Gap between canyon walls

Closing the Leadership Gap Between Talk and Walk

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The gap between who you are and who you want to be is a blessing if you notice it. It’s a curse if you don’t. 

I paced my kitchen floor from midnight to 1:00a.m swapping my 20lb, 9-month-old son from arm to arm. I walked. He cried. I prayed for him to stop. He yelled. 

We’d already been at it for an hour and my patience had waned. 

I rocked him. I hummed every nursery rhyme I could remember. Most of all I tried to hide from my complete annoyance with him. I was short with my wife when she was helping and snappy at both of them. 

We finally got him back to sleep but a new feeling rushed over me the second his eyes closed. Regret. I regretted the gap between who I want to be in those late night moments – patient, loving, calm – and who I was. 

There are many times in life where that gap between who we are and who we want to be shows itself. It happens to everyone. 

  • The boss who goes off the handle when an employee is late only to hurt their reputation with the other team members. 
  • The husband who wants his wife to help clean up the dishes but instead of asking says something like, “you really don’t pull your weight around here!” 
  • The person who sees the homeless man on the street and gets the nudge to help them out, but keeps driving only to have that nudge continue knocking hours later when the opportunity is gone. 

As a leader, you’re not parenting your team, but you will often face the gap between who you are now and the leader you want to be. 

95% of American adults say Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was effective and had a positive influence (the real question is who are those other 5%, but we’ll move on). We can extend that to say most leaders would want to emulate MLK. But, most probably don’t reflect his courage, speaking prowess, patience, and strategic vision.

That gap hurts. In a world full of pie in the sky self-affirmations, that gap shuts it all down. No matter how many times you high-five the mirror in the morning, or tell yourself you’re the best thing ever, the gap still shows up. 

So, how do you make sure to use the gap and not let it destroy you? 

A few big ways:

Don’t outsmart the gap. Morgan Housel noted that, “Very smart people can fool themselves with elaborate stories about why something happened.” Most leaders I know are pretty smart people. They’ve got the degrees, read the books, and genuinely care about learning. Yet, I’ve also never met a leader who couldn’t tell me something they regretted doing. 

It’s easy though to outsmart the gap by adding intelligence to it. “Well, we were under a lot of stress at the end of the quarter!” Or, “Yea, but that team member had caused issues for months before I finally lost it.” Maybe, “I read this book once and they said sometimes you have to set the tone of excellence.” 

Don’t outsmart the gap. Notice it for what it is and let the excuses go. No credible leadership course or book will tell you to be impatient, angry, passive aggressive, or snide. You can try to find the logical defense of your action, or you can accept that you have a gap between your action and the leader you want to be. 

 Acceptance is the first step to improvement. 

Have a clear picture of the leader you want to be. It’s fairly obvious to know you don’t want to be a crappy leader, but if I asked you to define “crappy” you might get stuck. In order to notice and learn in the gap, you have to know who you want to be. You need some role models. 

Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL and multiple times best-selling author has said, “If you have to yell as a leader, how many different mistakes have you made to actually get to that point? Yelling is a weakness.” Most leaders agree. Yet, when I’ve asked leaders who they look up to most, it’s not uncommon to hear about a champion winning coach or tech moguls for whom yelling and anger were everyday actions. 

Famous coaches like Bill Belicheck and Phil Jackson yelled at players so often that there are famous meme’s of it. Steve Jobs once fired the head of MobileMe in front of the entire company after he asked, “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” When the team answered, Jobs replied, “Then why the f*** doesn’t it do that?” No famous leader will go without repute. Perhaps Gandhi, Mandella, or Thatcher are close, but emulating them also leaves much to wonder. How Gandhi would have handled a team member late to a meeting, how Mandela would have hired a new IT manager, or Thatcher would have approached a new AI policy aren’t knowable. 

So, who do you want to be? If you want to be the next Steve Jobs, are you ready to be maniacal and tyrannical at times? If you want to be Gandhi, are you ready to give up everything you have to get the work done? If you admire Marget Thatcher can you handle the ridicule of being “the only” in a sea of historical precedence and discrimination?

It’s worth thinking about your leadership hero with a careful eye. You might be better off emulating the local business owner who will never be on the cover of Forbes, but has steadily taken care of her business and team for years. Or maybe you need to put together a “best of” list from a variety of different people. 

No matter how you come to it, you need to know who you want to be even if – especially if – you’re not there yet. I personally look to Jesus of Nazareth a lot for leadership lessons, but I have to think, as John Mark Comer points out, not “what would Jesus do?”, but, “What would Jesus do if He were me?” 

That’s the question to ask of any hero. It’s the question to ask ourselves: “How would the me that is past the gap handle this situation?” Then act accordingly. 

Find an outsider who can help you see the gap. We’re typically awful at seeing our own blind spots. Our teams aren’t going to tell us about them either. As much as we try to build trust for people to be honest, we pay them and their livelihood depends on it. Are they going to risk that to help us be stronger leaders? Probably not. 

Every leader should have an outside person to help them see the gap. Someone on the outside of your team who can look in without the emotional connection to the work and its outcomes. It could be a coach, colleague from a different area of the company, mentor, or whoever else you can find. Offer to trade with them – you’ll be their outside coach, if they’ll be yours. 

Whoever it is, they have to be honest with you. They have to spend time with you and watch you lead. They can sit  in meetings, you can share emails with them, or find other ways to give them an honest look at how you act. Tell them all about who you want to be as a leader (see #2 above). 

I personally love the outside role and have been fortunate to work with a few leaders doing so. I get to sit on the sidelines, observe, and offer feedback. Things I’ve often noticed and asked about are, 

  • “Why did that person talk the whole meeting? Did you notice that other person’s body language? Seemed like they didn’t feel valued there.”
  • “That email you sent sounded intense. Did you mean that?”
  • “You gave them the task and then stepped right over them to do it yourself. I wonder how that made them feel?” 

I can see what the leader can’t because I’m separated from the minutia. I’m not concerned with the content of the meeting, email, or task. I am looking only for the leadership actions to move them forward.

An outsider is perhaps the quickest way to bridge the gap. Find someone in your network or hire one. Be vulnerable with them. Let them into your leadership world. There’s no book in the world that could elevate your leadership as quickly as someone who knows you helping you grow in the big and small moments. 

Leaders who mind the gap between who they are and who they want to be continue to grow. They change organizations and create meaningful work. Those who don’t often go down in flames.

Make the gap a blessing in your leadership and your life. Use it as the motivation to be a stronger leader. Don’t try to outsmart your gap and pretend it’s not a big deal, create a vision of the leader you want to be, and find an outsider who you can help you take an honest look at who you are and how to bridge the gap to who you want to be. 

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Soldiers in the dark

The Battle for Love: An Introduction

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I have been working on a new project behind the scenes for the last month or so. I played my hand at the social media, quick bite content, and to no one’s surprise, least of all my own, it’s not my spot. Sure social has its place, and feeding the ever-hungry beasts of distraction and superficial thinking is fun sometimes. But I have needed to take ownership of my authenticity as an old-sou lover of long-form work. So, I’m working on a book. No, I don’t have a publisher yet. No, I don’t know where the project will go. I do know that the topic matters and that I have some unique positioning to talk about it. So, without further adieu, I wanted to share the draft introduction with you. If it resonates, let me know. If it’s off the mark somewhere, let me know that too. If you hate it and wish for me to stop, you don’t have to share that. Alright, let’s get into love.

*Click play to listen to this piece

Love is under attack. Love is deemed trivial by everything from romantic comedies and sappy movies to graphic novels and the porn epidemic. As one of, if not the, most profound human conditions, love has been uprooted and left to wilt in the scorching sun of contempt, anger, fear, and distraction.  Love is a word said to family members only because they’re family, not because it is fully understood. It is a word to describer everything from the nervous energy of a second date to the deep bond of a fiftieth wedding anniversary.

The uprooting of love in our modern society has not come without its scars. Just as a tree ripped from the ground brings rocks, dirt, and debris, to the surface, a society void of deep love has brought anger, frustration, division, and pain. 

Love is, in many ways, at a pivotal moment. Such moments have come before. Times in history have passed where love seemed not only to be uprooted and laid to the side but destroyed altogether. 

Such destruction is common in personal experiences and happening this very second all across the globe. Love is withered when a mother passes away, a father walks out, a spouse raises their hand in a weak fit of rage, and a friend moves across the country. Those small yet powerful moments can make love seem unreal in small towns and big cities everywhere. They leave an individual sitting in the darkness that is lost love and broken trust. 

At times love seems to falter on a societal scale and can border on being impossible or simply fake and imagined. The horrors of the Holocaust, the scorched earth of Hiroshima, the genocide of Rwanda, the aftermath of the Somme, and so many other tragedies are tallies for the argument that love is nothing but a delusion. The news and social media highlight and magnify love’s setbacks to make it appear all the more artificial. 

Yet, with perspective and experience, love always seems to reignite and rebuild.

How does love do that? 

How does love rise from the ashes, get up from the canvas, and never stay down? 

Not only does love win, but the moments that challenge love somehow only strengthen it. Is it the ultimate nod to the pop music of our day that, indeed, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? Maybe, and maybe it is much more than that. Perhaps there is something deep in the human experience that honors, longs for, and builds love. The attacks on love from a culture focused on the self might be the secret training ground for love to grow.  Maybe pain–the force that often uproots love–is the very force that strengthens it. It is the weapon used to break the spirit that heals it and the powerfully healed who become the powerful healers. The vice that nearly destroys a person turned into the medicine they use to heal others. 

This book attempts to reorient us to love toward a brighter world. You may need to rethink the love in your life. It may require you to examine the love you have today and the love you have lost or that nearly destroyed you. For some, such reexamination could create new pain as you realize the person you casually say “love you” to as you hang up the phone doesn’t have your love but something different, something less. 

This book will also lift others to new heights of giving and receiving love. It will offer a fresh perspective, reignite past wisdom, and envision a society where love reigns in genuine and meaningful ways. Love is the central principle of a good life, and I hope this book clarifies it. 

I hope this book changes what has been a growing sentiment in modern western culture that love is weak or unnecessary to living well. I fear that we have forgotten the truth of love’s strength all around us. The man who will give his life to save his daughter, the stranger who donates an organ to save a life, and the son who steps between his mother and her abusive boyfriend are all obvious examples of love’s strength that we would all celebrate. Those are extraordinary acts of courage. Yet, there are thousands of everyday, seemingly insignificant feats of strength and love that we choose to ignore and instead put our focus on anger, hate, and division. 

The attack on love is no longer taboo or hidden. Reality is quite the opposite, as the media immortalizes acts of violence and hate, and entire corporations are built to funnel anger to everyone. Culture has deconstructed and rearranged the idea of a family unit so many times that it is unrecognizable. Lies have been told, wars waged, and souls are broken in the name of selfish desire and at the cost of love. The mantra of our society could easily be, “get more, no matter what,” a statement that leaves no room for love or care for another.

The biggest lie of all has been that our pain, grief, fear, confusion, and personal needs are greater than our capacity for love. The false narrative is that somehow our own needs won’t be met, or our freedoms won’t be fully realized if we focus on love for others. 

We can no longer fail to ignore the lies. Adults are giving their lives to careers and bank accounts instead of family and friends. People of all ages are more isolated today than they were even a decade ago, and our health epidemics are evidence of the toll.  Young people who fail to know love’s strength are in dire straights. They fight in school hallways, gossip at the speed of their thumbs on the phone, seek help in substances, weaponize love through sex and porn, kill each other in acts of violence, and take their own lives when it all becomes too much. 

Who is left standing to defend love in a world where people profit from our obsession with differences and bias toward contempt and contention?

I am. I hope you are too because the consequences of losing would be dire. But, make no mistake about it; this is a battle and not one that ever ends. It is a daily decision to walk the more challenging path and make choices of love over selfishness, desire, resentment, and fear.

The battle for love is also not one we march toward alone. Ancient wisdom from the Bible to the great philosophers walk alongside us, willing to fight. Love is not new. It is the central thread of the human condition. It is not that we need to rebuild love. We need to find it again amidst the rubble of brokenness, reclaim it as the foundation of life, and reignite it amidst anything that wishes to extinguish it. 

Let’s go to battle. 

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two coins, heads and tails

Resistance is a Two-Sided Coin: An Idea to Change Your Life One Coin Flip at a Time

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*Click play to listen to this article

Flip the coin. It lands heads. Resistance is coming.

“I can’t write like Ryan Holiday or John Mark Comber. I don’t have an audience anyway, no one reads it, and no one cares, so why should I? Plus, I’ll never get a publisher without a huge following, and self-publishing is a nightmare.” 

Welcome to my mind as I sit, keyboard at the ready, a blank page in front of me.

I am a learner and sharer. But this blank page says I must not be any of these things, that, like it, I am empty. 

Isn’t that how so many lies of resistance are? A reflection of someone or something else’s fears projected onto us so much that we begin to carry the same fear. 

Resistance is a real and powerful force operating in opposition to who we are supposed to be. It is that voice that yells from the blank page or whispers from the depths of our minds that we aren’t enough, we don’t do enough, and even if we try, someone else is already better than us. It tells us to stay in slippers instead of running shoes. It reminds us of times we have struggled in the past and why that is sure to happen again. It is an old friend we know isn’t helping us move forward. It is a thought or behavior pattern we still have from when we were seven years old. The resistance exists in many forms, but it is a reality for everyone. 

If we end the story of resistance there, we end hopeless. 

Flip the coin again. This time it lands tails. 

We can return resistance. Fight it with itself.

As Newton taught us, an object in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. In the case of resistance to who we want to be, that external force is our resistance. It is the same in that it is a powerful force working against something. It is different in the direction in which it faces. It is the other side of the same coin.

This side of the coin is our ownership and agency to apply resistance against itself. This resistance is that of the single mother of three I met at the start line of Ironman Tulsa in 2021. Amidst voices all around me during my training that said, “once you have kids, you won’t do that,” or “if I didn’t have kids, I’d do an Ironman too,” here she was, at the start line of a 140.6-mile journey of endurance that many people set as a lifetime goal. With resolve, she proclaimed, “I’m finishing this so they know that they can do anything.” Her resistance was more potent than what the world could apply. Her kids, all under the age of 13, would be waiting at the finish line in about 15-hours to learn one of humanity’s best lessons: Yes. You. Can. 

At a core level, James Clear’s work on habits is an ode to overcoming this resistance. “Every decision and action is a vote for the person you want to be,” says Clear. He advocates for stating small, with the first two minutes of a new habit being the most crucial. Don’t decide to run 10 miles. Decide to put on your shoes and walk outside. That is overcoming resistance. 

Unlike a genuine coin with 50/50 odds of heads or tails, the coin of resistance weighs towards heads. Every once in a while, we get a tails moment or day when things seem easy, the words flow from our fingers, the weight goes up quickly, the strides synchronize to carry us forward. But, most often, we get resistance. The weather isn’t ideal; someone else wants our time and attention; our inner voice beats the crap out of us; our comforter feels too good; the news is all bad; we feel lost, worthless, or hopeless. 

There is good news with the resistance coin, though: it doesn’t have to flip in the air like the start of a football game. You can flip it on a table like the cover of a new book. You turn it over on purpose, only to be reversed when you lose focus or need to move on. 

You can flip the coin. I’m doing it with these very words. Later this morning, the weighted side will again prove victorious, and resistance will set back in, but for now, my resistance is stronger, and it is stopping the motion to give me a small but powerful space to create. 

I hope that this resistance coin can change your life. I know that sounds grandiose, but it’s true. A simple mind shift of empowerment allows you to realize what resistance you face and how to overcome it with your resistance and resolve. 

As Clear says, start small and build. Flip the coin over long enough to write a sentence or walk around the block. Let tails be up long enough to say “no” to that drink you know doesn’t serve you or to that person who treats you more like a punching bag than a friend. 

The more often you apply your resistance back, the weaker the force against you gets. You can turn the coin over to tails more often and for extended periods. You’ll never have an “all-tails” life. That’s a lie of social media. As Jesus of Nazareth said, “you will have trouble in this world.” (reference). 

Here are a few ideas to flip the coin today, even for a few minutes: 

  1. Flip it now. Decide to stop allowing resistance to win and prevent you from being who you want to be. Don’t decide tomorrow. Decide now. 
  2. Take a small action. Go for a 5-minute walk, write a sentence on a sticky note, make one brushstroke on the canvas, send a text to a friend, breathe deeply for 30 seconds, pet your dog for a minute. Whatever it is for you, make it small and do it now. 
  3. Have a reason to flip it. You won’t have the willpower to overcome resistance alone. Go for a walk because the dog needs it. Send that text to encourage someone else. Write the sentence to inspire a reader. Just as that mom in Tulsa taught us, the coin is easier to flip when serving others. 

I have a quarter on my desk at home in front of me now. For the past 15-minutes, it has been on tails as I’ve written this. When I woke up today, it was heads up. It’s a Monday morning. My bed was warm; my wife was with me; life was perfect right where I was. But I knew I had to flip the coin to serve, provide, and create. You do too. 

Resistance is strong, so are you. 

Flip the coin. 

Resistance is a Two-Sided Coin: An Idea to Change Your Life One Coin Flip at a Time Read More »

Victorious king

No Dark Hour Can Block Out an Eternity of Light: Ten Strategies for Battling Anxiety and Melancholy

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Last week I went to battle. Not physical battle across the ocean or as some metaphor for a workout. No. I deployed to a mental battle. This war has been raging for most of my life, with my best self entrenched across the field from lies of fear, inadequacy, and anxiety. My relationships and everything I love about life, stranded in no man’s land, waiting to see who the victor would be. 

If you have experienced this type of battle or have a loved one who has, you appreciate the fighting metaphor.

Even a few years ago, the battle would have lasted much longer, and the victor would have been much more difficult to determine. Obviously, since I am still here, I have never lost the battle fully. Though, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to imagining that ultimate defeat once or twice. 

Last week, after years of lessons learned and battles raged, the fight was shorter. It was equally as intense as the past, but the end was always drawing nearer, and the way to victory was always clear. 

Over half of Americans will experience a mental battle like this in their lifetime. Many will be more intense than mine. Some will be less so. All will test the fighter. All will require a strategy. If you find yourself on the mental field of battle, struggling with pain or sadness, you can’t explain contemplating the dark thoughts of, “would people be better off without me?” or “is there really any hope in this whole thing?” I want to offer you my battle plan. 

Please note I am not a licensed therapist, nor am I clinically diagnosed with mental illness at this point in my life. However, most people who struggle with what I do are like me. They live normal lives without medical intervention, but the battle is still real. If you are struggling with medical anxiety or depression, please get the help you need from a professional. 

Here are ten mental battle strategies I employed this week that have taken me decades to articulate and implement: 

  1. Stay on the battlefield, don’t avoid it.
    • In a battle with darkness, you must acknowledge the enemy with clarity. Running from him into a bottle, drug, gym, or screen only gives him more power to advance. Sit with it. Stare it down. Show your courage even if you don’t feel it.  
  2. Don’t talk about it (yet).
    • For me, the battle feels like my emotional mind moving at the pace of a Formula 1 car while my rational brain is a 1995 Pinto stuck in neutral. The fix feels like it should be to get my thinking outside of my head, to match the pace of my mind with that of my words. I’ve learned, verbalizing my issues at a Daytona pace is not helpful in the moment. Instead of talking out loud about the battle, I write about it or pray silently. I face it where it is in my mind. Talking will come later once you’ve had a chance to understand it, seek the source of the feelings, and face them. Any earlier than that is venting or ranting and only creates more chaos. 
  3. Acknowledge it to those in your household or relationships.
    • The only exception to the previous point is that you should acknowledge your battle to those who live in the closest relational proximity to you. This is not a rant or long-winded session. I will tell my wife, “Babe, I’m struggling with some anxiety or sadness today. Nothing you need or can do to fix it but I want you to know in case I seem to be acting differently.” That’s it. It is not her burden to carry, so I do not ask her to do so. 
  4. Don’t hope to solve it with a life hack.
    • Anxiety and melancholy are most often deep-rooted issues hitting the surface. You didn’t life hack your way into the problem, you won’t life hack your way out. Some actions can help you deal with the symptoms, but don’t try to replace the hard work of facing the enemy with hoping to wash him away with cold water, eating a certain thing, or doing pushups. Do those to help with the symptoms btu recognize the real work to be done is intense and arduous.
  5. Resist the lies of the “grind” culture.
    • I’ve tried to work harder to get past anxiety and melancholy. Spoiler: it doesn’t work, at all. “Do more” and “work harder” are great for productivity gurus and when times are good. But in war, smarter work is always better and stillness is often the best offense. To find healing, don’t try to do more or hide in your work. Slow down and do less even for a few minutes and you’ll gain strength. 
  6. Lean into what you can.
    • Doing less doesn’t mean do nothing. I find it helpful to maintain some sense of my rhythms and routines. Importantly, I lean into what I need instead of what might look good to others. I might still run but it is slower and easier than my plan. Or I can lift but I switch the days to focus on something easy instead of intensity. I may listen to a podcast instead of reading, or read a fiction book in place of a nonfiction one. Do what you need to, not what you think you should do. 
  7. Celebrate others.
    • When I am in a dark place, it is helpful to find the light in the world around me. The best place I know to do this is to look to the people in my life. I am careful with who is in my circle so in my darkest hours, I know they offer light. I don’t always need them to speak to me directly, I just need to see them. I will often take to social media and celebrate someone publicly. I’ll share an accomplishment they’ve had or post something about how they have been a light in my life. Celebrating them reminds me that not all is dark and that the battle is raging but the war is already won. 
  8. Talk about it as reflection.
    • Talking becomes incredibly valuable after you have faced the enemy. Once you can articulate exactly how you feel, where you think it originated, and the steps you have to move forward, then you can talk about it with a loved one. This allows them to understand your battle but not pick up the rifle next to you and join in with the real chance of emotional injury. If you need to talk before this, I suggest a good therapist as the place to go.
  9. Give yourself grace.
    • Grace is an undeserved yet full love. In my dark moments, I don’t feel like giving any love to myself. I’d rather tell myself how bad of a person I am or feel guilty for feeling anxious and low when I’ve been blessed with so much. That’s why grace is undeserved – you don’t earn it, you get it. Learn to love who you are even in the darkness. 
  10. Never give up.
    • Last week, I was at my lowest on Wednesday morning but by Thursday morning, I was clearly leaving the battlefield. On Wednesday, I thought I would lose for sure but I knew to not give up. The war on the lies in your mind has already been won but if you give up in a battle you sacrifice the victory. In my case, the darkest thoughts come in two flavors. One is relational:  “your family, friends, colleagues will be better off without you.” The second is valuation: “you don’t really add value anyway, no one will even notice if you lose this battle so why fight it?” Both of these have driven me to see checking out on my dreams, sabotaging my relationships, and, once, taking my own life as options. But through tragedies of loss in my life, I’ve learned that in no way will people be better off. Instead, they will carry the trauma and pain of loss with them forever on my account. I lost my dad suddenly in 2012 far before his time and I carry that pain every day even a decade later. I always will. I am not, at all, better off without him and no one in your life will be either if the enemy destroys your light. Have your dark hours but know that your light illuminates someone else’s dark hours and they need you. 

In this battle of the mind, the enemy’s greatest weapons are lies, fear, and hate. Our greatest weapons are love, relationship, celebration, and conviction. The enemy has strong hours and days, but our victory is already assured into eternity. 

In the times where the lies seem like truth and the enemy seems too strong to defeat, remember that no dark hour can block out an eternity of light. 

No dark hour can block out an eternity of light. 

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bathroom mirror

It’s Time to Clean The Mirror: Clearing the Dirt and Grime from the Reflection

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Have you ever disregarded cleaning your bathroom mirror for a while? 

It makes no sense. That thing is at least a couple of feet away from you all the time. You never touch it. Yet, that thing gets nasty! 

Simply leaving the mirror alone and living my life around it is enough to add dirt, grime, and little spots of who knows what all over it. 

Yet, as it gets dirtier and dirtier, its purpose remains unchanged. Every time I walk by it, I look at it. I check my hair. Make sure my clothes are all good. And, let’s be honest, make sure my workouts are getting the results I want. 

But there is something deeper happening. That quick look in the mirror is an assessment. It is an evaluation of myself. It’s a chance to remind myself of my greatness or see the shortfalls. That mirror has power. 

Even through the dirt, its power remains. I don’t see something I don’t like and think, “damn, I gotta clean this mirror!” No. I think, “damn, I’m not what I could be.” I don’t think to clean the mirror; I assume it must be me bringing the dirt and grime. 

This same phenomenon happens in the metaphorical mirror of life. 

We all judge ourselves. We look at ourselves physically in the mirror and spiritually, mentally, and relationally in thousands of other ways. 

Yet, just like that nasty bathroom mirror, we see ourselves through a lot of dirt and grime. 

We try to see ourselves for who we truly are, but the grime obscures the reflection.

The mirror is covered in lies. 

Lies of the world: You should be a millionaire. Your house isn’t big or grand enough. Your skin is the wrong color. You need to do more to be valuable. You need to have more. You need to be more. You are not enough. You do not measure up to that person or this person. 

Lies of our own: If I want it, I should have it. I deserve to be rich. It’s my parent’s fault. If only the government would solve this. I’m a waste of space if I don’t make the “40 under 40” lists. I never was any good with relationships. I can’t meet the right people.

Lies of the past: Your parents were angry drunks; you will be too. You’ve always been an introvert so stay quiet. You were a bad kid. You were a troublemaker. You weren’t worth the coach’s time. 

When I look in the mirror of life, I decide who I am, what I am capable of, and who I want to be. But the mirror is nasty. It needs cleaning before I use it to know myself.

But just like the bathroom mirror, I don’t think to clean it. Instead, I see the dirt and grime as a part of me to fix. Sometimes that is true. I do have things to improve. But because the mirror is so dirty, I can’t know what those things are, and I focus in the wrong places. 

I am learning, slowly, to change that. When I hear that subtle inner voice tell me I’m not good enough to write or not fast enough to race, I remind myself that the dirt of lies covers that mirror. I am working hard to clean the mirror, but the grime is much stronger than what is on the bathroom mirror. Windex and paper towels won’t do the job here. 

I’m learning to clean the mirror one layer at a time by applying resistance. I resist the lies with truth. I make sure to consume wisdom every day before I expose my mind to the lies of the world. I read the Bible before Instagram. I meditate on wholeness before starting my fractured schedule. I say “thank you, Lord” before asking for more. I lean on my brothers before believing what a stranger says. I say, “I love you,” and refuse to utter, “I hate you.” I give credit before taking it. I look for the best in my colleagues and highlight it for the world when I can. I stop for one full day a week to remind myself to be humble and wipe away any new dirt that may have landed on the mirror. 

I’m not perfect, but my mirror is getting cleaner, and I’m getting to know who I really am. 

It’s time to clean the mirror layer by layer. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it. When I was born, the mirror was pretty clean. Maybe it had some specks of dirt from my ancestors, but if I looked into it, I saw me. 

Along the way, and in a million ways, from family, school, friends, religion, media, social media, sports, books, conversations, deaths, breakups, fears, and more, the mirror has gotten dirty.

Simply leaving the mirror alone and living my life around has been enough to add dirt, grime, and little spots of who knows what all over it. The default is a dirtier and dirtier mirror. The resistance is the clean reflection. 

It’s time to clean. It’s time to see myself, for who and what I was created to be. 

Have you disregarded cleaning your mirror for a while? 

It’s Time to Clean The Mirror: Clearing the Dirt and Grime from the Reflection Read More »

Government building

Why Liberalism Failed: Thoughts and Questions Upon Reading

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*Click play to listen to this article (pardon the background static, the new mic wasn’t quite right yet)
The book.

Before you start, please note that liberalism in this context is not “liberal vs. conservative.” It is not an attack on the “left” but rather a narrative on the system of liberalism that exists above and beyond right and left. 

Most books I read make me feel good because they say things I already believe. Not because I’m that smart but because I, like all humans, bias toward materials that confirm my ideas. Once in a while, I get a book that does something different. 

Such a book might counter my beliefs altogether, or it may offer a new perspective I hadn’t considered about one aspect of life or another.  

However, there is another type of book out there that carries real magic. These books open me to a whole new view of a piece of the world. They make me conscious of some of the water I swim in every day but rarely notice. 

Why Liberalism Failed is such a book.

At times, this book made me feel inadequate. I am not often engaged in political philosophy. Still, I relished the chance to consider current issues through a higher lens than left vs. right, covidiots vs. covidians, and the rhetoric of hate and division. The complexity of the ideas was overwhelming at points, but the read was well worth it.

My Takeaways and Thoughts Right Now

  1. Liberalism is a political ideology built to provide freedom but it has been tampered with. Liberalism is characerized by individuals who desire liberation to the greatest extent possible from any external constraints and limits. This kind of “freedom” sounds good on the surface, but we often neglect that liberalism was originally a means to promote self-governance and demphasize distant state governance. The goal then wasn’t personal freedom from everything as it has become so today. This shift in definition has created a state in which people claim to be powerless to overcome “oppressions” from anything that limits them – nature, biology, culture, norms, families, friends, responsibilities, accountability – and then rely on the state to remove those limits.The state readily complies, enlarges, and expands to “free” people, leading in turn to those same people experiencing more powerlessness. Liberalism does not give freedom, it takes it like a thief you threw a welcome party for before they stole your TV and left through the back door. 
  2. The United States is not a democracy and it was never designed to be. We are taught early on about the democracy created by Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and their contemporaries. However, there was no intention from the founders to develop democracy. Publius – the collective pseudomonic author of the Federalist Papers – made clear in Federalist 10, that the views of the public are best passed through “the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country.” Remembering that democracy in which every person’s vote is needed and counts equally toward all decisions, was not the goal helps to enlighten a different conversation about governmental power in 2022 and how we got to a point of political elites who never leave office. 
  3. In many ways, the two-party system is a distraction from the real issues of western cultures hating limits. In the past couple of years people have begun to identify as democrat or republican with more zeal than they do with religion, hometowns, or even family. The ideology war is intense and relativly meaningless. Both modern liberals and conservatives are operating to strengthen liberalism, just in different ways. The central stance of both parties is asking the government to provide and protect the greatest possible sphere of individual liberty. For the left, they focus on limits of sexuality, diversity, culture, and self-expression. The right hones in on limits of the economic market, property ownership, and extended libertarian interpretations of “don’t tread on me.” Both sides are vying for any limits on human desire to be destroyed and both give the state more power to do so. For example, the sexual revolution and the calls for government interaction has provided the state the power to define human sexuality and biology instead of God, communities, or even individuals doing so. On the other side, political conservatives have consistently supported state protection from infringements on the free market and for government salvation when it goes awry, such as in 2008 when the limits of borrowing against nothing came to bear. In the greatest nobel lie of liberalism, the government is ready to destroy limits to this new definition of freedom for the good of the people while doing so actually makes the people more powerless. The question we argue about is, “what freedoms are most important to human flourishing and how will the state create and protect them?” but the real question is, “what limits are necessary for human flourishing and how do we honor them?” Hint: the answer is not, “no limits at all.”
  4. The state in modern liberalism loves power and will do anything to keep it. Conspiracy theories about particular political elites and a deep state of global overlords are a dime a dozen. However, the truth might be much more straightforward than that. In the modern definition of liberalism, the state gets power as people shift identity away from families, communities, religions, and even genders and move toward political affiliations. The state is not designed to hand that power back. In a perfect example, Donald Trump ran for the presidency on the principle of smaller government and giving control back to the states and people. He failed to do so in part, because the system is much stronger than any individual and will not relent that power.
  5. Our biggest failure is the sum of our reliance added to our selfishness. We live in a world where both “reliant” and “selfish” synonmously describe us. In contrast, classic liberalism required self-governance. This meant that people and local communities had to do what we now rely on Washington D.C. to do including: define and enforce social contracts; help people in need; create jobs and a local economy; uphold moral standards; and sacrifice for the common good. People were required to be selfless and reliant only upon themselves and those in their social circle. In modern liberalism, people have shifted their reliance to the state. We offloaded the duties of self-governance to a distant land of policymakers and asked for the liberal state to treat us as children to be cared for instead of adults to be consulted and relied upon. We have also become selfish with the outright goal of “me over we,” celebrating anything to make life more comfortable and prosperous for the individual with essential disregard for the wellbeing of others. By adding selfishness and reliance together, we have created the system we love to hate.
  6. Our blindness to these issues is our fault. I believe more strongly everyday that many of the issues we see on the news are distractions from grander ones lurking through them all. Putting our face against the tree, we are blind to the forest surrounding it. Though when we become aware of our blindness, instead of thinking deeply and critically to examine complex systems and ideas, we scapegoat politicians. We are quick to blame someone or a political party for lying or keeping us in the dark. All the while, very few are willing to put in the effort to learn deep concepts on philosophy, governance, and sociology.
  7. The hope is in the future, if we can keep it. The future of liberalism is bleak. We all have been a bit too comfortable giving up our deeply held values in the name of freedom from limits. The reality of life is that there are limits. There are limits of nature, society, faith, personality, and biology. As a general rule, most of us personally limit ourselves far before the natural limits but on a governmental level, we want too badly to not be limited by the past or other people. The hope is in remembering the limits and even being thankful for them. Hope is in remembering that the family unit has a strength of limits and that a community or neighborhood carries unique and important features for us to thrive. It is getting back to our roots and knowing that to best contribute is not to influence the millions on TikTok but to go next door and offer help to your neighbor shoveling the driveway after a big storm. The hope is in our ability to recognize that personal freedom is best expressed within the limits of community, nature, and a God who knows better than we do. 

My Questions

Of course, like any good book, I leave with as many questions as I do ideas. Here are a few I’m wrestling with: 

  1. What can we not rely on community, family, and more local sources of governance to do? For example, could local communities in the 1950s South have led a movement to stop lynching? Maybe, but maybe not and I think we can all agree that lynching was not an acceptable practice for human flourishing in any way. 
  2. How can a world obsessed with limitlessness come to accept limits in a healthy way?
  3. How can we delineate between limits of nature, God, and positive community and limits of greed, personal satisfaction, and power grabbing? 
  4. Is it possible for a wise group of chosen citizens to not become agents of modern liberalism? How does that happen?
  5. Why was human nature essentially forgotten in the past 20 years of liberalism? 

Should you read it? 

Yes, if…you are ready to think deeply with a book, you are open to thinking beyond the left vs. right rhetoric, you care about the future of governance in the USA or other western cultures, or you are wondering about the massive division we face and how to start moving in a different direction. 

No, if…you are in a season of life of needing to be working inward instead of outward (though this would be proof of the arguments in the book), you are set on your political framework and are not in the place for rethinking, your self-care is a priority over the political issues that have reigned anxiety on all of us, or you want to feel really smart (this book will break that). 

Overall, I recommend Why Liberalism Failed. You will find appeal for both the left and right of modern politics but read beyond that. Use this book as a scalpel on the surgery to optimize your thinking about politics. See it as a chance to revisit ideas you long ago learned and haven’t reviewed for nuance since you were popping the collars of two different colored polos in 9th grade (or was that just me?). 

Get the book here

Credit to the author Patrick J. Deneen and for the recommendation from the Bridgetown Church online bookstore

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Weekend Challenge #55: The Last Challenge is to Never Stop Challenging

Weekend Challenge |
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It’s been over a year since I introduced the LIFE Council and the Weekend Challenges. The goal was simple: provide practical processes for progress toward the principles – love, integrity, fellowship, and excellence. Fifty-five weeks in a row of focused and powerful ideas to help you think, rethink, and grow in LIFE.

This 55th iteration brings the Weekend Challenge series to a close.

I set out to give you all – and myself – a year’s worth of actions that would help us be better. Throughout the year, I was challenged many times with what “better” means and if it is really a goal at all. I’m still sitting with the nuance of “better.” My next project will dive deeper into that exact place.  

A year later, I believe even more strongly today than I did a year ago, that the LIFE principles are worthy aspirations and meaningful guides for everyday decisions.

Originally, the LIFE Council and Weekend Challenges were designed to combat a single issue: male loneliness. Very quickly though, I realized that that loneliness is usually a result of me thinking in isolating ways.

Being lonely comes when I lean into toxic mindsets, don’t engage in introspection, hide behind my ego, focus on external measures of success, and act selfishly.

As a result, the LIFE Council and Weekend Challenges expanded from loneliness to address these bigger, in my opinion, root, issues. I dove into sharing ideas to take accountability for and begin to shift the mindsets that lead to loneliness. The Weekend Challenges were those ideas in action.

The expansion from the original goal is why it’s time to pivot. I want the Weekend Challenges to remain powerful toward the end of toxic thinking that isolates you and me from the people we love, and the people we don’t.

Some Reflections Before We Go

Life has surely been. . . let’s say “dynamic”. . . these last 55 weeks. Globally, we had a pandemic. Nationally, an election captured our attention unlike any other in American history. Personally, I went through a job change, experienced personal loss, established more of what it means to be a husband, took new financial steps, and put my work out into the world for the first time. I know you went through a lot too.

Along the way, I didn’t take every Weekend Challenge to its full extent but each week, I did take conscious steps to implement something from the challenge. As a result, I have some positive habits and attitudes today, that I didn’t have 55 weeks ago.

With everything that went on and all the potential reasons to be idle, I am excited to look back and see that the Weekend Challenges cultivated actionable difference amidst the changes. Each week, they grounded me back to the core LIFE principles and who I aspire to be. They reminded me of the importance of the Stoic principles to focus on what you can control and remember that life is short. They brought to bear existentialist ideals of authentic living by choosing to be responsible for the experiences in my life. And they solidified my faith in God, the amazing people I walk through life with, and myself.

I hope you’ve found some of the same benefits from the Weekend Challenge series whether you read and tried them all or just caught one here and there. If one person saw one benefit, it was worth all the time and energy.

If I had to sum up the entire series in a sentence, it would be this one. To expand your LIFE, you don’t need to do everything but you need to believe that you can do something.

To expand your LIFE, you don’t need to do everything but you need to believe that you can do something.

If you didn’t come along for the ride as the Challenges were published, that’s ok. Take what will serve you and toss the rest. Pick a category of the Challenges you want to work on, read the blogs, and do the work. It doesn’t actually have to be the weekend for you to take them on, and each doesn’t need to last only a week. Shoot, pick one single challenge, and enact it for a year – I guarantee you’ll see a positive difference.

The Weekend Challenge series will not disappear. I purposefully wrote the series in a way that, I believe, someone could pick it up at any time and dive in. So, although they won’t be new in the sense of time, they can be contemporary in your life at any time.

Whenever you are ready and willing to take the hard, lasting road to a stronger sense of self and success, get the LIFE Enacted Guide and use the Weekend Challenges to stay on course.

Over the 55 weeks, we’ve touched on a lot of topics and leaned on the wisdom of some incredible minds. See the end of this bad boy for a categorical chart of all of them.

What now?

I’ll admit that part of me wanted to use this as a chance to bow out of writing every week. There were times I barely got the work done and others I published something that I wasn’t proud of. Ever been there?

I’m not doing that. Instead, I’m letting the Weekend Challenge series serve its purpose into the future. If it were to go on and on, it will lose its focus and power.

As I mentioned, I want to start thinking about “better” with more nuance. I worry the self-development world has become a place to become aware of our issues (a great thing) but then it stops. A comedian recently joked that we are the most self-aware that we’ve ever been but not changing. He quipped:

Person 1: “I have anxiety.”

Person 2: “Oh wow, what are you doing about it?”

Person 3: “I’m telling you so that you can adjust around it.”

I worry that he is right. That we’ve built a field of awareness but have fallen short of accountability and solutions. Not everyone has gotten stuck of course, but I’ve been there with my own anxiety plenty of times. I think the issues come from the extremes. Either people don’t take any accountability and expect others to cater to them or people go full-on into work to be “better” but do so without a clear direction of what better means. One day, after attaining money, fame, or the like, they look up and find themselves still with the same issues. They took some ownership of getting “better” but they went the wrong way.

My new project will be launching soon. It will still be writing-based but will be delivered differently. A newsletter is in the making that will go out via email. Honestly, I hate social media. The Weekend Challenge made sense to send that way but going forward I want to connect with you all much more closely. I want to build a community of people ready to think hard, change their minds when needed, challenge themselves, and build networks so we can stand stronger together. The email newsletter serves more of that purpose.

I hope to bring you the best of the information I get from books, blogs, podcasts, etc. but bring it down to earth and challenge some of the assumptions we make in self-development. I’m not a billionaire entrepreneur, a professional athlete, or a military special operator. You probably aren’t either (statistics would say so at least). But we can all benefit from a once-a-week reminder to rethink our desire for “better” and stay focused on what wisdom from the ancients to modern-day says is worthwhile – peace, joy, hope, and purpose.

I want my newsletter to be a weekly breath of hope for you. Honestly, as a standard pessimist, I need it for myself. The news is dark, but the world is still full of goodness. Let’s highlight that, shall we!

Sweet, What About LIFE Then?

The LIFE Council is not going anywhere. Though I won’t be writing for it every week, I have plans to expand that too. COVID hit the pause button on my vision. Once we can hit play again, we want to bring people together in-person at LIFE Council events. Here are some plans on the horizon:

  • LIFE Council retreats. We’ve held two retreats for my personal Council but once we are able, we want to expand the offer to other groups.
  • Right of Passage Events. I’m truly excited for this one as it harks back to some of my initial ideas. We will create experiences for fathers, sons, and mentors at key points of young men’s lives – turning 16, heading to college, getting married, etc. The goal will be to give intentional space to help young men understand what it means and takes to move into the next phase of their lives. We will refine the typical, and surface-level notion of what it means to “become a man” to fill a generation of men with mindsets and skills to be successful far beyond the modern definition of job titles and income level. The goal is to influence that generation to be the best partners, fathers, leaders, and friends the world has ever seen.
  • LIFE Breakfasts. One big pull on my heart lately has been to focus the council more locally and less across the world. I think a big impact is to be had right here in the community so we will create short opportunities for people to come together.

It feels odd to put a cap on something I’ve been committed to for a year, but I know it’s time. The resources are here. The ideas are in the world. The power to create change is within you.

Weekend Challenge

This weekend, set an identity as a life-long learner. Decide that you can grow and learn right up until the end. I don’t care your age, background, faith, or whatever else. The minute you shut off to learning you set the course toward loneliness and emptiness.

Use the Challenges below to work on it, read a new book, or have a conversation with someone who disagrees with you. Kick off the rest of your life, by leaning into learning something new this weekend. It is truly the one and only secret to a fulfilling life (in my opinion of course).

See you all later. Have a good weekend. Be on the lookout for the newsletter coming to an inbox near you!

Topic CategoryBlog Number and Title
Loneliness and Friendships#5: How’s Your Circle?
#8: Isolation and Fellowship (Pus Other Resources)
#15: Is it Really All About Loneliness?
#19: 5 Things you Have to Stop to be a Better Human (& LIFE Council Member)
#26: Retreat to Return Better-Why Getting Away Makes You More Present
#29: Four Ways to Build an Awesome LIFE Council Crew #35: Who’s Waiting For You?
#51: Trust in the Foxhole – Friendship Lessons from Chosin
Stillness, Presence, and Peace#3: Tenacious Stillness
#9: Control of Life
#42: Gaining Control of the Emotion of Mass Destruction – Anger and How to Control it
#53: “Presence in the Process” – What You Need to Give Up and Pick Up to be Present
Practices of LIFE#1: Legacy of Service – Give to be Remembered
#12: The Power of Public – Sharing Your Aspirations
#20: The 3 Things You Need for Life-Long Learning
#28: 4 Steps to Escape Your Jail Cell
#41: The Art of Not Getting What You Want
#44: Picking up the Rope – Go to Battle or Learn to Support
#45: 31 Lessons for 31 Years – Lessons from my Life so Far
Rethinking Common Ideas#22: The Worst LIFE Advice You’ll Ever Get – Don’t Stay In Your Lane
#24: The World’s Easiest Way to be Liked – Integrity is Key
#33: “Will it Matter in 100 Years?” – Legacy and Why You Need to Let it Go
#38: Lies of “The Grind”
#40: Truths of “The Grind”
#50: Three Reasons to embrace Your Jaggedness
#52: Who You Are Matters – A Cautionary Tale of Self-Help Quips and Quotes
Love and Relationships#3.5: What is Love?
#11: Are You too (In)Dependent?
#16: Are You a Crappy Lover? 3 P’s to Operate with Love #25 (.1 & .2): What True Love Is: Lessons from My Wife and a Foster Puppy
#43: Only Love Can Change – How to Actually Change Ourselves and Others
#46: Habits of Service – Going Beyond Acts, to Show Love
Self-Belief and Development#6: Your Fear of Growth
#18: Fill the Dash: What Will Your LIFE be?
#30: The LIFE Council Can’t Help This (Part I)
#31: The LIFE Council Can’t Help This (Part II)
#34: Going to Battle with Life’s Worst Critic – Self-criticism and You
#39: Let’s Get Real About Self-Help – How to Use it Instead of Celebrate it
#48: A Life to Envy or a Life to Remember?
#49: The Ultimate Believer – You Have to Believe in Yourself First
Pursuit of excellence#2: Tenacity – Show Up Even When You don’t Want to
#4: Making Room for Excellence and You – Getting Better and Having Self-Acceptance
#7: Who Cut In on You?
#13: The Next Right Step – Becoming Who You Want to Be One Step at a Time
#14: A Walk to Bring Down the Walls that Stop you From your Dreams
#17: The Integrity of Your Dreams
#21: The Long Race of LIFE: 3 Lessons from the Early Stages of Endurance Training
#23: Why You Have to “Check-in” – Showing Up is Most of the Work
#27: Ditch Your Goals and Start Declaring Who You Are #32: Three LIFE Lessons of 70.3
#36: Crush the Small Goal and See a New Door
#47: Envy Steals Excellence
Purpose and Fulfillment in LIFE#10: Invisible Enemies
#37: The Road to Meaning is Paved in Bricks
#54: Purpose – It’s Not What You Think

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Weekend Challenge #54: Purpose – It’s Not What You Think

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I’ve been struggling.

I’ve been struggling with what my “thing” is. Everyone seems to have a “thing” – that thing that they are known for. They seem to have found their purpose.

If everyone has some deep-rooted purpose that drives their life though, where does that leave anyone like me who doesn’t seem to have found their purpose? I can’t pinpoint a single thing that I want to define me. Today, I’m prouder than I am ashamed of it but it weighed on me for years.

Purpose has been popularized to the “oh, this isn’t really the same thing as it was” point so let’s revisit this two-syllable word that can create anxiety in so many of us. There are two key ideas that I believe to be true about purpose which are too often left out of the popular notion.

Purpose is Dynamic and Plural

Purpose is most often described as some sort of singular and fixed, end-all-be-all to our existence. It is talked about as a stagnant driving force throughout our lives – unchanging because of its universal truth in our hearts. It defines us and guides our every decision and move from the moment we find it until we die.

The problem is that notion assumes stagnation that doesn’t exist in the human condition. It is a rare, if not completely fictitious person who has a single-minded focus throughout their life. Don’t trust me, trust those who have shown us. Here are some examples of people who seemed single-focused and incredibly purpose-driven who have proven that purpose isn’t fixed.

  • Michael Phelps was driven by a purpose to be the greatest swimmer of all time to the tune of 40-hour training weeks and 10,000 calories per day Most would say he accomplished that with his 28 Olympic medals – 23 of them gold. Then, he turned 32 which is not quite an age for purposelessness to settle in. Now, he is an activist for mental health and therapy motivated by his own struggles with depression and anger. Purpose changes.  
  • Barack Obama started his political career as a small community organizer in Chicago. His purpose was determined by what that community needed locally. Then, as he experienced more, he began to shift to a broader approach and desire to bring about change but his purpose to lead the nation wasn’t cemented until others pushed him there. He couldn’t see it himself, but once others showed him, he opened his purpose to more. Purpose broadens.
  • Alexi Pappas has lived with dual-purpose throughout her life. She is an Olympic caliber runner and a creative filmmaker plus a best-selling author all at the age of 30. Her dual purposes – be an Olympian and a world-class creator – shift and combine for Alexi to be the amazing person she is. David Epstein would call this range and says, “our greatest strength is the exact opposite of specialization, it is the ability to integrate broadly.” In a world that celebrates specialization purpose can be plural.
  • Bob Dylan, after years of being “the voice of a generation” with a purpose to engage people from behind the microphone, announced that he had become a Christian in 1979. His purpose continued in music, but he integrated his new faith and recorded two gospel albums to share the message of Jesus for three years. Purpose grows.

Each of these top performers has been and is purpose-driven. None of them though have lived with one purpose that has driven every decision and action. They’ve been open to the inevitable complexity of human experience for themselves and others. Purpose is dynamic, ever-changing, and pluralistic.

Purpose is in the Present

Purpose is almost always talked about as being in front of us. It is something you “find” somewhere at some time in the future.  Simply stated, that doesn’t make sense. If it’s always in front of you, you can never get there and yet your life every day is meaningful. The trick is that you must choose to see it.

Zach Mercurio has recently said, “Purpose is your contribution. It’s how your strengths make an impact. The problem isn’t ‘not having purpose.’ The problem is not being able to see it”.

That’s incredibly well put. Your purpose is already within you. It is in the moments of your life that you knew you were contributing. A conversation with your friend after a breakup, making that meal for your spouse after a long day, leaving an extra tip for the waiter on your Friday date night, or creating that program at work that people use to help clients.  

Beyond purpose being actions of now, sometimes your purpose is to simply be in the moment.

Purpose can come with pressure when we assume that is something to find or attain

Purpose can come with pressure when we assume that is something to find or attain. It’s intangible. It can’t be bought or taken off a store shelf. All you can do is live it and chose to see it. Don’t discount the small yet impactful things you do. Don’t overlook people right in front of you in order to stress about the masses on social media who could follow you someday.

You, yes you, have a purpose right now. You always have. God created you with it. It might take on a new variation tomorrow. It might have something added to it. It might even expand with a new opportunity.

The only thing purpose is not is something you don’t have and need to get.

Weekend Challenge

This weekend don’t try to live with purpose. . . because you already are! Instead, choose to see it. Choose to notice how many things you do this weekend that contribute to a positive world.

When you ask your spouse how their day was and choose to listen, that’s purpose. When you tuck your kid into bed and read a story, that’s purpose. When you meet a friend for coffee, that’s purpose. When you simply chose to wake up and live the day, that’s purpose.

You are purposeful. Make the choice to notice it and be prepared for it to shift, adapt, and elevate as you go through this incredible ride of LIFE.

Have a great weekend! Remember that purpose isn’t as scary or complicated as it seems. Purpose can and will change through life. Be ok with it, embrace it, and choose to see it today and every day.

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Weekend Challenge #53: “Presence in the Process” – What You Need to Give Up and Pick Up to Be Present

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An ability to be present is a superpower. If you’ve watched The Last Dance, you know Jordan was great because of his presence. Every game was its own, every play got his full attention. The moment demanded all of him and he gave it. Can you do that? You don’t have to live with monks (although Jesse Itzler did and it seemed to teach him a lot) but you do have to be intentional.

Before getting too deep, it’s worth a quick detour into why presence even matters in the first place. In the context of our LIFE principles, presence in everything. LIFE doesn’t exist in the future and you can’t change how it looked in the past. Your chance to live with love, integrity, fellowship, and excellence only exists right now.

With presence, you’ll love better, be less likely to slip in your integrity, build stronger fellowship, and pursue excellence at this moment than the next culminating in “big E” excellence at the end of life.

Unfortunately, presence has been watered down in recent years. It has become some sort of new-age, Portland hipster meets LA Vegan fad but it shouldn’t be. Presence is simply the state of being in the here and now.

In doing research, I searched “how to be more present” in Google. In 2 seconds, I was blasted with over 2.5 BILLION hits. There are videos, blogs, and more than enough articles titled something like “26 Ways to Be More Present” to keep you busy reading tips on presence without actually being present, for a decade.

There’s good reason presence gets such airtime. Being more present and mindful of the moment has been linked to alleviating feelings of loneliness, stronger romantic relationships, reducing inflammation and pain, and of course, the subjective wholly grail of happiness (joy, purpose, hope).[i]

For anyone who reads this 2.5 billion and 1st blog on presence, I do hope to cut through some of the mess. You don’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to be present and you don’t need 101 tips either. You simply need an awareness and a few basic ideas but it’s easy to get lost.

One place we get lost is in the language around presence. Books on presence could fill a bookstore and if you add digital pieces, you get a Super Walmart stacked to the ceiling. But every person who writes on the topic seems to feel the need to create a new name for it to make themselves stand out and the language complicates more and more.

Tell me if you’ve heard any of these: monotasking, single focus, flow, moment awareness, turning inward, me time, mindfulness, live in the moment, embrace the now, reflective journaling, crouching to self (okay, I made that one up).

All of these have their unique components to be sure, but the essence is the same- be aware of the moment in which you are living.

A second area our path can get crossed is in the timeframe of a “moment”. Presence at the moment doesn’t mean the exact 60 seconds you are in. “The real present moment,” Ryan Holiday said, “is what we choose to exist in, instead of lingering on the past or fretting about the future.” The present moment is the window of time you can choose to let go of the past and not worry or hope for the future. It could be one breath, a dinner with your spouse, an entire day, or even a year if you could hold on to it that long.

Most of us can’t hold onto presence for a few minutes, let alone a year but why does it slip away so quickly?

As Holiday also reminded us, “Being present demands all of us. It’s not nothing. It may be the hardest thing in the world.” Presence slips away because it requires more than we are willing to give up for it.

My 2021 mantra is, “presence in the process”

My 2021 mantra is, “presence in the process” because, well, I am terrible at being present. I haven’t built present habits yet but in working to do so through January, I’ve already seen things I need to give up and ones I need to pick up.

What You Need to Give Up for Presence

Presence might require you to give up:

  • Old habits of thinking. According to Adam Grant, our ways of thinking all too often, “become habits that can weigh us down, and we don’t bother to question them until it’s too late.” We’ve built habits of catastrophizing, confirmation-bias, worrying, and regret as ways to feel in control of our lives but they make it impossible to be present. They move our focus to the external and uncontrollable. Be courageous enough to think differently.
  • False responsibility. Related to habits of thinking, we tend to believe that it is our responsibility to worry about the future or analyze the past. If we are to take care of our family long-term, we must plan, right? Yes, and remember that your most important job is to be there for them today, this week. Plan for tomorrow but you’re giving yourself a false sense of responsibility by obsessing over the future.
  • Your ego. It feels good to share your amazing trip to Hawaii on Instagram. Your ego loves watching more and more people hit that little red heart. It feels just as good to post your vision for the future and have people encourage you to go get it. But being present may require you not to post about everything in your life. Your ego doesn’t want you to be present, it wants you to brag about the past or the future. Give it up, your ego is, after all, your biggest enemy.
  • The badge of busy. The most overused humble-brag ever is, “busy.” Ask 10 people how they are doing and I can almost guarantee you’ll hear some form of “busy” from 7 of them.  It comes off as a complaint, but it isn’t. It’s a badge of honor and an ego kick. To be present, you might have to say no to more things. You will have to stop measuring your life by how full your calendar is. You’ll have to learn how to spend an entire day on one thing, instead of a hundred things.

What You Need to Pick Up for Presence

Alright, let me add my ideas to the million ways to be more present on the internet. There are so many things out there that I had to get practical so maybe these can help you too:

  • Focusing on a single task at a time. I’ve been a time-boxer ever since listening to Indistractable from Nir Eayl. Recently, I’ve tapped into its true power by actually sticking to the boxes – most of the time. When my schedule says “write the blog” I put close my internet browser, turn off email, and write the blog for as much time as I set aside. The same goes for answering emails, training, posting to social media, and so on. It’s not easy but I can already see how much higher quality my work is when I stick to one thing at a time.
  • No (or very little) social media before noon. On my perfect day, I don’t touch my phone until noon. When I can do that, I notice I’ve usually had a great day before noon. It doesn’t happen every day but I’m working toward that by adjusting notification settings and leaving the phone in another room.
  • With people, be with people. I’ve taken to leaving my phone in the car when I go to dinner with people or visit friends. I find it way too easy to look at it when conversation lulls and then I become a known phubber (snubbing people by looking at your phone).
  • Take a moment. Throughout my day, I actively remember to pause and take in what is happening around and within me. I’ll notice I’m starting to feel anxious about a work project or that I haven’t left my desk in a few hours. Noticing, being present in that moment, allows me to then adjust and adapt.
  • Honoring the process. If you’re reading this still, you’re probably rare. Not many folks stick with reading something this long and that can be discouraging for a writer. But Seth Godin reminded me that creativity is “a commitment to the process, not simply the next outcome on the list.” I’m learning to be present in the process and focus less on what might come of it.

Overall, don’t make it so complicated. Presence is a habit of being here. It’s not something you do, it’s something you be.

Let’s free presence from the shackles of being a new-age fad that requires a man bun or 10,000 hours of meditation practice. We need to free presence of our thought habits and obsession with the past and future. Free presence and it will free you.

Weekend Challenge

Let’s start small this weekend. I simply want to challenge you to try something that can help you be more present. You should also give a go at what I think you need to give up and pick up but if you’re not quite that bought in yet, that’s ok.

This weekend, at random times, set a few alarms or reminders in your phone that simply say, “what is this moment?” Whenever that notification comes to you, pause for a brief moment (physically if possible but at least mentally) and take it in. Check-in with your 5 senses – what do you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste at that exact time? This is presence.

Image of presence reminders
My reminders to be present this weekend

You may want to warn the people you hang out with that you might get a glossy look on your face after checking your phone throughout the weekend but this small exercise can begin to build the habit of presence you need.

Start there. Let me know how those moments go and challenge a friend or partner to do this with you.

Presence is overcomplicated sometimes but no need. It’s difficult to be sure. Start small and you’ll get there. I’ll be with you. Presence in the process.

[i] Check out Growing Young: How Friendship, Optimism, and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100 by Marta Zaraska for more. Chapter 10 is focused on mindfulness, presence, and meditation as a key to longevity.

Weekend Challenge #53: “Presence in the Process” – What You Need to Give Up and Pick Up to Be Present Read More »

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Weekend Challenge #52: Who You Are Matters – A Cautionary Tale of Self-Help Quips and Quotes

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This week, I was confronted with a quote during an Instagram death scroll that made me take a second look. As someone who struggles with self-doubt from time to…always…I follow a lot of people who provide such uplifting media because I need it. But that means I often scroll right by. This time, I didn’t. I paused. Reread. And then thought, “wait, I think that’s missing something.”

Yes, I had the bravado to think I could disagree with one of the biggest names in the self-help world. Let me tell you why…

Here’s my submission for the anthem of self-help for the last decade:

“You kind of suck. You must get better. If you run a marathon, do a 50k. If you wrote an article, get to work on the book. If you’ve ever dealt with anxiety, depression, fear, anger, or any emotion for that matter, just stop. Get better. Better. Better. Better.”

Now, I am a fan of the self-help world. Psychologists and counselors who are willing to share their work through a $14.95 book give access to many who can’t put up $100 every week. But somewhere along the line, some things went awry as less than qualified people began to pedal less than thoughtful ideas and shamed millions along the way.

Mark Manson, himself a self-helper and author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, pointed out some issues with the industry that are worth summarizing before I go to my own:

  1. Self-help reinforces perceptions of shame and inferiority when people consume it with an attitude of, “look at all the things I’m not doing to be better than I could be. I’m more awful than I thought.”
  2. Self-help is a well-hidden avoidance tactic for people to say they are working on themselves while not actually doing anything about it. Reading a book is the start, not the finish.
  3. Self-help is built on unrealistic expectations of getting better in every aspect of your life in the matter of an hour seminar or a couple of hundred pages.
  4. Science can be in short supply. Most authors and leaders in the space do very little research on their work. That can be ok, but it should be something to be wary of.
  5. Self-help means help yourself, yet most treat it as getting help from a guru or author. Only you can really create change in your life, so the ideas of others are just that, ideas, not perfect and universal solutions.

If these issues are true why do I, and millions of others, buy so much self-help stuff? There are a lot of reasons but a hopeful one is simple.

Many people truly want to improve their lives but get stuck in how to do it.

It’s encouraging to see how many people are trying to get “better”. What I can’t stand is the blind way we talk about what “better” is. Is it happiness? Discipline? Motivation? Or is it something deeper like faith, friendship, love, or hope? It could just be as simple as having more stuff – money, cars, houses, and everything else you don’t need but you hope impresses other people. Maybe it’s all of it? The quips and quotes of self-help fail to reconcile why we need help in the first place.

Such ambiguity begs the question of whether self-help is actually helpful or not. I think it is but we need to be more careful and discerning in certain situations.

A Case Study In Mattering

As a case study, let’s return to where I started. That quote I saw this week that gave me pause was from Tom Bilyeu (who I truly do appreciate as a thinker and leader). He said, “It doesn’t matter who you are today. The only thing that matters is who you want to become and the price you’re willing to pay to get there.” I get it, the idea that you can leave your past behind no matter how rough it is and become something new is cool. However, I also think it needs context.

I don’t think Bilyeu is wrong. His work is incredible, and his pedigree speaks for itself. I also know this message permeates self-help everywhere. AND I wonder if it’s oversimplified. Boiled down for Instagram but missing the nuance that life always has.  

To truly engage in self-help, it absolutely does matter who you are today.

Who you are today is the only place to start becoming who you want to be tomorrow. Like a river that starts as a stream, the current version of you has awesome things to offer the version of you that you are building. The idea that you would try to forget or somehow extinguish who you are for something else, doesn’t work.

It seems that a more nuanced way to approach the idea is to recognize that who you are today does not determine who will be tomorrow. It is not the cause-and-effect life you were taught as a kid – go to a good school and get a good job; get your act together and find a partner; go to jail once and you’re screwed forever.

Who you are today though does matter for your future. If you have struggled, hit rock bottom, and want to climb out, you can’t forget about the bottom. The lessons you learned there should go with you. Your background and mistakes that put you there aren’t to be ignored; they are to be incorporated.

Brene Brown may have said it best. “When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending.”[i] It takes incredible courage to examine our collective and individual stories. The easier route is to try and deny the past to act as if it doesn’t matter, but as Brown points out, then the past defines you.

I think Bilyeu is on to something that Brown might echo. The past does not HAVE to define your story but it’s not as simple as ignoring it. If you are willing to step into and own your past, only then can you build your future.

So, it’s not that who you are today doesn’t matter, it’s that who you are today needs ownership.

You matter, right here, right now. You might not be exactly where you want to be. You might want to get better. But if you don’t reconcile the story of who you are today, and clearly identify what “better” means, you aren’t going anywhere.

Weekend Challenge

Get better. See you next time. Kidding, kidding…

This weekend, I hope you can start to own your story, take account of your past, and realize how much you of today matters. One of my favorite questions about who we are today to address in a written or recorded journal is:

“What values have my actions exemplified?”

You can think in terms of your whole life, the last year, a few days, or whatever time frame you need. I started the LIFE Enacted Guide with a version of this question to honor what you might be tempted to ignore – yourself! 

I want you to lean on who you are today to create a purposeful vision for your future.

If you want a deep dive, grab the LIFE Enacted Guide but at least ask yourself this question. If you’re honest, you might unearth some ugly stuff. For example, I found that I live out value for the “approval of others” and “financial success to measure my worth.” I don’t like it, but they have shown in my actions. I usually create work thinking about if it could go viral – approval of others – or make me a bunch of money – financial success as worth.

I want to live values of contribution instead of consumption and authenticity instead of popularity, so I have some work today. Change is damn hard but the guide helped me identify the not-so-great pieces of who I am today so that I know how to get “better” tomorrow.  

Who I am, matters to who I am becoming. The same goes for you.

Who I am, matters to who I am becoming. The same goes for you.

Happy weekend everyone. Be careful of the quips and quotes in the self-help world that go big on social media – their authors often have so much behind them that you should dig into.

Let me know if you’ve seen any quips that need questioning this week and share how your weekend challenge helps you figure out who you are.

[i] Brene Brown (2015). Own our history. Change the story. https://brenebrown.com/blog/2015/06/18/own-our-history-change-the-story/

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