Men Need Responsibility, Not Less of It (Controversial Truth) #672

What if the goals you're avoiding aren't about lacking confidence but lacking conviction?

In this episode, I'm sharing frameworks from my Instagram series "Lachie's Learnings" that explain why: 

→ Your strong body is the foundation for a clear mind 

→ Confidence doesn't arrive first, it follows conviction 

→ Men are wired to grow when they're needed (responsibility isn't burden, it's purpose) 

→ Anti-goals matter more than goals (what I refused to sacrifice for 58 marathons)

If you're a man who wants to show up for your family while still chasing what you're capable of, this will shift how you approach 2026.

The Core 4: Strong Body | Calm Mind | Clear Purpose | Confident Life

Follow @lachlanstuart on Instagram for daily "Lachie's Learnings"

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting A New Format
• 2:19 Why A Strong Body Comes First
• 5:50 Training Through Resistance And Doubt
• 9:30 Confidence Follows Conviction
• 13:45 Evidence, Process, And Starting Anyway

Transcript

Lachlan Stuart: 0:01

What we consume, what we experience, they're all the things that shape who we become ultimately. On today's episode, I thought I would do something a little bit different to what I've been doing the last couple of weeks. Now, don't get me wrong, I've had more five-star reviews in the last three weeks than I had all of last year. That says something to me. You guys are enjoying the episodes where I'm breaking down things in life, and you can go back over confidence versus conviction and frameworks and sharing personal stories around how I came to break something down and why I believe it's important to understand. Whereas this week, I'm going to give you something a little bit different where I'm going to just share some of my learnings from my Instagram chat that I have. So I have Lockie's Learning on Instagram, and this is where most mornings I'm writing and I'm thinking about things, I'm exploring ideas, I'm hoping to get feedback from you guys around the things that I'm testing. And when I say testing, it's like this is a concept that I believe to be true until you and I have a conversation or someone shares something or I do something in my own life that proves otherwise. Because I, like you guys, listen to podcasts because I want to improve my life. And through different seasons, what improving my life is different. And at the moment, as I'm about to become a dad, I am starting to think about how I can be as present as possible. So I'm going to, you know, commit to being home for dinner every night with my family, having breakfast with my family every morning, while still pursuing what I believe I'm here to do, which is inspire men all around the world to see what they're capable of. And I do that through my life performance coaching program and I guess even framework or cycle system, whatever you would like to call it, and keynote speaking, and the funnest part, the challenges that I'm training towards. And so this episode will be I'll go through probably three or four thoughts that I've shared and I'll give you a bit more context around them and how I've came to believe that. And you can head over to my Instagram at Lochland Stewart and you can jump in the Lockheed's Learning and you can even comment and reply because I'm always interested to hear from you guys. Or alternatively, if you don't want to leave this platform, just leave a comment below. But let's get into it. So the first one, which I posted on January 10th this year. And if you're watching on YouTube, you can see I've got the 58 marathons playing on YouTube in the background because it's literally 12 months to the day at the time of recording this since I started. I was in Alaska literally 12 months ago, which is crazy to think. Where does the time go? But back to the post. When your body is strong, your mind thinks clearer, your emotions regulate faster, your energy is more predictable, your confidence increases, and your life feels easier to manage. I'm a big believer that when you take care of your body, when you take care of the vehicle, the driver becomes more capable. So your body is a vehicle, your mind is a driver. I am always calmer. I feel like I have better direction in my life when I'm training. I don't always enjoy getting up and training this morning. I got up at five so I could stretch and get out there and do a Hill session. I resented it. I procrastinated for a little bit because I was just like, fuck this, it's too hot. I don't want to get out and do that. I know it's going to hurt. I know I'm going to suffer. I don't want to do it. But it's moving me towards a goal and it's also going to set up my day. And so I believe for any of you who are listening, one of the first places to start, which is pillar number one on the core four, which I'm about to release my, I guess, my philosophy soon, once I've sent it out to a few people that I respect their decisions. I want them to read, give me feedback before I do that. But so far it's been good. The strong body is the first place to start. It's the easiest lever to move for most people. And what that looks like is just going back to what is one thing that I can do to move my body forward and start challenging myself. I've set up the strong body dashboard where there's another episode you can go listen to, which shows five key metrics that we track if you're using a wearable or a whoop. I've also created a dashboard on an Excel spreadsheet that you can use if you don't have a wearable, and you can get that through the 30-day reset. And I might just make that a free resource soon. But as you start moving your body and start trying to get your resting heart rate down or improving your heart rate variability or just consistently moving your body, you're going to start thinking clearly. You're going to regulate your emotions more because you're going to put yourself in the firing line, right? The firing line where you test yourself. Think about this. When you're going for a bench PR or you're challenging yourself in a hard class or a hard session, you have moments where you stare doubt in the face. And you have to ask yourself, am I still prepared? Even though there's so much doubt, I don't feel like I'm good enough. I don't feel like I'm capable. I'm still going to step forward anyway. And the beautiful thing about that is that you can do that on the training field. You can then put that into other areas of your life. It might be you want to go ask someone out on a date. It may be that you want to knock off earlier and ask for less work hours. There's all these challenges that pop up in life that we are now flexing the muscle and becoming or building this evidence, this warchair stacking brick by brick that we're capable of achieving so much more and creating a life that we want. And that for me is why, or where that thought came from when your body is strong, all of those things that I mentioned. I put out a podcast last week, Confidence Comes Last. So conviction before confidence. And if you want to listen to that, you can go back and listen to that. But this was the post that I put out there. Most men are waiting, waiting to feel confident, waiting to feel ready, waiting for permission. But confidence doesn't arrive first, it follows. So in that episode, I broke down the difference between confidence and conviction and why building your life backwards helps you start. A lot of people ask about confidence. I've asked a lot about confidence before. Like, how do I become more confident to play the guitar in front of my wife? How do I become more confident to establish some boundaries and say no to people who are draining energy? Or how do I feel confident to start my own business? And confidence is established through evidence, through doing things, right? You're getting feedback, and along the way, you're getting feedback to slowly go, hey, I am capable of this. Like I'm starting to feel confident in doing it. Think about anything you feel confident in. I want you to write this down. Anything that you feel confident in, you believe you're good at it because there's feedback suggesting you are, right? You understand the process, you understand what it feels like, you understand what goes through your mind when you're doing that thing. And so, therefore, if you work backwards on that, to become confident in anything, you have to start. You have to build it rep by rep. When we look at conviction, on the other hand, conviction is intrinsic, right? Meaning I could start anything in my life and I have the conviction that I will become confident should I follow the process. A lot of people avoid the process because we're waiting for confidence. And that may be you. So I want you to think about in 2026, what is something that you're going to be building towards that you're already kicking the can, meaning you're pushing it down the road because you don't have the confidence and you're waiting for it to arrive, where you could just ask yourself, is there a level of conviction within that believes that I can do whatever it takes to achieve the outcome that I want? You're in control of conviction. Results don't always lead you feeling confident, and there are going to be days where doubt stares you in the face. And that's a non-negotiable, right? If I look, if you look at the video behind me, I on day one, which was 12 months ago today, had no doubt in my mind that I was going to finish the 58 marathons, and I was confident of that. The reason why I was confident was for the 14 months prior, I didn't miss a training session, regardless of whether we were doing international travel, there was late nights. It did not matter. I did not miss a session. So I had stacked evidence that I could achieve this. I really believed it. And then when injury came, my confidence was obviously diminishing because it's like, dude, you're day one and you're injured, you're day five, you can hardly walk. So the evidence that I'd stacked was now falling apart as I was going into the unknown. But the conviction, the conviction was I may not have been here before, but I do believe I will do whatever is required to achieve the outcome. And I believed I had a team behind me that was also prepared to do that. And that's where that conviction comes in. Another learning that I shared over the last week, and this was on Saturday. I'd love to hear from you guys about this one too. Men are wired to grow when they are needed. The moment a man stops feeling useful, progressive, or responsible for something beyond himself, he doesn't relax, he shuts down. That shutdown doesn't look like failure at first. It looks like numbing, distraction, and drift. I talk a lot about drifting. When a man has no weight to carry, aka responsibility, his body weakens, his mind overwhelms, his purpose disappears, and confidence collapses. Give a man meaningful responsibility, whether it's physical, emotional, and directional, and he will rise to meet it. That's why I believe responsibility isn't a burden for men. It's a doorway to who they are capable of becoming. Establishing this world where we're taking a lot of responsibility away, ownership, we're passing the buck, and a number of things are changing in the world. And as a result, we aren't carrying this weight of responsibility. And I think there's got to be this fine line, and it's something that I'm interested in learning more about because we're trying to tell men to be vulnerable and to open up and to not be weak. Yet I think it's swung too much the other way where men can't burden the weight of responsibility, can't show up for a family, they can't do some physical things that they probably should be able to do. And as a result, we're going, Well, what is my role here now? I've been told for so long I need to start doing the opposite. Now I'm doing that, I'm actually losing my value to do certain things in the household. Now, I can understand that this would be different for every person and every relationship. It definitely is. Just like when we go through the core four, you've got to work out what a strong body looks like to live your quality of life, how you calm your mind, what your purpose would be, and what a confident life looks like. That's personalized. But there are some things that I think we do need to burden. We need to carry some weight because that strengthens us and that puts us in the, or gives us that opportunity to feel challenged. When we have the opportunity to feel challenged, we find out our character. What are our standards? What boundaries are we prepared to put in place to achieve our outcome and to be the man that we know we can be and the man that we must be to achieve our quality of life. I just see there are so many people who are so far from where they want to be, and they're whinging and they're complaining and they're doubting themselves to be able to turn it around. I think the only way to turn it around is to start putting some weight on the back, accepting responsibility and stepping forward. So let's go one more. This one's a good one. If I do say so, so sorry, do say so myself. Before I started planning the 58 marathons, I did something that most people don't do when they set big goals. I didn't just ask what I what do I want to achieve? I asked, what am I not willing to sacrifice to achieve this goal? Because most people have those things. They just don't talk about them or label them. I was not prepared to lose my marriage in pursuit of completing the 58 marathons. I was not prepared to lose my life. You know, you always hear these people doing some wild stuff and they're like, I would die out there. I'm like, why? I've got so much other good stuff going on in my life. Why would I want to die to achieve this? Yeah, I want this bad, very committed. But if you gave me a choice between dying out here and getting home to see my wife and my friends and my family again, I'm choosing family, friends, and wife every day of the fucking week. Every day of the week. So that was not going to happen. I wanted it to be hard, but I also wanted it to be fun. And an adventure we'd remember for the right reasons. Those anti-goals became just as important as the goal itself. We're obviously in that time of year where you're getting to decide what you want to create for yourself and hopefully you're not feeling overwhelmed. Have you asked yourself, what are you not prepared to sacrifice this year in order to achieve your outcomes? A big one that is always on the cards for me is my marriage, is my adventure and my health. I'm never going to sacrifice those things to earn more money or to be on more stages or to create more content, etc. It's not non-negotiable because I understand when I'm 80, I want to have awesome health. I want to have great relationships. I want to have awesome stories to tell. I don't want to just be like, man, I'm I work so hard. I earn a lot of money. A lot of people know my name, but I'm fucking fat. I don't have any friends. And I couldn't tell you the last time I did something fun. That does not sound appealing to me. So there's some of the things that have been in my mind. If you want to join that, if you know, if you follow me on Instagram, awesome. But if not, I'd love to hear your thoughts, right? I am very curious as to where other men are at in their life, what they're interested in, what challenges you're facing, because I do believe all of us go through different things in different stages of our life. And there's no right or wrong, how I see the world and what works for me may be different to you, but I do hope that by sharing some things that I'm thinking about, sharing some of the challenges that I'm experiencing, even some of the goals that I'm working towards, can give you thoughts and insights and perspectives to improve your life. Just like in these other videos that we have to come, I can give you some tools, insights, and frameworks to better improve your life in an actionable way, not just consuming more content. Because yeah, YouTube, as you can see behind me, is full of content. I just want to give you things that are going to improve your life. Thank you guys for listening. Once again, share this if you've got value. Hit the subscribe button if you want to leave a rating. Wow, I'd love that. That would be amazing. We will see you next week on the episode. My name is Lachan Stewart. Thank you for listening.