by Jamesscotthenson | Jun 21, 2017 | Blog
Back to follow-through.
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. –
Friedrich Nietzsche
To do something big, whether it’s a change of habit or a new
project or something else, we will not follow through unless we know why we are
doing it.
Change is hard, projects are hard, everything is hard, and
it will all fall apart if we don’t have clear reasons for attempting any of it.
We often start things on a whim or because of a momentary passion for them or
because someone else suggests it. These are all recipes for failure unless we
really know why we are bringing this new thing into our life.
Here are a few questions it might be useful to ask before
starting something new:
What draws me to this project?
How does it connect with something I care I about in life?
Do I know what I really care about in life?
How is this going to benefit me and the people I love?
How much time will this cost me on a daily basis?
How much money?
Do I have room for this in my life?
When will I complete this project? (you need a concrete time
frame here, not “soon” or “quickly”)
Have I started similar projects and abandoned them?
What will make this one different? (you need concrete
answers here, no “pull myself up by bootstraps, try really hard, dedicate
myself” type nonsense)
What am I doing to prepare for this project?
Will this make me a better person?
Will this help other people?
There are a million other questions to ask yourself, but
these are probably a good start. It may seem like a lot, but if you aren’t
willing to sit down and work through questions like these, I am not sure you
have any business starting something new. These questions are a minimal
commitment.
More than anything, keep a firm grip on why you want to do
this new thing. Jot this down wherever you will see it frequently and refer
back to it. Anything that doesn’t line up with this why has to be disregarded
immediately.
Know your why. Everything else is easy.
by Jamesscotthenson | Jun 20, 2017 | Blog
“If you don’t initiate your young men into the tribe, they
will burn down the village”
It’s an oddly unpopular idea these days, but men need men to
mentor them and help them. We evolved in bands with other men, and many of the
ways we bond and grow are based around this. Yes, our moms are super important,
and mine is especially bad ass, but we need other men too.
Some fathers are absent, and that sucks. We live in an
increasingly atomized and disconnected society, and that also sucks.
As I mentioned yesterday, I have a great father. I was also
I was raised in an environment with many male role models around me. No, not
all of them were good, but I think in the balance I had a lot more positive
ones than negative.I know that everyone is not as fortunate as I am, and it may
take an intentional effort to seek out the mentoring and relationship we need,
but it is worth it.
Throughout my life I remember older men reaching out to me
to offer advice and guidance.
As I also mentioned yesterday, I was not always good at
knowing how to implement these things, but I distinctly remember knowing they
were right. Had I been less paralyzed by the things in my life that I didn’t
know how to deal with, I might have asked them to help me with the
implementation, and I may have had an easier go of things than I did.
We are all watching what happens in a society without
rituals and initiations, or even guidance, for young men.
We see this in our prison system and on the news. I see it
in my office every day. This isn’t a criticism of anyone or any group, in all
honesty I think it is probably the natural result of a society increasingly
infatuated with technology and with the ability to spend our time however we
want.
We are undergoing a massive shake-up in what it means to be
human, and everyone is suffering in the process.
None of this is to say that mothers are unnecessary ort that
young women don’t have a tough road to walk (they have a very tough road to
walk), it’s just about men because Father’s Day just passed and because we tend
to turn violent when we don’t have anything to do. I don’t know what the
solution is, because I don’t know how we turn the tide against an increasingly
digital and technological world where video games and porn are raising our
young men.
I do know that individual and group mentoring – intentional,
competent mentoring – helps and that older men reaching out to the younger
generation is important, but it also seems that this is dying off with the
generation ahead of me.
Did you have older mentors as a teenager?
What rituals or initiation rituals were there in your life?
When did you officially know you were an adult?
by Jamesscotthenson | Jun 19, 2017 | Blog
We’ll get back to the specifics of following-through
tomorrow or the day after.
There is really no way around the fact that we owe our lives
to a father of some kind. Even if it’s just a literal sperm donor, somewhere,
somehow, we all have fathers.
There is also no way around the fact that this is the full
extent of gratitude that some people owe to their particular father figure.
Half of their DNA, that’s it.
I am not one of those people. I am fortunate enough to have
a great father who I am very close with. We have fought a lot over the years,
and a vast majority of these fights have been my fault.
My father taught me how to work, to treat people with
respect and that choices have consequences. He taught me that there such things
as right and wrong and that we need to plan for the long term.
I didn’t always listen.
I rarely listened.
And this cost me over the years. I always wanted to listen,
and I always intended to, but I just didn’t really know how to put it all into
practice.
So maybe I listened, but I didn’t know how to make it work,
and this is what cost me. It cost me time and money and blood and tears, but I
was lucky enough to have had the seeds for good things planted so that they
could eventually grow into something real.
I still learn things from my father and I am better about
putting these things into actual practice. I know that a lot of people are less
fortunate than me and do not have good fathers, and I think this is why men
being willing to mentor young men is so important. The best men I know do this,
and we need it.
What did your father teach you, either directly or
indirectly?
Are there things you can learn from your father whether they
are present or not?
by Jamesscotthenson | Jun 18, 2017 | Blog
“Can you elaborate on the ways to follow through?”
I try to keep things under 300 words and cannot always go
into as much detail as people would like, so we’ll work on
clarifying/specifying a couple of things over the next few days.
How can we establish accountability in an effective way?
This is a tough one, because the things that make
accountability difficult for us are the exact same things that make
accountability worthwhile: people we trust, calling us on our shit. The nature
of this relationship makes respect and competence very important. Without both
of these elements you are setting yourself up for trouble.
We have to respect the people we turn to for accountability
or else we will not listen to what they tell us, and we will bristle at the
very idea that they are telling us anything at all. This is a recipe for a
failed relationship.
We need competent people in our lives because we have to be
able to trust what they are telling us. It is rare to find someone who can
check off all the boxes in this regard, so I try to have multiple people who
are strong in different areas. I tend to look for people who are older than me,
and who know about something in ways beyond book-learning. I also need to trust
and respect them as a human being – someone may be very knowledgable about
something, but if they are unethical or shady, they will bring trouble into
your life.
I do not think a person can have wisdom without integrity,
and I look for wisdom when seeking accountability.
Who do you have in your life that can fulfill the role of
competent accountability?
What could you do to cultivate or foster relationships with
more people who could help you grow and evolve as a person?
by Jamesscotthenson | Jun 17, 2017 | Blog
If you were to make a time log that documented your life in
15 minute increments, what would be on there the most?
People always have their go to answers when I ask them this
question:
Family
God
Work
Chores
Reading
Driving
We all like to think that our times goes to good and
necessary things, but when we actually pay attention we get a much different
story.
People are often shocked to learn just how much time they
spend on Netflix, sports (on television), looking at porn, and scrolling
aimlessly through their phone. This last one is often particularly shocking for
them (install Moment for iPhone or Quality Time for Android and see for
yourself). We lose hours everyday on the internet, and a great deal of it is
not worthwhile or intentional.
I often hear people say they cannot (a misuse of that word)
follow-through on the projects they start because of time constraints, but it
is really a simple matter of getting rid of the things that waste their time.
It’s not about there being a lack of time, it’s a lack of intentionality and
purpose. It’s a problem of choosing the path of least resistance and most
entertainment.
There are dozens of ways to change how we use our time.
There are apps to lock you out of your phone for a given amount of time, and
you can cancel Netflix or cable or Hulu (or all three!). We can train ourselves
to leave our phones in another room and not open our computers until certain
tasks are taken care of. We can establish accountability with other
people. It may not be easy, but there is a tremendous feeling of freedom when
you make the break from these habits, especially if you re-invest that time
into something worthwhile.
If you made a time log of your life, what would be on there
the most?
Is this activity intentional, or is it something you “just
do”?
Is it helpful or harmful?
If it is not helpful, what keeps you from addressing it?
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