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Jan 30 2012
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Knowing

Knowing

Ask any group of guys to talk about their biggest mistake, worst investment or greatest regret and you better find a comfortable chair and a good cup of coffee. Every guy has a long list that they sort of mentally carry around and review from time to time and inevitably they’ll say “If only I had known then what I know now…..” It’s easy to see what you should have done when you’re looking in the rearview mirror but you can’t and that’s why men must develop wisdom.

Wisdom is what keeps you from marring the wrong woman, taking that job or investing that money before you do it. When you have wisdom, you live a life with very few regrets. Wise people see the same thing in the windshield as they do the rearview mirror.

The question is “what is wisdom”? It’s actually kind of hard to define but here are three common definitions.

  • The first is age but just because you made it to 65 doesn’t automatically mean you’re wise.
  • The second is intelligence but there are tons of very smart people who no one would mistake for being wise.
  • The third is education but just because you’ve got  BS, MA, PhD and other kinds of letters after your name doesn’t guarantee that you’re wise

While none of these make you wise on their own, all three are often found in wise people. The reason is found in a great statement from the book of Proverbs on how to gain wisdom, “Get all the advice and instruction you can, so you will be wise the rest of your life.” So age does matter, especially when it comes to who you take advice from. the more instruction part is getting more education and the combination of advice and instruction equals smart.

That’s how you become wise but we still haven’t defined wisdom. Especially defining wisdom in just a few, memorable words that boys trying to become men can use as a daily filter to help direct their lives. Here it is:

Wisdom is knowing what’s right and how to do it.

Just to be clear what’s right = what God says is right, because that is the only reliable standard.

That’s wisdom in a nutshell. A really simple sentence that applies to your job, marriage, parenting, hobbies,  choice of friends, where you live, well you get the idea. Knowing what’s right and how to do it is really what separates the men from the boys.

Jan 17 2012
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Choosing, Doing, Knowing

Building Men

When it comes to figuring how to move from being a boy to a man or even from being a boy who can shave to a real man, there have been tons of books written but all of them are full of complicated formulas or long lists of things to do. This means that almost every male will never remember them and probably won’t read past page 25.

I’ve been thinking, reading, and studying about this process for a lot of years and have finally broken it down into three elements of being a man: Wisdom, Discipline, and Good Judgment. These three come a verse in the ultimate training manual for men, Proverbs, “Get the truth and never sell it;  also get wisdom, discipline, and good judgment.” Mastering these three elements will get you over the hump and into manhood, but the first question is what do those things really mean and how do you do them? I’ve been trying to come up with simple definitions that also give directions for the “how”. Here’s what I’ve got:

Wisdom is Knowing What’s Right And How To Do It

Discipline is Doing What’s Right, Even When It’s Hard

Good Judgment is Choosing What’s Right, Even When Something Else Looks Better

Or you can just remember three words and live every moment of every day with them in mind: KNOWING, DOING, & CHOOSING.

That’s it. Simple right? Well simple to remember, but you’ll spend the rest of your life reorienting your job, relationships, finances, hobbies and everything else to them. Hard to do but the payoff is worth it.

Over the next several days I’m going to write a post on each one to get you started.

Sep 23 2011
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Doing

An Empty Stomach aka Motivation

Proverbs is probably my favorite book of the bible for lots of reasons. One of them being it’s intensely practical, even 3,000 years after it was written. Like this verse:

“It is good for workers to have an appetite; an empty stomach drives them on.” Proverbs 16:26

Great verse that perfectly explains why we’re having some of the issues we’re having in our country-men have lost the motivation of hunger. We’ve lost the need and ability to eat what we kill.

The basic problem is there are way too many guarantees in a world that was never meant to have any. Most folks think it’s good to have guarantees because it takes the pressure off of men, but the truth is it’s had the opposite effect. Guarantees have had a debilitating effect on men. It’s robbed them of a significant part of their makeup.

The reason is men are designed to hunt, designed to gather, to go out and deal with the pressure of getting food. Men need to have a little weight on their back to keep them on the right path and help them focus. What we’ve got to learn is that you are never doing a man a favor by removing responsibility from him.

Men don’t have to fear living without guaranteed employment and no bid contracts, in fact they should embrace it.   The reason is a man experiences a special sense of satisfaction when he does it on his own instead of having it handed to him.

So, if we want to begin to reverse the trend of living in world lead by boys who can shave, we need to let them go hungry.

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