You Aren't Defined by the Dust and Rust | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES
Order of Man
Ryan Michler
4.8 • 9K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In today's Friday Field Notes, Ryan Michler shares a powerful message built around a simple but meaningful reminder: your dust, your rust, and your scars do NOT define you - they tell your story.
After finding an old, rusted metal grid and working to restore it, Ryan reflects on how men often feel discarded, overlooked, or worn down by life. Through this analogy, he unpacks five key truths about identity, hardship, and resilience.
If you've ever felt beat up by life, sidelined by circumstances, or dismissed by others, this episode will remind you of your worth and your purpose.
In This Episode:
Why your scars are proof that you've lived, not that you're broken
How stagnation creates "rust" in your life
How to wipe away habits, attitudes, and behaviors that no longer serve you
Why rejection doesn't define your value
How to turn your scars into stories that help others
Five Lessons From This Episode:
What clings to you is not who you are
Rust only forms when you sit still
You can wipe away what no longer serves you
Your scars are your stories - your mess is your message
Someone's trash is another person's treasure
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
00:00 – Introduction
00:27 – The Rusted Metal Grid Story
02:51 – Men Feeling Discarded
03:20 – Five Lessons About Dust and Rust
03:30 – #1 You Are Not Defined by What Clings to You
05:16 – #2 Rust Only Forms When You Sit Still
07:29 – Stop Wearing Other Men's Names
08:07 – Become the Man Who Leads
09:30 – #3 Wipe Away What No Longer Serves You
10:27 – #4 Your Scars Are Proof You've Lived
12:40 – Turning Scars Into Stories
13:50 – The Restored Rusty Truck Story
14:46 – #5 Someone's Trash Is Another's Treasure
16:04 – Being Valued at Home
17:19 – Recap of the Five Lessons
18:00 – Final Encouragement & Closing CTA
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Rust and dust and scars and scratches and dings and nicks, it's only proof that you've seen some shit in your life. |
| 0:08.2 | And you're hardened and you're tough and you're resilient. |
| 0:12.3 | And you've been through some difficult challenges in your life. |
| 0:15.3 | Those things are amazing. |
| 0:16.5 | Those are stories. |
| 0:17.3 | Those are things that I have experienced in my life that make me who I am today. And they're not |
| 0:21.5 | meant to remind us that we're human. They're there to remind us that we've lived. Men, I was working |
| 0:32.1 | on a little project this afternoon. I found this metal grid thing that I'm going to put behind me and hang some things on. |
| 0:40.0 | And I'm really trying to improve my podcast studio and make this a better look and feel. |
| 0:45.7 | But as I was doing this, I couldn't help but think about the dust and the rust that was on the grid, the metal grid that I had found. |
| 0:55.6 | And I'm going to show you that shortly in another podcast because it's going to be up on my wall |
| 0:59.7 | and it's going to look good. |
| 1:01.5 | But as I was digging through the trash, there was a bunch of debris and dust and rust all over |
| 1:06.7 | this thing. |
| 1:07.4 | And I brought it in and I've been scrubbing it. |
| 1:10.5 | And I got some stuff at Ace |
| 1:11.8 | Hardware to take the rust off and clean it up and make it look nice so that I could actually |
| 1:16.7 | bring it in the house and use it as a backdrop and a very practical thing that I'm going to be |
| 1:22.7 | using. But I couldn't help but think as I did that we tend to in modern times throw away things that |
| 1:32.3 | are a little dusty, a little dirty, a little rusty. We think that they're no longer useful. |
| 1:39.3 | We just tend to buy things on Amazon, cheap replacements for what was. And as you guys have heard, they don't |
| 1:46.0 | build them like they used to. And this is a really quality piece of metal. Somebody welded it. |
... |
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