At the end of the third episode of his podcast, best-selling author, jiu jitsu black belt and former Navy SEAL, Jocko Willink, answers the question: How do you deal with setbacks, failures, delays, defeat, or other disasters?

Good, he says.

Mission got canceled — good.

Got tapped out — good. It’s better to tap in training than to tap out on the street.

Got beat — good. You learned.

Unexpected problems — good. We have the opportunity to figure out a solution.

Willink’s one-word solution to life’s problems has been clip-farmed and reproduced countless times, permeating the For You feeds of men interested in self-improvement, motivation, and masculinity. It appears alongside other bro-sphere icons, including David Goggins (another former Navy SEAL) shouting You don’t know me, son or Who’s gonna carry the boats? before grinding out another rep.

You don’t need to go to war to be a good person. Most men are not Navy SEALs. Most men have no real need to sit facing the exits at their local Chili’s or keep their head on a swivel to assess potential threats when taking their family to see Zootopia 2. 

But these ideas—of finding joy in struggle, of perseverance—resonate because they’re filtered through familiar lenses of masculinity: violence, domination, grit.

You know these men, these bros. You’ve met them. You might even be one of them. In many ways, I am. We have spreadsheets for our lifts. We’re currently working on our side-control escapes. We track our sleep, every rep, every gram of protein consumed in the service of becoming, as the algorithm almost seems to promise, elite.

But we often cannot tell you what the family has planned this weekend or which teacher of which kid gets what on which day of teacher appreciation week. We know the names of dead soldiers with CrossFit workouts named after them, but we don’t know the names of all of our wives’ co-workers. 

Willink’s list of things that can be tackled by flipping the negative into positive motivation does not include weaving together a patchwork of summer camps, scheduling doctor appointments and discussing medical history in an informed way, or packing supplies — whether ultimately needed or not — for a trip to the beach. David Goggins does not ask, Who’s gonna carry the mental load?

It is not a coincidence that our modern version of masculinity is based on the self-improvement ecosystem that has sold us an optimization gospel—do the work, measure the output, become better—while also defining which work counts and which work doesn’t. According to this gospel, the work that counts involves kettlebells, ice-cold water, and suffering that can be quantified and posted. The work that doesn’t is the invisible labor that provides the structure that makes the other work possible in the first place. It is a result of expectations baked in over centuries—that the management of domestic life is women’s work. But those centuries were centuries ago. The logic does not hold when both partners carry full professional lives, goals, and workouts that come with a second shift at home.

There are no clips of managing the continuous cognitive load of running a household—anticipating needs, holding information, making decisions, tracking the tens of thousands of tiny details that keep a family fed, healthy, and where they’re supposed to be when they’re supposed to be there. 

The work increased. The mental load did not diminish.

The gospel that preaches discipline and sacrifice applies almost entirely to the service of the self—the body, the performance, the individual becoming harder and more capable. The capacity being built does not get redirected toward the unglamorous, unfilmed work of partnership. 

What, then, is the point of being strong if we don’t use it to pick up more of the weight?

The reframe works just as well. The stoic flip—obstacle into opportunity—is just as transferable to holiday planning, a messy house, or putting together a school project the night before it’s due as it is to a failed lift, tapping out, or programming 32 grams of peanut butter into a meal plan. The effort required to track macros or study a guard-passing instructional is not categorically different from the effort required to know what is happening in your own family’s life. It is simply effort that has never been asked for or glorified in the content we consume. 

We are not everyone. We are not Clavicular, we are not Andrew Tate. We have wives we love who are mothers to our children, who are alive and present and carrying more than we’ve been willing to see. This is not about our own mothers, or mothers we’ve lost, or the more complicated and infinite contours of the word. That’s different, for a different day. This is about the person next to us. The one handling it. The one who already knows which teacher gets what.

Mother’s Day arrives as a single, brief acknowledgment of what has been happening every other day of the year. One day is not enough, but it can be a moment to look at the weight she’s been carrying and choose to help shoulder more of it.

And if figuring out how to love her better is hard work — good.