[00:00:00] Intro: Forget the civilized path. It’s time to break the chains of debt and dependency, take control of our financial lives, and live free. This is the Fiscally Savage Podcast.

[00:00:15] Dylan Bain: Hello and welcome to Fiscally Savage. I’m your host, Dylan Bain. And Happy Friday, ladies and gentlemen. If you are new here, on our Friday episodes, I typically take something in the news and go one step deeper. And right now, I don’t know what’s going on in the world but there’s just like so much stuff I could talk about. I could talk about falling birth rates. I could talk about train derailments. I could talk about Chinese spy balloons. But honestly, ladies and gentlemen, I’m not gonna talk about any of those things because I have had an amazing week of just very interesting interactions and I wanna share some with you.

[00:00:51] So, in my personal life, I spend a lot of time working with men specifically but women, too in the process of trying to help find ourselves and better ourselves in today’s world, which is not a small task. And when you’re on the path of trying to make yourself a person of value, when you’re trying to craft a vision and craft a life and, you’re basically moving mountains in modern society, which is so intensely anti-human that it’s daunting sometimes. But then that’s why when it comes right down to it, you have to have a band of brothers, a tribe around you with all of these things. And I was having a discussion the other day where one of the gentlemen that I spend a lot of time talking to said, “Well, you know, Dylan, how do you know what to do? Like with everything you’re doing in life, how do you know what to do?” And I thought about it for a second and I just I said to him, “Well, you start by courting your Muse.”

[00:01:56] And he looked at me and quite frankly, those words came out of my mouth before I knew what I had said and then I realized that that was exactly the thing. Because so often in so many different places, when you look at Chinese balloons and you look at debt ceilings and you look at falling birth rates and toxic clouds over East Palestine and Ohio, it’s so easy to just become nihilistic, to just be washed out and just forget how absolutely amazing it is to be alive. We find ourselves just strip-mined of value, economically squeezed, and constantly bombarded by advertisement after advertisement and we find ourselves listless. Is it any wonder that so many men are walking around in today’s society with nothing of purpose in their lives? It is I think a very true thing to say men don’t want happiness. They want purpose. Men don’t want comfort. They want a hill that they can die on where they feel that it’s going to matter when it’s all over. If you give a guy a wall to run at with the promise that his purpose is on the other side, he will run at that wall until he’s hamburger. But so many men I think look around in society and just find themselves with no inspiration to do anything because at the end of the day, it just feels pointless and inauthentic, worn out, and just dead. Everything’s, to quote Fight Club, a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. And I say this on the heels of Super Bowl Sunday, which is supposed to be this amazing event, but think of how commercialized it’s become where the headlines are talking about the Super Bowl and all the Airbnb landlords in Phoenix who don’t have full occupancy and what’s going on in the stock markets and, you know, price changes and like it’s — we focus on everything except the people themselves. Like stop and think about all the football players out there. Who are they as people? Do that — does that even matter? Who are the people who are going? I think about that specifically because I was raised in Wisconsin. I was raised to root for the green and gold, to cheer on Sundays “Go Pack Go!” And when I moved overseas, I just didn’t care anymore about anything to do with football. And why? Because I never cared about the football in the first place. I only cared about spending time with my grandfather.

[00:04:39] And so, when this man came to me and said, well, how do you know what to do? I was thinking to myself like where is the inspiration? Where is the purpose? How do you know what to do? And I said, “Court your Muse.” And as I went forward in that conversation, I said, when you do anything in your life, when you step into your office or you step onto the lot where you are moving trailers around and that’s all you do, you’re an artist. You’re the best there is. And if you’re not, you should be trying to be. You should look at everything you do as though you are trying to make a great work out of every aspect of your life. Court your Muse. Find inspiration in a job well done and take deep senses of purpose from even the most mundane thing. This today, ladies and gentlemen, is one hell of a good cup of coffee. And be inspired by the smallest of those things. When you court your Muse, you’re channeling part of yourself as a lover. I mean, stop and think about that. How many of us has stopped dating our wives? How many of us has stopped pursuing things? And remember what it was like when your blood was full and your heart was fluttering and you were in the pursuit, not chase, but the pursuit of a great beauty, of a love story, of the perfect moment to steal a kiss, the perfect time to make eye contact? Have we forgotten what that feels like — to be so full of life, to be so ready to embrace those small little things? Have we stopped courting our Muse? Have we stopped going to our Muse and embracing everything that she is? And when I say “Muse,” I’m not talking about a physical woman. I’m talking about the ethereal source that inspires us, at least men, on the masculine level. The thing that talks to our heart. The thing that when we are, when it’s hard, when it’s difficult, when we wanna quit, we just say, “No. I want one more for the sake of one more.” When was the last time that we went to our Muse that we made ourselves open and available, free and abundant to be inspired by something beautiful, by something sensual, by something deep and embodied inside of ourselves?

[00:07:24] On this show, I talk a lot about money as a foundation of things, but why do we do any of it? Why do we want to be wealthy? What’s the fucking point, if not in the pursuit of purpose and beauty? And when people say, well, I don’t wanna be wealthy and I don’t want it to be all about the money, on some levels, they’re just screaming into the void, I want more nectar in my life and I don’t believe that money is gonna get me there. And they’re right on some levels and wrong on others. When all you pursue is the money, then you are misaligned because you’re not seeking the nectar. You’re hoarding opportunity, power, and wealth. And hoarding behaviors are not human activities. They’re anti-human. Stop and think about how many different cultures have had rituals in their culture for welcoming guests and feasts and songs and dances. And if you’re Christian, you can go to the Bible and go to the story of the prodigal son. When he comes home, they slaughter the fatted calf and they put a ring on his finger and there’s dancing and celebration. Where did we lose that in ourselves along the way? When do we stop courting the Muse that inspires us to slaughter the fatted calf and put a ring on our brother’s finger and meet him with song and dance?

[00:08:48] At the end of the day, when I sit here and I think about and doing this more and more frequently, ladies and gentlemen, I think about what I’m doing and how my life is changing and what those transitionary periods look like and the idea that we live in this anti-human society. So then the question is, what is truly human? What are the things that bind us? What are the things that bring us together? And I find myself asking more and more: when did we lose that? When did we forget how to be inspired? When did we stop courting our Muse? When did we stop making ourselves open and available to feel the power of that sensual inspiration and embrace? And when we ask ourselves and we say, well, what is it that you do? Well, I forge leaders and I help men understand the way to lead is from the front. I hear that. I just think to myself, how much more washed out can you get, bro? And then I think to myself how would you say that in a more human level? Well, what is it that you do? I help men channel the king within their heart and give them the words so that they can help others see it, too. Holy shit. That’s what we want. That’s what we need. What’s the end state of anything? If we were a hundred percent successful at the things that we wish to do in our lives, what great work would we have done? If we court our Muse and let her speak to us, what would we create? What is on the other side that’s intensely human that when we describe it, it’s hard not to have tears in your eyes, even if it’s the most mundane of things? When we take pride in our work, we take purpose, when we understand that maybe we are just working for some Seattle-based coffee chain and we’re just slinging drugs out the door, you know, that’s one way to look at being a barista — I’m just slinging caffeine and stimulants and sugar on top of all of that. Or the other way of saying I made that person’s day one bit better. I helped them get an opportunity to be able to greet the day with a smile on the face. I take pride in how I handle my coworkers. I take pride in how I handle my workflow because I’m working for myself because I’m inspired by a vision of me that can be and I’m diligently working on that because my Muse has come to me and I’ve seen what can be at the top of the mountain and so. I climb every single day. When have we been in pursuit of our Muse? When was the last time you sat down and really just went for it, really just opened up to the possibility of possibility? When were you just so ready to the idea that everything could be different? When have you driven down the street and saw a vision of how it could be rather than the way it is? When was the last time that we wanted to plant trees whose shade we’d never sit in?

[00:12:07] I mean, these are questions that have started as I have read more and I’ve done more on this podcast and we’ve crossed 40 episodes. I have doubled my coaching practice. I am growing by leaps and bounds. I am really leaning hard. Remember I named this year the year of emancipation. People have said, “Emancipation from what, Dylan?” And I’ve said, well, from my broken body, from the chains of society, and from the stories that no longer serve me. And so, I’ve been asking myself, what stories failed to serve me? What things in my life just aren’t the way they need to be? And on hard days, why is it that I can just sit down here and make a podcast for all of you but I find it harder and harder to do the other things that society expects from me? And I gotta wonder if it’s because I’ve started to pursue my Muse, to look at what are my gifts in this world. What are the gifts in this world that I have that have been beaten down? That people have tried to take from me that weren’t okay to be expressed, whether in my childhood where I was told that children should be seen and not heard or that I should stop flapping my gums in the breeze ’cause people who pretend to be interested to listen to what I have to say are only humoring me? But it turns out, ladies and gentlemen, that if you’re listening to this podcast, I’m pretty good at telling a story. I’m pretty good at putting together something that’s entertaining and informative and maybe, if I’ve embraced my Muse enough, inspiring. I mean, I look at all of this. I look at everything that I’ve done with this podcast and with my coaching practice and I’m so excited for everything that I’m doing that I’m constantly looking for inspiration in everything and every story and every interaction. Every time I talk to somebody, I find myself increasingly feeling like I am the beneficiary of that interaction because I’ve walked away a little more inspired. And I realize that I have been courting my Muse; that I have been going to her and saying, I would love just a moment to be in your presence, to be open to the gifts you have to give to me; that I go to her like a patient lover, looking for some inspiration, some sensuality, some connection, something that makes me full of purpose in everything I do. And so, I am not gonna talk today about toxic clouds and balloons, of debt ceilings and birth rates. I’m going to just leave you with a question: when was the last time that you courted your Muse?

[00:15:23] Outro: Thanks for listening. If you like what we do here, please hit that subscribe button. Leave us a rating and review. And share the content with somebody who would benefit from the message. You can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, all @fiscallysavage. And head over to fiscallysavage.com to get our free tools, suggested reading, and everything else you need to take control of your financial life and live free.