Dewayne Noel is a wrangler, cowboy, educator, and founder of Dry Creek Wrangler School. Hustle culture often tells us that working harder is the only way to succeed—grinding through 80-hour weeks on 4 hours of sleep per night. But what if the real solution isn’t about working harder, but finding balance? What if true success lies in slowing down, savouring life, smoking a cigar on the porch occasionally and being fully present. How differently might we define success then? Expect to learn who Dry Creek Dewayne’s is, his backstory and upbringing, how to un-harden yourself, how any person can overcome & control their anger, what Dewayne has learned from working with horses, the dangers of being out of balance in work & life, how to have a better relationship with the voice in your head, how to find the right partner & why men need to learn to treat women better, why bad fathers are partly to blame for the downfall of America’s culture, what a day in the life of Dewayne’s life is like and much more…. Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Gift, 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom Get expert bloodwork analysis and bypass Function’s 300,000-person waitlist at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with any purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What does Dewayne do at Dry Creek Wrangler School?
How would you describe what you do if you meet someone for the first time? Wow. Well, what the school does is I bring people out for a week at a time and teach horsemanship. The basic fundamentals of working with horses and understanding horses. But that is more of a springboard experience. for life.
Um, I started out, we started out with a YouTube channel where I was just, just wanting to give some basic horsemanship tips and some things for young people who are wanting to get into wrangling or cowboying or packing. And, uh, and it took on a life of its own. And, uh, and we started getting a lot of questions, a lot of comments on the channel. It's like, Hey, if you'll start a school,
will come, you know, and so it's just kind of grown from there. So it's hard to say we teach horsemanship, but then we also try to help young people have a more grounded, solid approach to life.
What career did you want to do when you were a kid?
I wanted to cowboy. That was it. You know, every little boy in this country at a certain age, they want to be a cowboy when they grow up. The only difference for me was I never outgrew it. That's all I ever wanted to do.
Talk to me about your upbringing. What was childhood like?
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Chapter 2: What was Dewayne's childhood like?
Definitely not cowboy. I had a very solid family and my dad, my family, I'm the seventh generation of my family born in central Kentucky. My dad, my granddad, my great granddad and my mom's side of the family, too. And my dad was a Baptist preacher. 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, you know, what I wanted to do. It just, it took a while for me to be able to actually do it. Um, but I was raised in, in a, you know, a very close knit, very solid, very country, patriarchal family, you know, just very old school Kentucky. Okay.
What do the rest of your family think about having a rogue wrangler in it?
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. What do you mean when you say that? 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, easy going fellow that, you know, people see today.
And so I think in my children are all grown and I think, you know, in a lot of ways, they're still sitting back trying to, trying to, uh, compare the old me with the new me that, you know, it's only been about five years that I found the, the place where I could just get some self-control and learn how to chill and, and, uh, get a handle on things, you know?
So I think in a lot of ways, my family are just, they're just sitting back watching and trying to justify the one, what they see now with what they knew for so many years.
What's the story of your initiation into this life? 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 little town called Alpine, Tennessee. And there was a Burke line furniture factory there that made recliners. And I was working in the shipping and, uh, was not happy. Uh, didn't like the job. What age are you here? Oh, I was, 26.
Um, and, uh, it was reading Western horsemen and there was a ad in the back and 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, uh, and I just, I said, you know what? I'm going to do it. I'm doing it. I'm taking the jump.
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Chapter 3: How did Dewayne transition to cowboy life?
So she wasn't, I don't think she was heartbroken at the separation for a while, you know, any more than I was. And, uh, 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, she, 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. Um, so it was in, in one sense, it was difficult. Another sense, it was a bit of a relief, you know, That it shouldn't have been. It doesn't speak well to where I was in my character at the time.
But yeah. Maybe that six month break has enabled a 35 year marriage. Right.
You need though. My wife has come. I've traveled all over the world and I've always been a very restless fella. 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, you know, she knows and she's, she's been very supportive over the years.
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?
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 um i can't um we'll just it just catalyst just came about and i'm like i can't i can't do this anymore um i was i had 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. You were in bed next to your wife having a heart attack.
Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What lessons has Dewayne learned from working with horses?
What have you learned about humans from working with horses? 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 I think many of us give it credit for. So 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. 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 horse's 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 us and the horse, 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, we wake up of a 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 instinct. 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 that. 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.
It's interesting the fact that when you're around a horse, you have this almost 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.
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Chapter 5: How does Dewayne define success and balance in life?
Yes.
How do you apologize to a horse?
They don't care. I apologize to the horse for my sake. I mean, nothing the horse does is personal. 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. Sounds like you've learned a lot to do with patience and humility through this.
Yeah. Um, 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, uh, so it's, it's, that's where you start saying, you know what, I need to approach this, um, in a, in a better way.
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? I was a passenger off a mountain in Alaska.
I need to hear those stories, please. We, 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 one 80, a little Cessna one 80 Bush, but I think it was one 80 and we were flying out and it was dead a winter. It was like 30 below zero.
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Chapter 6: What insights does Dewayne have about anger and self-control?
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 Xbox, 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.
I wrote an essay about that this week. Did you? Would you mind if I read it to you? Absolutely not. 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, Taipei 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.
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Chapter 7: Why is communication important in relationships?
I look at me now and I, 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. All right, 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, but I like me, so I'm going to give me some grace. And it's as simple as that. I would buy me a cigar. I wonder how many men can say that. Not as many as should.
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.
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. Yeah.
You listen to a Joe Rogan and a lot of what he's saying is hedged in some regard. It's caveated. You know, it's, it's, this is what worked for me. Right. Not, this is how everybody should do it. Right. And, uh, yeah, there's a humility that comes with age. Right. Right.
Because there's, If you turn around and look back with open eyes at your life, you see all the scars. I mean, the only way you cannot be humble in old age is when you refuse to look at the reality of your life up to today. That's the only way. Because nobody's skating through it perfectly. But this is what drives my, and it sounds ludicrous in my ears, but my business endeavors today.
This is the core of what drives me. 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.
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Chapter 8: How can men find balance between strength and vulnerability?
Speaking of famous people, who are some of the role models that you have looked up to over the years? Um, I can't think of anybody famous that was... Well, what about private people? My dad.
Um... Uh... 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 so just some of the folks i've worked with and been around but my dad was probably the my dad and i were not always on the same page about everything but i have 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. And no one has affected me more in that area than he did.
I think when we're talking about leaving the world in a better place than you found it, not doing things that derogate. well-being of the people that are around you that you're supposed to look after and care for. I do think that 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 dad, dad. Yeah. I think that's usually a pretty good indication that you did a good job.
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.
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 want 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
Man, my days right now are all over the map.
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