How to Stay Real in an Age of AI w/ Ryan Levesque
Ryan Levesque’s new book, Return to Real, is supposed to be about getting back to what’s real in a world of artificial everything. It’s not billed as a book about fatherhood. But Ryan tells Jon that readers keep writing back to him with the same line: at its core, this is a book about being a better father. This conversation is where the book meets the work of raising kids, one morning habit, one argument, one mirror at a time.
Touch earth before you touch a screen
Ryan credits this one to fellow Front Row Dads member Ali Jafarian: before you reach for your phone in the morning, walk outside and touch the ground.
“When you wake up in the morning, first thing, before you reach for your phone, before you check your messages, walk outside. Take off your shoes, take off your socks. Look for the first patch of bare earth that you can find. Step on that earth for just a few seconds. Take a deep breath. Look up at the heavens, and remind yourself that you are a physical being in a biophysical world, and you are deeply, deeply, deeply connected to the natural world. And you just take a moment to ground yourself, and it will shift your energy for the rest of the day, and it only takes 30 to 60 seconds.”
True self vs strategic self: there is no third path
Ryan says every interaction forces a choice between who you really are and who the moment needs you to be, and there’s no way around picking one.
“The dilemma of the human existence is every interaction you have to make a choice: true self or strategic self. There is no third path. And therein lies the great human dilemma.”
Scars vs wounds
Ryan draws a line between sharing that’s actually healed and sharing that’s still bleeding.
“The distinction between scars versus wounds. So wounds represent unhealed trauma and shit that you’re dealing with, and sharing that results in you bleeding on your audience. Scars, on the other hand, have not disappeared. They’ve left a mark, but you’ve done the processing. You’ve done the work.”
Lazy people are losers: the words Ryan wishes he could take back
Ryan tells Jon about the night he screamed at his younger son, and what it cost him to sit with it for 12 days on the road before he could make it right.
“I said words to him that I’m not proud. He was doing something, and I can’t even remember what it was at this moment, but I said, ‘Stop being so fucking lazy. Lazy people are losers.’ And I screamed it. And I remember he looked at me… the terror in his face.”
“The worst part is literally the next day I was on an airplane to travel to an extended business trip for 12 days… There was a 12-day stretch where I was speaking at a bunch of events.”
We’re all just boys trying to raise men
The moment leads Ryan to a line he’s been sitting with in his own writing, about where that kind of anger actually comes from.
“I feel like we’re all just boys trying to raise men.”
“I love you all” means “I love myself when I’m with you”
Jon shares how a stranger’s goodbye at a party turned into a lesson about how everything we say to other people is really a mirror.
“I was listening to somebody leave a party, and they went, ‘I love you all.’ And what I heard was, ‘I love myself when I’m with you.’ That’s what I translated that to say.”
Category of One: nobody can out-compete you at being you
Ryan closes on the model he’s bringing to the VIP day at Front Row Dads Live, the same idea that runs through the back half of Return to Real.
“It’s predicated on this premise that nobody can out-compete you at being you. So how can you inject the most concentrated version of you in the key elements in your business that will make you the clear and obvious choice in your market?”
Listen to the full conversation with Ryan Levesque on the podcast, where he and Jon also get into the Levesque family mantra of curious, ask questions, seek truth, and why Ryan’s 15-year-old reading his newsletter every week keeps him honest. Ryan is leading the Category of One workshop on the VIP day at Front Row Dads Live in Austin, details at frontrowdads.com/live.
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