies all of the time.

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I feel bad. My wife, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to,

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to, uh, to irritate my wife.

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I don't want to annoy my wife. So I go and watch porn, watching porn,

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vlogging the dolphin, all of that.

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Is giving yourself a participation trophy. Why can't they come up with a word

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that doesn't bounce as much as that word? We're going to have fun with this.

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Participation trophy. The real win would be if you got to do the horizontal mambo with your wife.

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But you have to, again, like the gold medal, you have to work for it. You have to earn it.

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You have to have that emotional connection with your wife. And it's easy.

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It's easier just to go to Pornhub.com.

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All right, there we go. We have got boobs and ding-a-lings flopping all over

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the place, and it makes life a whole lot easier.

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I get you. I was there.

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It is so much easier to look at porn than to look at your wife and go,

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how can I turn her on today? day. How do you do that?

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That's the, that's the trick. That's the rub, isn't it?

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Had a rough day at work. Well, you're bored. Well, let's do a participation trophy.

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Let's watch, you know, watch porn. Let's play a video game instead of taking

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steps needed to further our, our, our goals.

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What is our dream? What do we want to do?

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How do we, how are we not making the phone calls that that we need to make.

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What are we doing instead? Maybe you're staying busy for the sake of staying busy.

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So at least you feel like you're doing something. You're not furthering your goals at all.

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You're just writing blog posts for blog posts sake.

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You're finding other things that need to be done than what actually needs to be done.

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Again, watching porn, overeating, smoking, drinking, you know,

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taking a big draw on a bomb. All of those are aspects of buffering. Anything that we do, sitting and watching

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television is buffering. Anything that we do to prevent ourselves from having

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to feel the discomfort of whatever it is we need to learn, we're buffering.

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We're putting a buffer between our goal and us.

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There's a big old gap and we add some more buffering. So there's a bigger gap now.

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Our goal in life is to become better. Our goal is to have a better relationship.

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Those relationships mean you have to do the stuff that's going to cause some discomfort.

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Comfort you're going to kind of have to hang your heart out there

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and have other people see it you're going to have to

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hang it out there and let people judge it and you're going to have to be okay

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with people judging your attempts the more you try the better you're going to

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get the better you get the closer you are to getting third place trophy and

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you keep trying you're going to get the second second place trophy.

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And then you keep trying, you're going to get the gold, the gold trophy.

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You're going to get the big trophy. You're going to get the championship,

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but you're not going to want to for the very same reasons that we don't want

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to give our children participation trophies either, because why try harder?

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No need to try harder. Hey, we, we get, we do all right. We get, we get a little trophy.

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It's not as big as the first place trophy, but I got a trophy.

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Nonetheless, less. Look at this little thing. It's got a little angel-looking thing that's holding an olive wreath in its hands.

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But it takes the effort.

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When you fail trying to get to that third place, third place becomes really freaking sweet.

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That's a third place win. That's not bad. Better than fourth by a long shot.

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But then And, you know, he keep trying, you know, like, all right,

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well, that was a third place. That was a hard fought, uh, battle right there.

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Let's try for second place. Let's get that silver trophy.

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We got the bronze trophy. Let's get the silver trophy. And, oh, not quite.

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And we have to, what got us to the third place isn't going to get us to the second place.

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And we have to learn more to get that second place trophy because the results,

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the satisfaction, the fulfillment that you're going to get from the second place

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is going to be twice as much as the third place.

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Third place is so wonderful because it's above everything else.

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There is not really all that much satisfaction, but,

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From fourth on down, you get a little, like I said, you get that participation

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trophy and it's a really hollow, empty victory.

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It's like a, Hey, yeah. Okay.

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Put it in the, in the pile with the rest of them instead of taking and enjoying

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and savoring the wins, allow those cries, allow those disappointments to happen.

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Cause yeah, you're going to be disappointed because you wanted that first place

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spot and And you got sixth, man.

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You've got a lot of work to go. I thought I worked hard until I saw someone

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who does twice as much work as I do in half the time and saw how much was possible.

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And then you want to stand back and you wonder, well, why are they so successful?

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Because they're doing what they need to do.

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You're standing around with your thumb up your tail end going,

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well, it's just not fair. I want to have that too. I want to have success.

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Then you have to give up on the buffering.

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You have to give up on the participation trophies. You want a good relationship.

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You have to actually start doing the work that will earn a good relationship.

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You want a wife that is seductive and loves you and is excited to see you. you have to do the work.

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You want kids who turn to you for advice.

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You want kids to turn to you for, you know, for the affirmations of,

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am I doing good? Am I good enough? You have to show them that, yeah, you're willing to let them know what good

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enough is and to help them become good good enough.

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That's all work. That's all hard work that you have to do. Till you do that,

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you're going to struggle. We're going to have those problems. You're not going to reach the successes

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and the fulfillments that you want.

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And that's because you're too busy collecting those participation trophies.

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You're not reaching out, going for the gold. You're not reaching out,

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going for at least the silver. Reach out, snag that brass ring when you can.

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Because if you don't, someone else is going to snag it. And then you're just

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going to think, oh, well, I've had a hard day and I need to reward myself with

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a beer because I didn't succeed. Start using those buffers as rewards.

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What would happen then? Say you're going to get 10 calls into 10 prospect calls this week.

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Until you do that, you can't touch the video game system.

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You can't watch whatever show you want to watch.

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You can't work on your car.

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If you've got a project car that you want to work on, whatever your hobby is,

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you can't touch that hobby until you get those 10 calls in. You start doing

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that, and you'll start finding you got third place.

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Third place happens to be a lot easier than you thought.

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Still not as good as first place, but by God, you're a lot closer than you were

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when you were coming in at fifth. So what are you doing in taking the participation trophies?

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What are your thoughts? What are your plans of action on dropping those participation

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trophies, getting rid of those participation trophies?

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Whatever that idea is, I would ask you to leave a comment down in the comment

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section below of the show notes for here.

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And that's going to be over at relaxedmail.com forward slash 220.

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When you do that, you'll be able to go and down at the bottom, just leave me a note.

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Tell me what your participation trophy is and how you're going to remove that.

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How are you going to stop reaching for the participation trophy and start reaching for the gold?

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And we'll talk about that for a little while. If I have any,

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any responses, I'll talk about that on, on, on, on next week's show.

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So guys, I want to say thank you very much for listening.

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Thank you so much for taking the time. This is going to be a little bit shorter

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than, than some of the others, but sometimes we just need to say,

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just stop with the participation. Stop just participating and start winning.

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Start getting out there. Start doing the things that you talk about doing instead

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of just, I would like to one day.

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No, not one day. There's Monday, there's a Tuesday, there's Wednesday,

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Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Not one of those days in the week is a someday, one day.

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Do it today because that's just you accepting that participation trophy.

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All right? so guys thank you much so much

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for listening if anything i said resonated with

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you and sound and it's something that you caused you

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to think of a buddy of yours that might need to

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hear this then share this episode out all of our all podcast apps out there

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today have a share button hit that share button send it to them via text send

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it all on to facebook or instagram twitter whatever Whatever app you want to put it on,

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send it out to those social media sites and let folks know that there is this

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podcast out there called The Relaxed Male.

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And I am changing, working hard to change the thoughts and the hearts and the

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minds of men so that they can actually start having rich,

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fulfilling relationships. relationships.

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Till we do that, we're going to be standing around collecting those participation

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trophies. So guys, with that, I want to say thanks again for listening.