FULL TRANSCRIPT: Life Lessons From A Modern Cowboy – Dry Creek Dewayne 

My dad, my granddad, my great granddad and my mom’s side of the family too. And my dad was a Baptist preacher.

And so we moved a lot for his work. But I didn’t grow up. My opportunities for farm work, ranches and stuff like that was when I visited my grandparents back in Kentucky. And I knew back then this is what I wanted to do. It took a while for me to be able to actually do it. But I was raised in a very close-knit, very solid, very country, patriarchal family. Just very old school Kentucky.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What do the rest of your family think about having a rogue wrangler?

DEWAYNE NOEL: I don’t know. I was a different man back when I was raising my children. And back as a young man, I was wound really tight.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What do you mean when you say that?

DEWAYNE NOEL: I had a bad temper and I was under a lot of stress for a lot of years. And so I wasn’t the calm, laid back, easygoing fellow that people see today. And so I think my children are all grown. And I think in a lot of ways, they’re still sitting back trying to compare the old me with the new me.

It’s only been about five years that I found the place where I could just get some self-control and learn how to chill and get a handle on things. So I think in a lot of ways, my family, they’re just sitting back watching and trying to justify the one. What they see now is what they knew for so many years.

Initiation into Cowboy Life

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s the story of your initiation into this life?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Into the cowboy life? I was newly married and we had a baby. It was just an infant. And I was working. We were in a little town called Alpine, Tennessee. And there was a Berkline Furniture Factory there that made recliners. And I was working in the shipping and I was not happy. I didn’t like the job.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What age are you here?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Oh, I was 26. And I was reading Western Horseman and there was an ad in the back in the classifieds about an elk hunting lodge in Idaho that was offering you could come out and if you would work for the summer for free, they would teach you packing.

And I just, I said, “You know what, I’m going to do it. I’m doing it. I’m taking the jump. I’m not spending the rest of my life working in a factory and sitting here and doing this. I’m going to go chase the dream that I’ve had since I was a child.”

And so my wife and our infant, she flew to Hawaii to stay with her dad. And I sold everything we had, which wasn’t much. And I got a saddle and my gear and took a Greyhound bus to up into Idaho. And then wasn’t nobody there to pick me up that was supposed to pick me up. So I hitchhiked from there into Chalice, Idaho, and this was way before cell phones. So I found a pay phone and I called the ranch and the manager of the ranch says, “I don’t know who you are. I never heard anything about you. The owner is rafting the Colorado River to the Grand Canyon with his girlfriend and he never told me you were coming.”

But he came and picked me up and I stayed on there for the summer and I learned a bunch. And then I left there and hitchhiked from Chalice, Idaho to Cody, Wyoming. And when I got to Cody, I had like $9. And so I found a campground where they’d let me pitch my little one man pup tent to $6 a night. I remember it.

And I stated that one because they had a shower house and I’m like, “I’m not going to become a scrubby homeless person, you know?” So I stayed there and just started calling every ranch, every dude ranch, every outfit, every day calling, calling, calling. I ran out of money. And the lady who owned the campground there, she told me, she said, “My dad needs somebody to haul hay.” So I went and helped him and he paid me $15 for hauling hay like this. Came back another night, stayed another supper.

Next day, she said, “If you’ll police the campground for cigarette butts, I’ll give you a bowl of soup and a sandwich and another night stay.” So I did. And then the next day, one of the outfits called, called me back, came in, sat down and interviewed. And I threw my bedroll and everything into the back of their truck and went out and went to work.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And you’re doing all of this with a infant.

DEWAYNE NOEL: No, no. But they’re in Hawaii.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: They’re in Hawaii. You’re still a part of this system now. So you’re away from your wife. You’re away from your first child. For several months.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Yeah. I don’t recommend it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Was that difficult?

DEWAYNE NOEL: In a way it was, in another way, it wasn’t as difficult as it should have been.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, you’ve got this tension, right? You’ve got this tension between slowly moving toward a dream that you’ve had for a long time, this career aspiration, this fulfillment of a life purpose, and then also the desire to be a good father, a good husband. But you also are, you’re making these sacrifices in order to create the future. It’s a complex situation.

DEWAYNE NOEL: My wife and we’re still married today. It’s 34 years in March.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Congratulations.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Thank you. But I’m six years older than she is, and we’re totally different. And I had been on my own for a long time when we got married. And as happens in marriage, we’d hit that two-year mark and the luster was gone. We weren’t getting along very well.

I don’t think she was heartbroken at the separation for a while anymore than I was. So after I got settled, I had worked for the summer there. And then I wound up with another outfit. And after I got settled, I flew her and the baby out. And we’d had enough time apart for all the turmoil and the bubbling to settle down. And then we could start working on it again.

So in one sense, it was difficult. Another sense, it was a bit of a relief that it shouldn’t have been. It doesn’t speak well to where I was in my character at the time. But yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Maybe the six-month break has enabled a 35-year marriage.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Right. I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve always been a very restless fellow. And there’s been times where my wife has come to me and sat down and said, “Honey, I love you, but you got to go. Go hunting. Go visit a buddy. Go do something. But you can’t sit around and drive me crazy all day.” So she knows, and she’s been very supportive over the years.

The Mindset Shift

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What was the mindset shift? I’m interested to learn about old Dwayne and new Dwayne and where that calming trajectory, why that happened, what instigated it?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Well, I’ll just say I came to a place in life where I just didn’t like me anymore. I looked in the mirror, and I’m like, “I will not spend the next 50 years with this guy like I have the last 50. I don’t like me. Nobody around likes me.”

I can’t. Well, this catalyst just came about, and I’m like, “I can’t do this anymore.” I had a small heart attack, and I knew it was a heart attack. And I was at the point. I’m not kidding. I lay there in bed, and I felt it come on. And I’m like, “I think I’m having a heart attack. Good. I don’t have to fight this anymore.” I’m not going to wake my wife up. I went to sleep.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You were in bed next to your wife having a heart attack.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Yeah. And I went to sleep. I woke up next morning. I’m like, “Dang it. I’m still here.” And I didn’t tell her. And I went to the doctor. I had further heart problems and other problems. And I finally went to the doctor, and they did an EKG. And they’re like, “Yeah, you had a heart situation back on this.”

And it was just kind of like, “I can’t continue to live like this.” And my kids didn’t like me. I wasn’t abusive. I was never. But I just wasn’t a very nice person. And I was just very on edge, very angry, very. And I finally. So I had to make some decisions. What was making me like this? I need to get it out of my life.

And there were people, including family, that I’m like, “Nope, y’all are gone.” I stopped watching the news. I’m like, “Nope, y’all are gone.” You know, started changing my diet, started spending a lot of time out on the front porch, just smoking cigars, letting the world go by.

And slowly over time, you know, got a handle on stuff. And went back to reading. You know, when I was a kid, I read heavily, you know, and got back, went back to reading poetry and Marcus Aurelius and stuff and just kind of got some of my perspective back.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think that’s a hopeful message for young men that find themselves being angry and not in a place where they want to be.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Angry? There’s no. There’s no benefit to it. You know, it doesn’t fix anything. Even when you’re in a fight, and I was in law enforcement for a while. Even when you’re in a fight, if you get angry in the fight, yeah, maybe your adrenaline comes up, but you lose your head. You know, you lose your strategy and, you know, anger. It just it just turned out. I’m like, “This is not profitable and this is eating me up inside and I’m making stupid decisions and this is just got to end.”

Learning Through Horses

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You told me as we were talking outside about how horses can detect your emotional state, your heart rate, and if you enter into an environment with them, right, they’ll match you, right? If you enter in all sympathetically aroused, presumably angry and frustrated, they’re going to be able to tell. How did you manage to get through so many years of working with horses, still being this angry guy and how important was learning about yourself through working with horses?

DEWAYNE NOEL: The question is, how did I not get killed? How did horses not kill me? It was always a fight. I mean, I loved horses, but there was always it wasn’t ever what I wanted it to be.

And I never really realized for the longest time. And then there’s — I’m just going to — there’s a horseman out there. He doesn’t know me. OK, and so I’m not. His name is Buck Brannaman, and he’s been my my biggest influence in the horse world. OK, and so a lot of stuff I say is when it comes to horse world, man, that sounds really smart. It’s not mine. I’m not taking credit for it. OK. Um, but.

I learned from him that your horse is just a mirror of you. They’re just a reflection of you. And so any problem that you’re having with your horse is just a reflection of a problem that you have inside. And when I started getting that and I started understanding that and I started taking that to heart, being.

Learning to call myself for the horse. You know, so I could accomplish something with the horse, which I should have had enough sense when I was young to do that for my wife or for my kids, you know.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: But sometimes you need a horse to teach you what a human can’t.

DEWAYNE NOEL: You know, Mark Twain said that youth is wasted on the young. So, um, but when I started and it started working, you know, there’s times I’ve gone out to work a horse. And I was like, “Man, I just — I’m not in a good place today.” And I’ve sat down in a chair outside the pen, looking at the horse, lit up a cigar, smoke the cigar, looking at the horse. Cigars done, light up another cigar. Maybe it was a pipe, you know, but another one said there and then go home.

Just wasn’t ready that day. Just I wasn’t. And it’s like, did I accomplish anything today? No, but I didn’t wreck anything today. And that’s sometimes that’s a victory. Sometimes the biggest victory is, you know, I didn’t make a mess today. It was a good day. And I finally had to start figuring that out.

The Importance of Mundane Successes

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’ve been thinking a lot recently about mundane successes, these sort of small personal victories that you do in private. There’s no fanfare. There’s no audience. No one’s even going to applaud you. No one’s going to give you a pat on the back. How boring of a success to say, “I didn’t mess up another horse’s day today.”

I think there is a few lower magnificent successes that you could do. And yet, I think we need language around how that is something that’s important. That is a victory that you should be able to say at the end of the day when you look yourself in the mirror, “Hey, you were gentle with that person when you were frustrated.”

Right. This person came up to you and you were all agitated and you chose to put civility first. Like that’s something and no one’s going to give you a pat on the back for being modestly polite and civilized. Right. I just, I really, it’s cool that you say that. I really think that more language around being gentle with yourself and appreciating when you have these small, un-magnificent victories is probably something good.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Well, if you look at it, you know, like in math, you know, you study your negative numbers and your positive numbers in math. OK, so you’ve got a chart and let’s start to my left. You’ve got negative 5, negative 4, negative 3, negative 2, negative 1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

And in life, you’re at negative 5. You know, and people tend to think and sometimes we tend to think until I’m at 2, I didn’t accomplish anything. But, you know, getting from a negative 5 to a negative 4, that’s a victory.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And then so we are avoiding going from a negative 4 to a negative 5.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Yes, just staying at a negative 5. We didn’t go to negative 6. That’s a victory. You know, you know, when I was young, come home from work, “How was — how was your day to day, honey?” “I didn’t I didn’t get in a fight. So it was a good day,” you know, and but that is a victory.

Wisdom is Knowing What Not to Do

DEWAYNE NOEL: It’s a. You know, I’ve I study and and well, you name your podcast, you know, “Wisdom.” Wisdom is not in my studies. I’m starting to see this wisdom is predominant, predominantly not something that you do.

If you study the book of Proverbs in the Bible, OK, if you study “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius and you study these wisdom writings. There’s much more of the wisdom writings that are telling you things not to do than are telling you need to do this to be wise. But more of it is, if you’re wise, you won’t do this.

And so like what we’re talking here, a lot of — a lot of victories is just “I didn’t do that today.”

Never Multiply by Zero

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s an idea from mathematics called “never multiply by zero.” So we can have two million multiplied by forty seven multiplied by two point one multiplied by twenty thousand multiplied by zero is zero is zero.

So if you spend all of your time working on your health and avoiding seed oils and eating only grass fed organic meat, but one day decide to drive your car without a seatbelt on, that’s multiplying by zero. You get into a wreck. And so much of life, I think, is avoiding pitfalls, not expediting successes, because the pitfalls can kick you out of the game permanently. They can do things that are so catastrophic. They take much longer to come back from. And this is in some ways an excuse for being averse to risk. But I think it’s just being clever about risk and knowing where you can take risks that have limited downside, not unlimited downside.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Right. Well, you know, we work a lot with horses, of course, and we’ve gotten some horses in this year. They weren’t ours. Like my son had bought a horse last year and the horse was if you knew what you were doing, you could ride the horse. But the horse is not a broke horse. He didn’t have him for very long. And then he deployed overseas. He’s in the military. So we brought him to our place.

And so, you know, there’s all these things and the two young men that were working with me. It’s like, OK, “Don’t move fast. Don’t jump. You know, don’t let’s do this. Let’s be calm,” you know, because they’re a prey animal. So there’s all this stuff that we work with, you know, and so the young man that wrote he went out and wrote him and and he didn’t do anything like, but it was just he reached in the saddlebag and pulled out one of these water bottles and it crinkled and that horse. He just jumped out of his skin.

I mean, it didn’t turn into a wreck, but it was just like you spend all of this time moving easy around the horse, working with them real easy and slow, you know, so the saddle tension nice and slow system by threes and moving all nice and easy. And then there’s one thing crinkling a water bottle and it’s you just multiplied by zero.

Learning Communication from Horses

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What have you learned about humans from working with horses?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Humans don’t know how to communicate. Communication is our biggest weakness. Um, that’s not like the number, but that’s something that lately this is, this has been just really hammered home to me working with horses and working with humans.

Um, and communication is a much more complex issue than, than I think many of us give it credit for. Um, so you take, you take a horse and a human, a relationship with a horse and human. All right. For that to work, there has to be communication.

Well, we have a couple of problems here. First off, the horse doesn’t speak English and we don’t speak horse. All right. But as humans, we insist that the horse comes into our world, but we’re too arrogant or too lazy or a combination of both to learn to speak horse and horses language is not verbal. It’s all movement. It’s all body language. It’s all this.

And so that is a problem. But another problem is, is us and the horse, we are, um, we’re predator animals. All right. We are, the human is, we’re predators. All right. We’re designed to eat meat. Our eyes are side by side on the front of our face. We see one picture and we’re designed to see what we want and go get it.

The horse is a prey animal. They are the animal that everything that eats meat wants to eat. And so they have a complete different instinct. Their instinct is “everything wants to eat me.” You know, we, we, well, we wake up in the morning and we say, you know, “I want to be a trophy husband.” You know, that’s my goal. I read it. Okay. What do I want to go get today?

The horse wakes up and says, “I don’t want to get eaten today.” Two totally different instincts. All right. So to be able to build a communication with a horse, we have to move into the world and learn to speak, but learn to think how they think.

Well, I mean, we can say men and women are the same thing. You know, the women are different from men. They have a different way of thinking. And like I said, my wife, I’ve been married almost 34 years. And even today, there’s things I say, and she absolutely, what she heard is not what I said, you know, and so I have to, I have to, and vice versa, you know, so communication and you cannot have 34 years of relationship with one person. If there’s no communication.

Horses as an External Barometer

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Interesting. The fact that when you’re around a horse, you have this. What’s like an external barometer or thermometer for you and what’s going on. Right. So I mentioned to you that I’d spent a little bit of time with horses recently.

So I rode my first horse out here in Texas, and that was fun. And then I went and did equine therapy. So that was caring for a horse and treating a tube and doing all the rest of this stuff. And, uh, I’d honestly, in retrospect, one of the most embarrassing. In a situations with this horse. So first off, these things are big, but you don’t realize unless you’re around horses, just how big down the kind of scary, because there’s a lot of them and they’re just muscle. Right. You know, on stage, bodybuilder prep level machine.

So anyway, we’re getting used to one of these horses and we’re brushing her and she’s super chill, really, really relaxed. And then they said, “Okay, so we’re going to give you this tool. And this tool is what you can use to clean out the hoops. And this horse will know what’s happening when you bring the tool up, but you need to make it feel sufficiently comfortable so that it will raise its foot up for you. You need to be careful about where it puts its foot back down.” Because it, I had Crocs on, which was not a good idea.

Anyway. So you sort of put your hands firmly, upper hind leg, slide it down a little pinch at the ankle, little ball, do this. So you need to feel relaxed as you walk up to the horse. You need to imagine that the horse is going to do this. You need to make it comfortable for it. It needs to be comfortable with you, so on and so forth.

And I remember walking up to the horse and thinking, “If this horse doesn’t like me, that’s a comment on me. I really want this horse to like me.” Right. And my self-worth had immediately become outsourced to whether or not this horse I met 10 minutes ago was going to lift its hoof up for five seconds so that I could move a little bit of dirt out of it.

And honestly, that one incident, I’d been calling it horse meditation because I thought, like, it’s cute or whatever, but really, how much can I learn about myself from being around a horse? That one incident, I must think about it every week, every couple of weeks. This need to be wanted, this need to be accepted, this outsourcing of my own self-esteem to something else, and this sort of derogation of how I felt about myself based on whether or not a horse lifted its foot up or didn’t.

And thankfully, it did. But it just really made me think about, where do we put our sense of self-worth? And the fact that you have this creature who is, as you say, kind of just reflecting you back at you, there’s nowhere to hide anymore from the way that you’re behaving, especially if you can clamp down the anger or the aggression or the sadness or the whatever, but inside, it’s so bubbling and vibrating.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Well, I suspect, I mean, you and I, we only met today, all right, but you strike me as the kind of person that you don’t very often approach another man like that. Like, “my self-worth is predicated on whether this guy respects me or not,” okay? Especially another alpha, okay? Now, a horse is not an alpha, okay? That horse is definitely not an alpha. If you wanted to, you could put that horse on the barbecue for supper that night, and there’s nothing he could do about it, okay?

So, it speaks to me, the fact that you predicated your view of your self-worth on whether another creature whose well-being was in your hands liked you or accepted you or not. Does that make sense?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: It really does, and I’ve been thinking and talking about this a lot recently. There is a category of people, of which I’m one, who see other people’s emotional states as our responsibility. If you’re not happy, I’m not happy, and if you’re not happy, I have to fix it, and that’s noble in some ways, but it’s only noble if it’s a choice, if you’re choosing to do it to help. If it’s a compulsion, if you’re forced to do it through some sense of obligation or whatever, even though the outcome may be good, it’s not quite as virtuous as it may seem.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Well, it becomes unvirtuous when your help of others is about you. I do this because it makes me feel better. I do this because it gives me purpose in life. I do this because you’re going to like me more, you’re going to respect me more. That’s where it becomes a problem, but it’s not a problem if it’s just, you know, empathy. So, yeah, I don’t know where I was going with that, but there you go.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is there a particular host that you have learned a lot from in your life? Is there a few keystone horses that you had relationships with that taught you an awful lot?

DEWAYNE NOEL: There are. There’s several. So, I was riding for an outfit in Alaska, guiding, and they brought in a mare, and she was a retired, the best I could understand, she was a retired barrel racing horse from here in Texas. And so when I signed on, they assigned her to me because nobody else, we couldn’t put guests on her. None of the other wranglers wanted to ride her because her, her go-to was run. If something disturbed her, her head came up and it’s run, just run. That’s all. Her head came up and it’s run, just run.

That’s my answer to escape, to just run. And it wasn’t something that I could physically fight and stop.

Learning to Get into a Horse’s Mind

DEWAYNE NOEL: And so that horse really made me step outside of the thought process of physically controlling something that has a mental, emotional issue and getting in her head and figuring out what can I do if the problem is mentally or emotionally, what can I do to get in to her head and get into her emotions and fix that for her?

And so what I did, and it’s so simple, it probably wouldn’t even make sense to a lot of folks, but while we were sitting there and while she was calm, sitting there at the ranch, waiting for others to get on their horses, I would just come in with the lightest little pressure and get her to tip her nose. Not pull her nose in, just give a signal, “Hey, tip your nose.” So she’d tip her nose and we’d just do that and just do that.

And then when we get out on the trail and she started getting anxious about something and her head would come up, I would just default to that. And so she would find something that she would secure the signal and she would calm down and she would calm down.

And working with that mare for the summer, I made huge strides with myself in stepping outside of the norm of trying to physically control something that isn’t ideal.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, I mentioned that I had ridden a horse for the first time in Texas and they gave me whatever the leader of the group is for the horse, whatever that’s called, and I was right far at the back and this horse was eating.

And the lady that was guiding the group said, “Just give him a little pull and he’ll come along.” I gave him a little pull and he didn’t move. I mean, it is absurd to explain how strong these things’ necks are. And I’m like, “I don’t think he doesn’t want to come.” She’s like, “No, no, just take a little bit more, a little bit more.” I’m like, “I’m a pretty strong guy.” So I was like, “Right, okay, I’ll give it a big pull,” didn’t move. I’m like, and by this time they’re a hundred yards away.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m like, “Still, he doesn’t want to, doesn’t seem like he wants,” “No, like a really big pull.” So I went mixed grip like you do on a deadlift, set my feet into the stirrups and like, like one rep max this horse’s head up. And finally he got up and that was absolutely not the most efficient way to get him to do that thing. That would have been a much better way than me.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Right. Well, so your average horse, your average quarter horse size horse, you know, is going to weigh between 800 and 1100 pounds. Okay.

Now what I teach folks is I don’t want his body. Okay. I want his mind. Now, if I physically, like you just went through, if I physically get his body to do what I want, but I don’t have his mind. So as he gets a chance, he’s going to go back again.

But if I ignore the body and I get the mind, if I have the mind, I have the body. So in a situation like that, what I do is I, I don’t pull his head up. Okay. I take the range and I bounce that bit that’s in his mouth. I bounce it pretty sharp and he decides in his mind, “I don’t like that. I think I will, I think I will pick my head up” and it’s like, “I’m not going to pick your head up. That’s what you have a neck for. Okay. You have that neck. That’s what it’s for. I’m not picking your head up. I’m going to suggest to you that you decided it’s in your best interest for you to pick your head up.”

And we go for the mind and how much in life, you know, you’ve got all these folks working for you here and you have to, you can’t physically browbeat and nag and threaten you. Try it. Does it work?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No, no, no, no. That belligerent. Yeah. I’ve already heard stories. Yeah. Yeah. They’re abused. Yeah.

DEWAYNE NOEL: But you want to make things so that they decide that if this is, this is what Chris wants done, it’s in, it’s in my best interest. I want to go do that. And again, it’s communication, you know, and again, it’s getting in the horse’s mind and working with a horse in that manner.

I’ll give you an illustration if I can. All right. One of the cardinal sins in my book is when I go to get on a horse and the horse walks off when I’m part way up, you know, I’m stepping up, I’m swinging my leg over and he’s, he’s walking, he’s leaving. Okay. That’s a cardinal sin.

So we have a difference of opinion here, me and the horse. It’s like, “I want you to plant your feet and I want you to be still while I get on. And then I’ll tell you when I want you to go.” He says, “Well, I want to go. So I’m not going to sit there and take, pull back and say, ‘Whoa,’ and do that one-legged hop along Cassidy down while I’m trying to get in the saddle.” I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to physically hold him back.

I’m going to put my toe in the stirrup and I’m going to go to step up. And when he walks off, I’m going to step back out and I’m going to make him keep walking in a circle around me eight or 10 times. I’m like, “I wanted you to stand still, but you want to walk. I tell you what, I’m a nice guy. I’m going to let you walk. I’m going to let you do what you want in a controlled manner. You pick the tune and I’ll pick the dance” and I’ll make him walk around.

He’s like, “I don’t, I don’t want to walk anymore.” “But you said that’s what you wanted. So I’m letting you do what you want.” He’s like, “I don’t want to walk anymore.” “Okay, stop. Well, I want you to stand here while I get in the saddle.” And he says, and it may take a couple of times, but he says, “You know what? I think what I want to do is I want to stand here while he gets in the saddle.” You know, so we communicate. And when I got his mind, when I changed his want to, I didn’t have to fight with his body.

And so that’s just, that’s how, that’s how you approach it. You understand and you communicate.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’ve heard you say that sometimes you have to apologize to the horse for being an idiot.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Yes.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How do you apologize to the horse?

DEWAYNE NOEL: They don’t care. I apologize to the horse for my sake. I mean, the horse, nothing the horse does is personal. All right. The horse will buck you off. They won’t come back and apologize to you. They did what they did because that’s what they felt was necessary at the time.

And so they don’t operate on that wavelength, but there’s times when I do something and it turns out, I’m like, “That was my fault. And that was stupid.” You know, the horse doesn’t take it personal either. And I can apologize to the horse and the horse, it just isn’t in his thing. But I apologize to the horse to humble myself and to bring myself down and to say, “Look, you need to pay attention, dummy, and not do that again.” The horse doesn’t really, he doesn’t want an apology. He just doesn’t want you to do it again.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Sounds like you’ve learned a lot to do with patience and humility through this.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Yeah. And, you know, part of it is, is when you’re young, you can pick a fight and you can win some of them. And when you’re older and you’re busted up, I got plates and screws in my neck and I got joints are out of shape and stuff. You’re not going to win that fight anyhow, not physically anymore. And so it’s, that’s where you start saying, “You know what, I need to approach this in a, in a better way.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Plates and screws in the neck. But I’ve heard you say that not most of those were actually from horsing accidents, but you were in a plane crash, a car crash, and you rolled a motor home off a hill.

DEWAYNE NOEL: I was a passenger off a mountain in Alaska.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I need to hear those stories, please.

The Plane Crash

DEWAYNE NOEL: Wait, I spent a winter in Fort Yukon, which is above the Arctic Circle in Alaska, staying with a fellow. And, uh, I had a little 180, a little Cessna 180 Bush, but I think it was 180. And we were flying out and it was dead of winter. It was like 30 below zero. And in the back of that plane, we had like a hundred pound propane tank, a transmission out of a van, some spare tires.

And so we’re flying back South to Fairbanks. And when we landed in, as we’re touching down in Fairbanks, we had a crosswind. And so you kind of tilt the plane as you’re landed into that crosswind. And so as we touched down and I’m sitting up on the co-pilot on passenger side, I see the landing gear go wrong, the wheel and everything go rolling off across the tundra. And so I reach over and I’m like, “Hey, is that supposed to,” and then that strut came down and hit and we flipped and ground looped and, and carried on, on the runway with all of this washing machine, all in the back.

There was a transmission out of a, at a half ton Chevy van and a hundred pound bottle, propane bottle and just flying around. Yeah, it didn’t hit us, um, which is good. But we stood out on that. Of course I was wearing cowboy boots. So we’re standing out on the runway in Fairbanks waiting for FAA to come out and it’s 30 below zero and, and they come out and inspected. Then we picked up the wing, a bunch of us and push the plane off the runways. And then I had to catch two more flights that day to get back home. So, yeah.

The Motor Home Accident

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What about the motor home?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Motor home, I was a passenger in the back and we were coming down narrow road off the mountain and, uh, um, the lady that was driving, there were a couple of teenagers in the seat right here and they were fussing and bickering. And so she turned around to tell them, “Stop fussing. Hey, y’all stop fussing” and just drove right off.

So we went down, I don’t know how far down we went, but we slid down and hit and landed up against a bunch of trees.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: No rolling.

DEWAYNE NOEL: No, it didn’t roll. Okay. No. Yeah. So you just, just life. And then, you know, a lot of bucked off, been bucked off a lot, just a lot of bruises and yeah. Landing in places and, and so it’s just, it was accumulation of life.

Spinal Cord Injury

And then I was in, I was in the police Academy, uh, and we were studying Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and I was doing a backwards tactical role and something popped in my net and I didn’t say anything. And so then we went on a big run and this run was pretty, we’d run for about a mile and then without, and then we’d stop and drop and do burpees and bicycles and then jump up and run some more.

And by the time we got back to the Academy, my heart rate wouldn’t go down. And then I had this weird feeling of like an electrical net in my body and my heart rate would not go down. So finally they put me in an ambulance and took me to the hospital and I was like that far away from severing my spinal cord. Um, and, but he had, it was already bad, way worse than that. I had no idea.

And that tactical backwards tactical role had just, had just, um, brought it to the edge.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Maybe an odd blessing in some ways that it warns you and that didn’t occur when you got bucked off a horse.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Right, right. And I don’t ride bucking horses anymore. I mean, I say that you never know. A horse is always a horse is a horse. But after so many years, I can pretty well tell when one is a little hanky and I’m like, “I don’t have anything to prove anymore. I’m not riding that horse.”

Balance in Life

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You talk a lot about balance, the dangers of being out of balance. Explain that to me.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Well, let’s take, let’s, let’s take any. Okay. Raising children. All right. Um, I like to say that raising children is like holding a wet bar soap. If you squeeze it too tight, it squeezes out squirts out of your hands. If you don’t hold it tight enough, it slides out of your hands.

You know, raising children, you got to be balanced. There has to be discipline. We as human beings need discipline in our life, but there has to be love and grace and understanding. And so a lot of children who grow up with issues from being raised, you know, those issues are because their parents are out of balance one way or another. Marriage? You’ve got problems in your marriage. It’s usually somebody is out of balance. You know, they’re, they’re too distant or they’re too clingy, you know, they’re too demanding or they’re too permissive. They don’t have personal boundaries. It’s just out of balance. Um, I think.

Oh, heck I’m going to do it. What are they going to do to me? Okay.

The Problem with Hustle Culture

DEWAYNE NOEL: Um, I don’t like the trend in this circle, men’s motivation circle. I don’t like the hustle culture as is being brought out and taught today. I don’t agree with it because I think it’s out of balance.

I think young men need to know that, “Hey, it’s okay for you to sit down and to read and have a cigar and to chill and to think.” ‘Cause I guarantee if you’re in the weight room, um, pumping out all these reps and running on the machine, and then you’re going into the cubicle and you’re flip open a computer and you’re not thinking you’re learning, you’re taking in, but you’re not meditating on stuff and you’re not, you’re not thinking, but that can be taken so far that young men are made to feel guilty for just setting down and thinking and relaxing.

And I understand that there was a tendency in this country. We had a lot of young men that were not raised with dads. They weren’t raised to work, you know? And so it’s sitting on the couch, playing the stupid X-Box, you know, not growing up learning to work. So that pendulum went too far this way.

So now you’ve got guys who, in order to counteract that, they swung the pendulum too far this way. And a balanced man needs to be somewhere in the middle. He needs to be able to work, to do what needs to be done to improve himself. And he also needs to sit around by the fire in the backyard and have a cigar and read some Kipling and just stay balanced. There needs to be balance.

Type A vs Type B Problems

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wrote an essay about that this week.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Did you?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Would you mind if I read it to you?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Absolutely not.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think type A people have a type B problem and type B people have a type A problem. Insecure overachievers need to learn how to chill out and relax and lazy people need to learn how to work harder and be disciplined. Given that you subscribe to me, I’m going to guess you’re probably type A. Some version of a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity, as Andrew Wilkinson says.

Here’s the thing you may have already realized. Type A people with a type B problem get very little sympathy because a miserable but outwardly successful person always appears to be in a much more preferential position than the content being lazy but on the verge of being bankrupt person. The problems of opportunity will always get less sympathy than ones of scarcity.

One feels like a choice, the other like a limitation. One is a bourgeois luxury, the other a systemic imposition. “I need someone to teach me how to be disciplined and work harder,” feels noble and upward aiming and charitable. “I need someone to teach me how to switch off and relax,” feels dopaminergic and addicted and transactional and opulent.

Every underdog movie ever has a training montage of someone working their life out by working harder. None included a guy learning how to log out of slack at 6pm or finally enjoy a beach holiday. So yes, type A people may have objectively better lives but subjectively, they’re ravaged by the sense that they’ve never done enough.

They wake up every morning feeling as if they’ve already fallen behind and only if they dominate their entire day flawlessly will they have dragged themselves back up to some minimum level of acceptable output which means they can go to sleep that night without feeling like they’ve wasted it. Congratulations, you might be very successful but you might also be very miserable.

“Just work harder bro” advice reliably makes everyone more successful in the only way that they can be judged. Outwardly, there are very few issues in life which can’t be solved by just working harder so everybody treats it like a panacea not a purpose-built tool. And on average, maybe more people do need to hear David Goggins shouting in their face to “go harder” rather than Eckhart Tolle whispering in their ear that “they are already enough.”

But for a certain, perhaps minority cohort of people, they actually need to hear the opposite message. We need a parasympathetic Goggins who’s going to carry the TV remote and the cigars. Hashtag rest harder than me.

Type B problems are just as tough as Type A ones but they require a much less sexy solution, peace, one that you can’t achieve by just working harder.

DEWAYNE NOEL: I agree 100%. I have guys come into the school and they’re like, they’re just, I’m like, I don’t say anything. It’s not my business. I’m like, “You’re going to die young. Tightly wound. Just tightly wound and it’s never enough. It’s never enough.”

I’m like, “When is it enough? What is enough?” You know, I’ve been thinking the last couple of weeks. I’m like, you know, the saying is “just keep the main thing the main thing.” But I think where we crash and burn is how we define the main thing.

You know, and it’s, I see myself in a very small, tiny way, infantism away. I see myself as the anti-David Goggins. I see myself as a guy. It’s like, “There’s places where his message is needed. I’m not knocking the guy.” Okay. There are places where his message is needed, but his message is not needed for everybody.

I’m gonna, I’m gonna probably step over line here and you can edit out anything you want. All right. I’m really bothered by these guys who are financial gurus who will fire you if you don’t have a six pack, there’s a problem. There’s a “main thing, stay in the main thing” problem with that viewpoint on life. And I want to see, I want to see men that I’m, for whatever reason, whatever way brought in to influence, I want to see them find balance.

I don’t want to see them find money. I don’t want to see them find six packs. If that, if that is part of the result of it, fine. Okay. But I want them to find balance and I want them to find that place inside where they’re like, “My main thing is my main thing. And it’s enough.”

A Good Mind is Born to Serve

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’ve heard you say that a good mind is born to serve, not born to make money.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Absolutely.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What’s that mean to you?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Well, if I make money and I’ve heard all excuses, because there’s guys who have a problem with me saying that. All right. But if I make money, I make money for me. Now I’ve got, you know, my wife definitely benefits from it. And, you know, my children, although they’re grown, they benefit from it. But ultimately in the end, if I pour all my life into making money, that’s for me, you know, but if I, if I pour my life into as many people as is fitting, and I don’t know, their life is better for me having come through.

I ultimately, I want, and I’ll never know in some tiny way I would, what means the most to me is that when you leave here today in some small way, your life is better for us having sat down and talked. That means, that means more. And so we’re, you know, I think we are, I think a real man is born to serve and serve means provide for those that are in your sphere of you to provide for. It means to protect. It means to encourage. It means to teach and to train.

And sometimes it means to step back and let them hit the wall. Sometimes the best service you can do for somebody is to, when it’s all done, walk up and look down and say, “Did that hurt?” You know, that’s, that’s what they needed. But we won’t do that because it makes us look bad. And even in our service to others, we do it for ulterior motives, you know, but, but yes, I believe that very strongly. I believe, I believe if you spend your whole life to yourself for yourself, you have no purpose of being here. This, this planet is not in any way better for you having been here.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Is that what a good man is to you?

DEWAYNE NOEL: That’s what a good man is to me. When, when I, when my wife and I, and we’ve moved, we’ve lived all over, but we’ve, it’s been a thing of ours. When we leave, we try to leave the house in some way better than when we found it.

And that’s how I approach life is like when people come across my path, I try to leave their life a little better than when I found it. And you know what? That may be just looking at that poor, tired lady checking out at Walmart with the sore feet and the glazed over eyes and looking her in the eye and say, “How are you doing today?” It don’t take much, you know?

But it’s like, I guarantee in some small way, her life was a little better when I passed through that Walmart line than it was before I got there. And yeah, I think that’s a good man. A good man is a man who can protect and who can provide and who can serve, who can comfort, who can reprimand, who can discipline, whatever’s necessary to make the world a little better because he passed through.

The Balance of Strength and Softness in Men

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What do you think about the balance when it comes for men between strength and softness, sort of rationality, emotionality, rigidity, vulnerability? I think that’s a balance that a lot of men struggle with.

I still think that the conversation around emotions, around being open, whether it’s with your friends or a partner or even yourself, I mean, you literally denied yourself going to the doctor for a heart attack. Like the male ability to deny that things are wrong, whether they’re physical or emotional is like a reality distorting power that we all have. Right. How do you come to think about that balance between the hardness and the softness in men?

DEWAYNE NOEL: I’m still old school. I’m still very old school. Now, there comes a point where it can be debilitating to those around me. Okay. If I bottle everything up inside so that I get to the point that I am toxic or debilitating to those around me, then I need to get some help. But as long as I’m not, I don’t need to add more burden for them to carry. That’s just me.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Can you be a bit more specific about what that is, how that shows up for you?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Okay. My wife has been encouraging me for a while now for me to go and talk to somebody. Just there’s years and years and years of, I mean, there were a lot of rough years there. But I’m like, “I can’t do that. I mean, I know the guy gets paid to sit there, but it’s just not necessary.”

I’m still old enough and I’m of the school. It’s like, “Just deal with it. Suck it up. Suck it up.” I broke three ribs one time in a barn, saddling horses, horse to a fit, took eight aspirin and got on that horse and did a four hour ride because I had a job to do. It’s my job.

Now I know, let’s go back to balance. Okay. I was about to mention that. I understand. I’m with you a hundred percent. But at the same time, your balance and my balance and his balance are different. I think a man has to find his own balance. You’re going to get so many messages on here, disagree with this. But I think that this thought of men’s mental health, emotional health, “go get help.” I’m not saying it’s bad. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m not saying it’s out of place, but I think like everything else, I think it could be taken to the point that men just become weak.

And brother, let me tell you in this day and age, we don’t need more weak men. Now, when your internal battles come to the point that you need help because they have weakened you, then get help, you know, but I think everybody’s balance is different. And I fear there was a problem for years on this side, but I fear just like everything else, with that subject being pushed the way it is, we’re going to get out of balance on the other side. And it’s like, and everybody needs therapy for everything.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: This is the nuance, I think, around what we were talking about type A problems, type B problems, because it’s easy to just take that as a one single meal on a plate as opposed to multiple different pieces or a onesie. There’s a British writer called Matthew Syed, who’s coming on the show soon.

And the interesting thing about tennis as a sports reporter is that you had three phenomenal world champions all at the same time. You had Nadal, you had Djokovic, and you had Federer. And he used to go to Wimbledon, and he would see how they were warming up, and each had a different approach. So he’d go and see Nadal, and he’d go and see Federer, and he’d go and see Djokovic, and he’d go and see Federer. And each had a different approach. So he’d go and see Nadal, and he’s just raw aggression. His top’s off, and he’s hitting the ball as hard as he could, and he’s sort of just fury.

And then he’d go and see Djokovic, and he’s like a robot. And this guy’s precise, precision, rationality. Then he’d go and see Federer.

Finding Balance as an Individual

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Each of these guys have won titles while all of them have been playing, and they’ve traded places, some on this court, some on a different type of surface, et cetera. But if you were to look at any of them and say, “In order for me to be a world champion, I must be,” okay, well, which one? Because all of them are world champions.

And this is, I think, you’re right. The message may largely have swung too far back toward the “you cannot deal with any difficulty. You must prioritize your internal state over external responsibilities, mindful Mondays and time off Tuesdays and cookie Wednesdays.” And it’s trying to find who’s this message for, particularly, and I think really trying to get people that are listening to feed it through the filter of, “Is this for me? Is this, or is this for someone else?”

And that point around, “Just go harder, bro,” can cause you to have a heart attack laid in bed next to your wife. And you go, “Okay, that’s something that I probably do need to heed.” And on the other side, “Am I a useless blob of emotional nothingness?” Okay, well, maybe I need a bit more David Goggins in my life. I think finding that balance and not having a one size fits all answer.

DEWAYNE NOEL: So how does a man, an individual, pick any individual, how does he find that balance that fits him with difficulty?

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think, for me, it’s come with age, it’s come with learning myself, it’s come with experience of understanding what happened the last time that this situation occurred and how I felt. And trying to…

DEWAYNE NOEL: So what would you encourage or advise a young man, 19, 23, who doesn’t have that benefit of the age and the experience, and what would you advise him and say, “Look, this is kind of an area that might help you find your balance?”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think checking in with yourself and not treating your first response as always the correct one. I think the immediate sort of reflex that we often have, especially as young men, young and men, is an issue because you haven’t accumulated enough experience for you to be able to call it gut instinct wisdom.

What it is, is probably your default response, which is from childhood, from the group that you grew up in, maybe it’s dad’s pattern, maybe it’s mom’s pattern, maybe it’s the teacher and the way that you have to protect yourself in school. It’s unlikely that that is the best way for you to deal with things. So I think don’t believe everything you think.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Can we boil it down to a buoy base and say, “Look, when you have the thought, don’t trust the thought, I need to do this or I need to do that.” What if we start asking ourselves why? Why do I need to run 300 miles with two broken legs? Because David Goggin said so. Why do I need to do that?

That is the purpose, not why for me, but why do I need to do that to make myself the man I need to be for those around me? Why do I need to say, “You know what? I need to spend more time in the backyard with a cigar.” Why do I need to do that? And if the answer is because I’m becoming overwhelmed, overtight, losing my balance, losing my focus on what really matters in life, I’m becoming hard to live with to those that I care the most about, to those who I am the most responsible for. So the why is, this will make me a better person for those around me.

Me being able to bench press 200 pounds as opposed to 180 pounds does not necessarily make me a better person for those that I’m here to serve. It feeds my ego. So maybe a little more time in the gym doesn’t answer the why, and a little more time in the backyard with my kids, that gives me a better answer to the why do I need to make this choice as opposed to that choice.

And maybe that’s a little more accessible to a young man without a lot of experience.

Being Kinder to Yourself

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m really interested in this blend that you have of real introspection and accepting of your own flaws and faults with the old school mentality of “pick up a weight and carry it.”

I think one of the things that men that want to achieve things in their life struggle with a lot is being kinder with themselves when they fall short, even if they tried their best. They did everything that they could. Reality didn’t deliver to them the thing that they wanted, the outcome. How have you learned to have a better relationship with yourself, the voice inside of your head to be kinder if things go badly?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Just smiling. I like me. I like me. I would buy me a drink. I look at me now and I see all the warts. Okay, I see all the negatives more than anybody else does. I see the positives and over the whole balance of stuff. I like me and I can give myself the same grace if you and I were friends. I can give myself the same grace I can give you because I like me.

I like me in spite of my understanding and the reality of my weaknesses and my warts and my scars and everything. But you know, all in all, I’m a pretty good dude. And man, you got to get to that point outside of arrogance. Arrogance is pride mixed with ignorance. That’s the definition of arrogance.

I’m not talking arrogance. I’m talking about, “Look, as a human being, I’ve failed at this. I’ve succeeded at that. I’ve wrecked this, but I’ve built that and all in all, you know, I’ve tried and. But I like me.” Someone give me some grace. And it’s as simple as that. I would buy me a cigar.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wonder how many men can say that.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Not as many as should.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wonder how many people can say that. How many people say, “I like me?” They would give more grace, more care, more attention, more love to somebody else than themselves.

There’s a statistic around, I think on average, the likelihood that you are going to complete a course of antibiotics yourself is about 50%. The likelihood of your dog completing it is 95%. So we’re literally capable of caring for a pet, nearly double as well as we can for ourselves. Remembering that if you die, no one can look after the pet.

So in an odd roundabout way, serving yourself and serving others from a cup, which overflows around your own or the saucer that sits around your cup is important without. And again, this sort of tension between being self-serving, being narcissistic, being egotistical, being self-centered, but not meaning that.

It’s this delicate balance. And this is what comes with growing up. And I think this is why one size fits all flaming sword advice seems to die away as people get a little older. You listen to a Joe Rogan, and a lot of what he’s saying is hedged in some regard. It’s caveated. It’s, you know, “This is what worked for me, not this is how everybody should do it.” And yeah, there’s a humility that comes with age.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Right. Because if you turn around and look back with open eyes at your life, you see all the scars, you know? I mean, you can’t, you can’t, the only way you can not be humble in old age is when you refuse to look at the reality of your life up to the day. You know, that’s the only way.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Because nobody’s scaping through it perfectly.

Not Losing Yourself

DEWAYNE NOEL: But this is what drives, this is what drives my, and it’s, it’s, it sounds ludicrous in my ears, but my business endeavors today, this is the core of what drives me. Okay. There is no business out there that I can take on. There is no monetary endeavor that I can take on that is worth the gamble of me losing me It took me years of, of a lot of grief and pain and work to get to be who I am today in spite of who I was.

And I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose myself in business. I don’t want to lose myself in trying to earn a better living in trying to get a name and trying to do this. It’s like, I have turned down. I have turned down so much because I’ve looked at it and I’ve asked myself, “Who’s this going to make me be? Who’s this going to turn me into?” Even a little bit. And it’s like, it’s just not worth it. It’s just not, it’s not worth it.

And so I’m right now trying to find the balance in undertaking something that’s not going to alter me, that I’m not going to lose myself and then not succeeding at something because I was too afraid to try it, which has never been an issue with me before. I’ve never been afraid of failure before, but now I’ve got something I don’t want to lose. And that’s myself that I actually like, a me that I actually like.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Um, I, does that make any sense that you’re a hundred percent, the person that you have to spend the most time talking to in your life is yourself. Try not to lose that respect.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I think, you know, this is a lesson that I realized toward the end of my twenties where I’d accumulated a lot of success and status in maybe the way that modern society tells a young man that he should with freedom and, and notoriety and, and, and women and stuff like that. And that was cool. And, and to look back on fun, uh, but it was beginning to get to the stage where I didn’t like me all that much.

I hadn’t done anything bad, but I just felt like there was, I was built for more, I was built for different, built for something else. And I realized that I wasn’t keeping promises to myself that if I said I was going to wake up at a certain time, the snooze button would be hit three times. If I said that I was going to stick to my diet or go to the gym or do this thing, maybe it would happen, but it wouldn’t happen quite the way that I’d meant it to.

And there would be some negotiating and some cajoling and some falling short. So imagine that you had a friend and every time that you invited this friend out for lunch, they showed up an hour late or they didn’t show up at all. After a while, you’d stop trusting them and stop inviting them out at all, when you are that friend to yourself, you know, how can you have faith that you’re going to go and do all of the things that you want in life when you can’t not hit the snooze button, but you can’t not cheat on your diet, you can’t not do, you know, you are constructed by the tiny decisions that you make every single day.

And even if you think that nobody else is watching, and even if no one is, there’s this little ticker in the back of your mind, when you go to bed, you know, “You were gentle with yourself when you got agitated, right?” Good. “You were kind with the lady that looked like she was tired at Walmart. You said something peaceful and encouraging to her.” Good.

But you did these things, right? It’s something that makes you feel not so proud about yourself, right? And, you know, in some ways, it’s a great correcting mechanism, because there is no hiding from it. And people turn to alcohol and distraction and aggression and depersonalization in order to deal with the fact that they don’t like themselves, right? But ultimately, you need to live with the decisions that you make, right?

To live with you, right? There is this set of scales inside of your mind, that’s just balancing things all the time. And if it, you know, you know —

DEWAYNE NOEL: Yeah, people and people don’t know how to like themselves. I mean, people don’t know how to like themselves, but it’s not complicated.

How to Like Yourself

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Tell me, how do you like yourself?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Find somebody that you like. That you genuinely like and figure out what it is about them you like. “I like that. That’s something I like. That person is, they’re understanding, they’re gentle, they’re hardworking, they’re honest, this is what I like about them.” And incorporate that stuff into your own life.

If that’s the stuff you like, then incorporate that stuff into who you are. And then you like yourself. It’s not rocket science. There are things that you like as a person that wouldn’t mean anything to me. There are things that you like in another person that wouldn’t mean anything to me.

There’s things that I like in another person, just because of how I’m wired, and it wouldn’t mean anything to you. So that is what I like in a person. So if I work at taking on those attributes, it helps me become a person that I like.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I always used to feel a little nervous when talking to people, and perhaps my horse situation belied this. I always wanted people to like me. I was unpopular as a kid, only child, a lot of time in solitude, bullied in school. And I wanted people around me to think that I was fun, or cool, or interesting, or want to be near me, or want to be around me, or whatever.

How to be Likable

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I think I assumed that that was always this sort of grand, charismatic, out of reach, impressive person. You needed to be impressive. You needed to walk into a room and look at all of the things I can do.

And then this was two years ago. My friend George made me realize this, just by virtue of being peaceful and brilliant. And I realized that the reason I love being around him wasn’t because he was the most charismatic guy in the room, or even the most interesting guy in the room, although he can be, but because he made me feel like the most interesting person in the room.

And I think this is such an important lesson for people who want to be liked, who want to struggle socially, and want to become better. People like people that make them feel good. They don’t care that much about how impressive the person is.

There’s this great story. I think it was Winston Churchill’s wife who met the two US president candidates, Truman and somebody else. And she said that she sat down at dinner with both of them in the space of about a month of each other. She said she left from the first president feeling like he was the smartest man in the world. She left from the second president feeling like she was the smartest woman in the world.

And it is significantly easier to make someone else feel interesting than it is to be interesting, to make someone else feel charismatic than it is to be charismatic.

DEWAYNE NOEL: It is. But from an individual, and this is where I see things because of all of the particular comments and questions and emails and stuff I get from young men. You take a young man out there, and everything you just said is 100% correct. I agree with 100%. It’s dead on.

But there are guys out there that don’t have someone like that in their life. Someone who’s going to be that person that makes them feel good about themselves. But if we become the person that we like, I have recently come to the place, and this drives people crazy, I think. I think it irritates people.

I have come to the place in my life where when I meet somebody and they don’t like me, and you can tell, I don’t care. And when I meet somebody that, you know, they’re like, they really like me, it’s like, “Okay, but it doesn’t carry much weight either, because I’m going to be leaving. I’m going to be leaving.” You know, we’re not staying. I like me, and it’s enough.

And so when I meet someone who doesn’t like me, or I meet someone who does like me, it doesn’t alter myself.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I suppose that’s the vicious circle of, if you don’t like you, you will continue to outsource your self-worth to the people around you, which makes you more desperate and more needy, which inherently makes you less likable, because people know that you’re pliable and malleable and will kind of do whatever you need to do in order to gain their approval.

Mercifully, the horse did lift its hoof up, but it’s a vicious circle, I get that. And, you know, I’m a rehabilitating people pleaser in that regard. But this is the fascinating thing, I think, about developing as a person, that the journey that you’re on, parts of it will resonate with other people, and they see bits of them in you. They see a little bit. “I was angry. I’m angry as a young man. I see that in Dwight.” I was never angry. Anger was never my… My anger was always turned inward, not outward.

So, for me, it was low mood, it was fear, it was worry, it was concern, tight, closed up. It’s never out. Not fighting. I wasn’t showing aggression. I wasn’t being, you know…

So, okay, well, if I’m the angry young guy, like, intellectually, philosophically, maybe I can say something that’s remotely interesting, but I’ve got no lived experience that’s actually going to help. Good to you. I’m not a black belt master at dealing with that.

Crisis of Masculinity

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And that’s where picking different bits apart… But I agree. I think, you know, there’s been a lot of talk about crisis of masculinity, role models for men in the modern world, the multiplicity of backgrounds that guys are coming from, the unseen fatherlessness epidemic that we had, which has created a vacuum that’s required people like you to step in a surrogate patriarch. Right.

What are you hearing from the guys in your audience? What are they often asking? What are they coming to? What are the problems that they’re dealing with mostly?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Relationships. Girls. They were not raised, they were not raised with a dad who said, “Hey, this is how you treat a lady. You know, this is this is how, you know, when girls talk and they say this, what they actually mean is this.” And I’m not talking about “no means no,” but I’m talking about, you know, “I don’t — I don’t know. You don’t have to get me something to eat when you go get something. I don’t want anything.”

But it is. And so young men these days were never taught by another man how to treat a lady like a lady. They go in to a relationship, girlfriends, marriages, getting all their information from Hollywood. And it’s a crash and burn because they don’t understand relationships. They don’t understand communication.

They don’t understand the balance between being a man and being a boar, being a buffoon, you know, being a tyrant. They don’t know the difference between being. Can I call names on here? OK, Andrew Tate, OK, or or some little milk shop over here, you know, there’s you got the two extremes and they they can’t find that place in the middle. The biggest thing by far is relationships.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What is your advice from 34 and a bit years of marriage and negotiating with a woman from Venus? What is your advice to young guys on how they can treat a lady better and understand them

DEWAYNE NOEL: Treated like she’s special? I mean, for one thing. For one thing, my problem with the feminist movement is why in the Sam Hill was something is something as special and wonderful as a woman want to be equal with a man. Why do you want to bring yourself down to that level?

You know, as a Christian, God gave two very special gifts to mankind. The first one was a woman and the second was Jesus Christ. OK, you can teach an ape to work construction. You cannot teach an ape to raise human children. I think it’s degrading to women to try to be the same as a man is OK, treat them special. And secondly, is communicate. All right. If you don’t understand what they’re saying, if you’re confused, sit down and gently say, “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t understand. I don’t understand what you’re feeling. I don’t understand. But I’d love to understand if you can help me” and just sit down and communicate. Just listen to them.

You know, a lot of times they don’t — they just want somebody to listen to them. They don’t want you to fix it. They just want you to listen to them while they take all this boiling stuff inside their head and put it out so they can actually hear it. And sometimes that helps them sort out all these thoughts that’s in their head. They need to just put it out so they can hear it. And they don’t need you to demean them by saying, “OK, I’ll fix this.” Just listen to them.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: There’s a quote from Timothy Leary that says “women who aspire to be equal with men lack ambition.”

DEWAYNE NOEL: Yeah, yeah. I hadn’t heard that, but I agree with it. I’m like, I get up and give you my seat because I think you’re special, not because I think you’re my equal. A guy comes in. He’s 57 years old. He’s physically equal to me. He’s all mine. I’m not going to get up and give him my seat. All right. So I give you my seat, not because I think you’re my equal. If you’re my equal, you can stand just like I do. I give you my seat because you’re special.

Understanding Men’s Burdens

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What about the reverse? What do you wish more women knew about how men operated?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Oh. There’s 10,000 times more going on inside the head of a man than you have any idea. He’s carrying burdens that you don’t have a clue about, and he don’t know how to express them. And he don’t know what to do about it. And he figures if he puts it out there and communicates it, he’s just going to be shot down, called a fool, called weak. So he carries inside and you have no clue. The burdens and the hell that most men are carrying inside and not even showing you. I wish more women understood that.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Yeah, it’s a strange problem, I think, of the modern discussion around men and why they’re struggling. A lot of the solutions that get put forward, a lot of the only acceptable solutions that get put forward are if only you acted less like a man, all of your problems would go away. That men are treated like defective women as opposed to treated like work in progress men.

DEWAYNE NOEL: The average man, I believe the average real man does not need to go get therapy for the battles and the burdens he’s carrying inside. What he needs is for those that he’s carrying them for, to recognize that they’re there. And to respect it. And to be grateful for it. They don’t need to talk it out to get rid of it. They need the one that they’re going through this hell for, to recognize it’s there and to be grateful that the man is carrying this for them; they don’t need therapy, they need gratitude.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How important do you think it is to communicate that as a man? You’ve said there are 10,000 things, challenges, trauma, complete inability to communicate it, whether maybe you can communicate to a horse better than you can communicate with your significant other, right? What’s your thoughts around vulnerability within a relationship? If you’re not going to the therapist, perhaps. Right. How about opening up about these fears and concerns?

DEWAYNE NOEL: And well, first off, let’s let’s take away — let’s take away vulnerability. OK, because a lot of times men won’t open up, they won’t respond because it’s looked at as becoming vulnerable. And it’s like the, you know, the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike. It’s a little tiny leak. But if I allow this little tiny leak, the entire dike is going to give way. That’s why we can’t allow the little tiny leak.

OK, so if I’m sitting here. And if I’m one of these guys and my significant other is sitting there, I can communicate to her what I need to communicate without being vulnerable. I can maintain my strength. And communicate to her. OK, I can say, “Look, I’m working 60 hours a week. And the environment that I’m working in is very, very difficult. And I come home and I only have eight hours here at the house, and this is the only place of peace I have in this entire world. And when I come home, you’re angry all the time, you’re not satisfied about anything you want, you know, whatever the situation is. If you’re not going to provide for me that little bit of peace, that this is the only place I can get, what are we doing?”

Now, you’re not vulnerable, you’re not getting walked on, you’re not being a jerk, you’re not coming in, throwing stuff down and saying this, you’re just communicating the hard reality truth is. The hard reality truth is our relationship at this point has boiled down to this.

“Now, you have a beautiful house. You have — you never worry about there being grocery money. You have a car. I put the fuel in your car because you let it go to empty all the time. I provide this and this and this. And what I’d like for you is some peace and some understanding.” You know, if that’s where your situation is.

But to communicate it in such a way, not to come in and whine. Not to grovel. And not to tyrant, you know, not to yell, not to pick a fight, is that it’s like, “Look, I’m just communicating because I think we have a lack of understanding here. So I need you to understand this is where things are right now.”

And so you can communicate. But how you communicate is just as important as what you’re saying. Just as important as what you communicate.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Transparent communication like that is so rare. You know, making being able to put across what you mean. Without ladening it with. Resentment, passive aggression.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Right. I had a, I knew a guy years, years, many years ago, he had a little dog. One of those little furry little rat dogs, you know, and his is one of his little joys in life was he’d look at that dog and he’d smile and he’d say, “Oh, you’re so stupid. You’re the ugliest, dumbest, most worthless dog I’ve ever seen in my life.” And that dog would just wiggle and roll over and just, and he’d look at me and say, “It doesn’t matter what you say, it’s how you say it.”

Dog has no idea what I’m saying, but I say it in a loving tone and it’s all good. You know, there’s a lot of truth to that and communicating with people. We can say things that are not necessarily blatantly offensive, but we can say it in a real belligerent, aggressive tone and all they hear is the tone. They didn’t even hear the message and that’s right. They don’t even hear the words.

The Importance of Fatherhood

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What have you learned about the importance of fatherhood? You got seven children, seven children. Yeah. What have you learned about the importance of fatherhood?

DEWAYNE NOEL: All right. I believe God, God made man. Okay. And God created man and God gave man the word. And the word at that time was “Don’t eat of the fruit of those two trees.” Okay. That was a symbol. That’s all the word God gave man at that time.

Then God gave man a work and the work was, he said, “Take care of this garden.” And then God gave man a woman to help the man. Okay. That man, and then the woman God gave him, that became a marriage. And then that man and wife had children and those children had children. And then there became governments. Okay.

You see where I’m going? In this country, this country was founded. This was founded as a Christian country. This is what I believe. People can do whatever — I believe that this country is only as strong as the churches. Even our founding father says, “America will remain great as long as America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

This country is only as strong as the churches in this country. The churches are only as strong as the families that make up those churches. Those families are only as strong as the marriages that those families are built on and those marriages are only as strong and good as the man that God built the marriages on. As goes the man so goes the marriage. As goes to marriage so goes the family; as goes the family so goes the churches; as goes to the churches so goes the country.

Everything is built on the husband and the father, and this country is a failure today because the fathers and the husbands have failed, how failing to be — the failing to be the example they need to be, failing to be the leaders they need to be, failing to be the disciplinarians that they need to be, failing to be the providers that they need to be.

If you don’t have — if you don’t have the backbone as a husband and as a father to be the bad guy, you’ve got no business being a father or a husband. There’s times when you have to know this is not a good direction for my marriage, for my family. And everybody’s going to be mad at me. My wife is going to be mad at me. My kids are going to hate me. But in the long run, this is a very bad direction. And I’m putting my foot down and we’re not doing that. And you become the bad guy, but you do it for the long term strength and safety of the family.

And we’ve lost that. I mean, we’ve lost that in this country to a very large degree. And so I think — I mean, our next generation, our next generation is going to run the politics, they’re going to run the finances, they’re going to run the judicial system, everything in this country, and they’re going to be the result in a very large degree. And there’s going to be those who don’t agree with us, but they’re going to be the result of whatever their fathers made them or whatever they become because they didn’t have a father. And so I think fatherhood is paramount. I think it’s paramount for the future of a society.

Protecting His Daughters

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Speaking of doing things that make your family mad at you, I heard that you didn’t let your daughters date until they were in their late teens. Is this right?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Right.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And that you grilled the potential suitors when they started dating them.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Every boy had to come to me.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Tell me the process. Tell me the story, though.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Well, they would come, you know, the boys would come. “Hey, you want to — you want to.” And she was taught, “You got to go talk to daddy. We don’t even talk about this. You go talk to daddy.”

Two of my son in laws today for years, they would come and say, “I’d like to.” And they would they’d come to me and they’re like, “I’d like to write your daughter, I’d like to.” I’m like, “No. Nope.”

“Well, what about this?” “No, why not?” It’s like, “Look, you’re a good — you’re a good kid. But my problem with you is you’re a kid. All right. Grow up.” And the two of my son in law state, there were literally years they kept coming back and I’m like, “No, let me see what kind of man you’re going to become. OK, my daughter’s not marrying a boy.”

And a lot of boys, they grow up to not be good men, so why let her get into an emotional attachment with a boy who will never grow up? And why am I not protecting her from that heartache in the future? And both of them now are married to my daughters, but there came a point years later, I’m like, “OK, I’ve watched you. All right, you grew up. You can contact my daughter now.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How did that go down with the daughters?

DEWAYNE NOEL: I don’t know, they wouldn’t come first to me, but I think my daughters appreciated knowing they had a father who was not just looking out for them today, their feelings today, their whatever, but looking out for their entire future and putting them on the right road.

I brought a man in my office one time and I had a desk along the wall. We sat down in front of the desk. He was sitting in front of me. I pulled out the middle drawer of my desk, pulled out a Bowie knife about that long, slammed it on the desk between us. I said, “Do you have any questions?” He said, “No, sir, no, sir, I don’t have any questions.” I said, “All right, then” put it back to George, closed it and we got up and left.

They never had any question. My daughters are married. All my daughters that are married are married to good men, good men. And I’ve told every one of them at the wedding. I pulled every one of them at the wedding aside. I said, “If you ever hurt her, they will never find your body. I said, there will be no court. There will be no what they call it, a, you know, you go down and you swear out a. You can’t come with us so many protective orders, there won’t be any of that. If you ever hurt her, they won’t find your body. She’ll be my daughter to the day she dies.” And they all, they all know, everybody knows, you know, it’s just like, and I think they appreciate it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: And I think I’m sure they appreciated that on the wedding day. Yeah.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Oh yeah. Well, I didn’t tell them he may have later, but that’s okay. But you know, there’s, I think there’s a lot of women out there would just say, “Man, I wish I’d had somebody in my life that, that had that kind of commitment to my safety and to my future.”

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Why do people think that you were saying that? Is it because you’re a tyrant? Is it because you wanted to domineer over your daughter’s lives? Or is it because you love them and you want the best for them and you want them to be safe and protected and happy?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Just that, because I’m not, every one of my children, when they got married, “You’re adults.” And I never interfere in their decisions. Never. I never say “You can’t go here. You should do that.”

I never tell their husband, “You should get this job. You should do that.” You, we don’t interfere in how they raise their children. My children are not raising their children the way I raised them. I never say anything about it. It’s “You’re an adult. I raised you being an adult. You’re a parent. Those children are your children.”

I’m not a tyrant at all, but they know from a distance, Zeus is looking from Olympia and he will throw that thunderbolt down. If somebody tries, they know that it’s like, “Dad’s always there. He’s never meddling. He’s never in the way. He’s never in our affairs. But if he’s always there, if we ever name him.”

Lessons Taught to His Children

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: What do you think were the most important lessons that you taught your kids? Or what do you hope that your kids learned?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Um, your word, don’t, your word is your bond. Don’t lie. Now, I, I would go to jail for this today, but my kids are grown and gone. Uh, we had, we had a deal in the house and it’s like, and I spanked my children. Okay. There, there it is.

There’s, there’s a set penalty for breaking this rule. If you do, if you break the rule, you’re going to get that penalty. If you lie about it, the penalty is doubled. So it’s like my boys, it’s like, “You don’t hit girls. You don’t hit girls.” All right. And so, you know, if, if, uh, you know, if they hauled off and smacked her, his sister comes in, you know, “He hit me.” She’s crying or the red mark on the side of her face, call them in. It’s like, “Did you hit her?”

Now, if it’s proven that he did hit her, you know, there’s going to be like 15 licks. I mean, the penalty was severe. You don’t hit women. All right. If he said, “No, I didn’t hit her.” “Oh, son, don’t do that.” “No, I didn’t hit her.” And then two of the other siblings come in and say “He did. We saw it.” Well, he got the 15 licks for hitting a sister, but he got 30 licks for lying about it. So he got 45 licks total.

It’s like lying is the worst thing. Do not lie. Go through life. You be honest. You speak the truth, even to your harm, even to your detriment. You do not lie and you don’t hit women. Don’t lie. Uh, your, your word is your, a man’s most important, a man’s most valuable, most important resource is his good name. If a man ain’t got a good name, he ain’t got nothing. So don’t lie, be respectful. You know, be respectful to others. Be respectful to your elders. Even if, even if they’re not respectable, they still been through life enough, you know, their position earns them what their behavior won.

Affording a Large Family

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: You know, you had seven kids, were you rich? How do you afford seven kids? A lot of people at the moment have a problem. “I can’t start a family. I don’t have enough money. I don’t have the X, Y, and Z.” It’s one of the most common reasons people have for not starting families yet.

DEWAYNE NOEL: No. So during that time, there were years where my income tax return, like for the year, I made 16 to $18,000 for the year. Uh, I worked hard, worked two jobs. We were very frugal.

I had a guy asked me one time I was working. Um, actually I was working, we were living in temple, Texas, and I was working. It used to be Watson electric was an industrial electrical supply. And I was working at the counter. When the contractors come in, he says, “Dewayne, do you, do you get assistance on the side?”

I’m like, “What do you mean?” He said, “You know, food stamps, welfare or something.” I had four kids at the time. I said, “No, man, I don’t, I don’t get anything.” He’s like, “Does, does your wife work?” I said, “No, my wife is a mother of four kids at home.”

He said, “Then how do you do it?” He said, “I know basically what you’re making here. How do you do it?” I said, “Well, it’s a very, very difficult, very complex, um, very mathematical equation.” I said, “You sure you want to hear it?” He said, “I want to hear it.” I said, “You sure?” He said, “Man, I’m sure. How do you do it?”

I said, “We say, no, we just say no, no, we’re not going out to eat. No, we don’t need satellite TV. No, you don’t need a hundred dollar pair of basketball shoes. No, we don’t have to have TV dinners. No, my wife can cook. Uh, you just say, no, no.” I’ve I bought a 1976 Dodge dark paid cash for, you know, for $700. I don’t need a car payment. I just need a vehicle that’ll get me from point A to point B. I said, “Just say no. Live within your means.”

It’s amazing. I mean, we rented a mobile home. We were in a mobile home, you know, $300 a month, whatever it was.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: How many people lived in the mobile home?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Myself, my wife, and, and, uh, we had the three children. We had the three children at the time. Yeah. So it’s just live within your means. You don’t need near as much as you think you need, you know, and who cares about the status symbol of those around you, what they think you are.

And, and then you find out when you get up to my age, that the people out there who are super, super, truly super wealthy, for real, most of them, they look like they’re living in the mobile home, driving the Dodge dark. They don’t show it. You know, I mean, they don’t have all the big super cars and everything. You’re truly obnoxiously wealthy guys. Uh, you know, they’re driving Toyotas. They’re driving Hondas.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: That’s what I like about Austin. The richest people drive the shit that’s caused. Yeah. Yeah.

DEWAYNE NOEL: So it’s a, it’s a big circle. And so if you want to get this out of circle, start over here, you know, if you want to get to the level of where you are so rich, you drive the crappiest car, you start by driving the crappiest car. Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think, uh, starting at the end or realizing what do older people do? What did the people that are a little bit further down the line, how do they dress? What do they spend their time thinking about doing? What are they invested in?

And, uh, realizing that if you’re going to end up there and if you can see that most people with age for a good amount of time comes some wisdom and some understanding, right? You think, well, you can probably take some of that now and write it down into the present moments and speed run this whole wisdom growing up thing a little bit. Right.

DEWAYNE NOEL: What, what, how big was Warren Buffett’s mansion? He lived in a little three bedroom, a three bedroom, little brick ranch house, same house he’d been in for decades. You know, he, he drove a car, he just wore suits. You know, how does Mark Zuckerberg dress sweats in a t-shirt? You know, how, how does, um, what’s his name? Amazon. Look at how he dresses.

Yeah. Bezos. You know, what are these guys doing? You know, what are these guys doing? Um, it’s like, “Oh, maybe you should learn something.”

Role Models

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Speaking of famous people, who are some of the role models that you have looked up to over the years?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Um, I can’t think of anybody famous that was —

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, what about private people?

DEWAYNE NOEL: My dad, um, uh, the cowboy in Kansas. I worked with for several years, really respected him. He was a scratchy fella, but he had, he had his honesty and, and, uh, he really had a big effect, just some of the folks I’ve worked with and been around.

Well, my dad was probably the, my dad and I were not always on the same page about everything, but I’ve never met a man in my life where I looked at and said, “That guy’s more honest than my dad.” My dad was the most honest man I’ve ever known in my life. Um, and no one has affected me more in that area than he did.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I think when we’re talking about leaving the world in a better place than you found it, not doing things that derogate the wellbeing of the people that are around you that you’re supposed to look after and care for, I do think that, you know, if somebody asks the question, “Who have been the biggest influences, who have been your biggest role models,” I think the goal of every father should be for their son to say that dad, yeah, I think that’s usually a pretty good indication that you did a good job.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Pretty good. Yeah. It’s, it’s pretty good. Um, and he was, my dad was always himself, but himself was a good guy. Himself was enough. He was never wealthy, never famous, never, but he was very much respected in his field.

And, uh, you know, there’s a, there’s very little more that a man could ask for when he leaves this world than saying, “Look, I was known as an honest man. I was known as a very respectable man. And everybody that knew me respected me. They may not all liked me, but they all respected me.” And everything else is really not that important.

The Quality of Dewayne’s Days

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I’m interested. You have this facility now, which maybe you’re going to have to slow down for a little bit and, and reorganize to, to make it work. If you were able to design your perfect day, what would that look like? What would an ideal day for you be? That I could like, whatever you in my life now.

Yeah. Your life right now. What would it, what does it, what does a perfect normal day look like for you?

DEWAYNE NOEL: Man, I, my days right now are all over the map. Um, that’s a really good question. I don’t know if I have an answer for that. Um, I, Well, you stumped me. I don’t know.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I wonder if that’s an indication of how much sort of change and upheaval is going on inflection and, and, and attention and stuff like that for you at the moment.

DEWAYNE NOEL: I think it’s an indication of how the quality of my day is internalized, how it’s not affected by my environment, by what’s going on. Um, I think it’s more of that. It’s like, whatever happens, you know, we can, whatever I’m doing today, we can make this a really good day. Um, instead of thinking more along the lines of “If I can do this and this, and if this can happen and if I can be here and if I can have this property and I can have this schedule and that, then that’s going to be the perfect day. Then I can have a good day.” Yeah.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Well, that’s power. My, one of my friends, Alex says, “If you can have a bad day for no reason, then you can have a good day for no reason.”

DEWAYNE NOEL: You know, I’m going to stay on my, my best friend lives in Temple and a day before yesterday, I got up and he had to go to work. I got up, took a shower, made two or three cups of coffee, you know, and I got online and I said, “I know there’s cigar lounges around here, there’s gotta be.” And I found one in Belton, nice folks.

And so I went to the cigar lounge and I just sat there and smoked a couple of cigars and talked to folks until about one o’clock, went back to the house, sat on the porch and, and talked with, um, my buddy’s wife about poetry. She’s real big into poetry. And we just sat on the porch and talked, and then he came home and he and I went to a Lone Star Steakhouse and I had a ribeye for supper and I’m like, “Today was a really, really good day.” You know, what did I accomplish? Who cares? What did I break? Nothing. It was just a really good day.

You know, it was just the ideal day. And there’s something to be said for getting to that place in your life that you don’t have to architect what a good day is going to be. You make good days out of whatever you got. Whatever’s there. There wasn’t a horse anywhere in sight. I didn’t go riding, you know, um, my wife is back home. She wasn’t here, but we said like, “This is where I am. This is what I got. This is what my good day is going to look like.”

Closing Thoughts

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: Dewayne, no, ladies and gentlemen, Dewayne, I love everything that you do. You’re fantastic. Everybody needs to check out your YouTube channel. Everyone needs to go and follow the stuff that you’re doing online.

I, I can’t believe that you’ve been hiding away somewhere and now you’ve sort of broken above the surface. I really hope that so many people are going to be blown away by, you know, the, the things that you talk about. It’s very, very impressive. I’m really, really glad that you’re doing what you’re doing.

DEWAYNE NOEL: Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

CHRIS WILLIAMSON: I appreciate you too.

DEWAYNE NOEL: It’s been an honor. You having me here. I’m very thankful.

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