Fire and Ritual

Why Today's Young Men Are Choosing Health Over Partying, and What That Means 

I've been noticing something with young guys that I reckon a lot of men my age have missed. 

They're not partying like we used to. 

The young guys I mentor and spend time with talk a lot about getting up early in the morning. They're training regularly. They're watching what they eat. Some of them don't drink at all. 

Even the young guys who are still partying are talking more about getting enough sleep, recovering properly and understanding how different activities and environments make them feel. 

Twenty years ago, if you'd shared that with your mates, you probably would've been laughed off site. You would've been ridiculed for wanting to be better. 

But something is shifting. 

I'm seeing young men becoming more confident about looking after themselves, and communities are forming around health, wellness and personal growth. 

I think that's something we should be paying attention to. 

What it cost us 

When I was growing up, I came through construction and landscaping, and the culture was pretty simple. 

You worked hard. You drank hard. 

Knock-off beers. Friday at the pub. Big weekend. Turn up Monday feeling like death and basically do it all again. 

And you wore that like a badge of honour. 

Being able to turn up Monday without any sleep was almost a measure of being a man. 

I'll be straight up. It cost a lot of people I grew up with. 

It cost relationships. It cost people jobs. And it wasn't just the financial impact. There was a mental load that came with knowing you should probably be doing better, while being so ingrained in the ritual and routine that you just kept doing the same thing. 

That's the thing about rituals and routines. 

They can be positive or negative. 

It doesn't take much to slip into a routine that has really poor outcomes, and sometimes you don't realise it until you're years down the track. 

Why the shift is happening 

What I'm seeing now is a beautiful shift, and I think young men should be championed for it. 

I reckon there are a few things going on. 

First, they've watched us. 

They've got a front-row seat to what that culture looks like 20 or 30 years later. They've seen what it did to their dads, their uncles, their bosses and the men around them. 

Second, they've got more information than we had. 

They know more about what alcohol and drugs can do to their sleep, their mood, their training and their overall wellbeing. We either didn't have that information or, if it was there, you had to actively seek it out. 

But I reckon the big one is that they just feel like rubbish. 

They're more self-aware. 

They can talk about feeling anxious or depressed. They can start to recognise how they're feeling and look back at what they've been doing beforehand. 

They're asking themselves: 

How do I actually want to feel on Monday? 

And they're choosing things that make them feel better rather than worse. 

Same need, different place 

Here's the really interesting part. 

When you look at what young men are really after, I don't think it's that different from what we were after. 

They want to belong. 

They want to be tested. 

They want to feel like they're becoming someone. 

They want to feel like they're stepping into manhood. 

We went looking for a lot of that at the pub. 

A big night out was a rite of passage. Your first beer with your old man. Your first night out with your mates. Getting on the piss and proving you could handle it. 

That was how you grew up and got accepted. 

It was a pretty poor version of a rite of passage, but it was the real offering we had. 

So when that starts to disappear, there's a gap. 

And this is the part I really want people to hear. 

Young men still need connection. 

They still need challenge. 

They still need belonging. 

What I'm seeing is that they're finding different ways to get it. 

It's the 5am gym session with a couple of mates. 

It's the run club. 

It's the cold water plunge. 

It's Sunday meal prep. 

It's groups of young men doing something hard together, on purpose, at the same time each week. 

That's the ritual. 

That's what the pub used to be, minus the hangover, the regret and everything that came with it. 

They're not walking away from connection. They're walking away from the hollow version of it. 

Burn what no longer serves you 

There's a line I want to use with this pillar: 

Burn what no longer serves you. 

That's what I think some of these young men are doing. 

They're looking at the party culture and recognising that it doesn't serve them anymore. 

So they're putting it away. They're burning it. 

But here's the important part. 

When you burn something that no longer serves you, you need something to take its place. 

A guy training on his own six days a week, staring at himself in the mirror and making everything about how he looks can be just as detrimental. 

If you're doing everything alone and you don't need anyone, you can end up filling the same empty space in a different way. 

You've swapped one unhealthy version for another. 

The ritual has to connect you to other people. 

And it has to build something within you. 

Otherwise, it isn't sustainable. 

What makes a ritual healthy? 

I think that's the question we should actually be asking. 

Not just: 

Is this activity healthy? 

But: 

What is this ritual building in me? 

A Friday night at the pub can build connection, but it can also build dependence, regret and unhealthy habits. 

Training every morning can build discipline, confidence and community. But if it's driven entirely by how you look in the mirror and you're completely isolated, it can become something unhealthy too. 

The ritual itself isn't the answer. 

What matters is what the ritual is doing to you. 

Is it helping you become someone you want to be? 

Is it connecting you to other people? 

Is it building something within you? 

Is it something you can sustain? 

Those are the things that matter. 

Small things, on purpose 

I've learnt a lot of this the hard way through my own business. 

Trying to hang on to things. Isolating myself. Getting caught up in routines that weren't necessarily helping me. 

And what I've realised is that rituals don't have to be huge or dramatic. 

They can be really small things that you do consistently. 

The biggest ritual I've got that has actually stuck is journaling. 

It's a commitment to myself. It keeps me connected to myself. 

The gym is another one. 

I go to a rehabilitation gym where I see people regularly overcoming different physical barriers. Even though I've had significant injuries myself, I'm grateful for my body and for my ability to move. 

There's something powerful about being around other people who are healing and being part of that process. 

Meal preparation is another one. 

Eating properly. Looking after myself. Creating that connection between what I'm putting into my body and the energy I'm going to have. 

None of it is flash. 

None of it needs bells and whistles. 

That's exactly what a ritual is. 

It's the small things you do on purpose, over and over and over, until they become part of who you are. 

If you're a parent 

If your son is getting up early to train, or he's stopped drinking, or he's choosing different things for himself, don't automatically write it off as a phase. 

He's telling you something. 

He might be telling you that he wants more out of life. 

And I think that's the conversation we need to be having. 

We spend a lot of time talking about what young men are lacking. 

But what I'm seeing is huge growth. 

I'm seeing self-awareness. 

I'm seeing a massive shift towards positive health and wellness rituals. 

I'm seeing communities being built peer-to-peer. 

And I reckon that's a good thing. 

These young men are looking for something that actually builds them up and is sustainable, instead of something that wears them down. 

That's what Fire and Ritual means to me. 

It's about recognising what no longer serves you, having the courage to burn it, and then intentionally creating rituals that help you become the person you want to be. 

And that's where we're heading next. 

Discipline. 

How do we put measures in place to make sure the routines, rituals and habits we're creating for ourselves are actually sustainable? 

We're building something at IAM101 that puts these ideas into practice. A place where young men can step away from their usual routines, take on real challenges and build something stronger together. 

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