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Patience – The Calm Man

Men who are impatient rarely arrive at greatness. This is because they cannot handle the years of focus that it takes to arrive at greatness. A man with a great work ethic may fail because he does not have the patience to maintain that work ethic over long periods of time.

“Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.”
Ecclesiastes 7:8

“Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!”
Psalm 37:7

“Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”
Romans 12:12

Patience is one of the cornerstone habits of men of excellence and strength. This can be seen in how these men react to various situations that they encounter. The masculine man does not lose his temper at trivial items in life. He does not allow small situations or problems that are beyond his ability to control cause him to lose his temper. He is not influenced by life because he himself is influencing life.

Have you seen men who lose their tempers or get agitated over miniscule things in life. How did they look when they “lost it”?

Pathetic?

Weak?

Childish?

The answer is all of the above. Would you trust this man in a life or death scenario? If they”lose it” under small pressures, how will they handle large pressures?

Though it is popular for people to brag about “losing it on someone”, that type of attrition warfare will get you nowhere, no matter how satisfying it is to give someone “the business”.

Great men have high levels of patience. They have patience in every sense of the word. They can wait for long periods of time for something they want or need.

The masculine man is unmoved by petty annoyances. He does not become upset because of other human beings. The masculine man is not even bothered when someone waits far too long to take their screaming baby out of the church assembly. The masculine man needs only to master himself and his emotions and patience will immediately follow.

Great men in the Word held patience as one of their key virtues.

Abraham waited years for the son of promise.

Job endured suffering and was written about in James 5.

Moses was the meekest man in all the earth.

David waited years on the throne of Israel.

Christ lived his entire life being patient and delaying gratification.

Also note that Christ was the only one of these men who did not amass great material wealth, because He was concerned with saving the world. The other men were very wealthy, therefore it is reasonable to argue a possible connection with the virtue of patience and wealth. Combining great virtue with faith was the way these men were able to be found worthy of possessing such wealth. God does what He wishes with the wealth of the world, but it is reasonable to say that He would not give wealth to the man whose faith would be destroyed by the possession of that wealth.

Foundational virtues must be in place before we can acquire great wealth if we are to simultaneously maintain our faith.

Patience is one of these virtues. It is a foundational building block of all other virtues, for without it we would give up or surrender to weakness. Patience allows us to build other virtues, no matter how slowly or painfully they are developed. In this way, patience is the foundational virtue. Other virtues are only as strong as the patience you have with them. So build patience first, before you build your other virtues.

Patience is masculine because men use it to resist outside forces. Strength is manifested not only in forcing your hand on others, but also on resisting those who try to force their hands on you.

Mantra

Patience is a pillar of strength.

Application

Stifle emotions. Control them and master them. You are going to feel angry and impatient at times. The first mission is to deny yourself the open expression of these feelings. If you are impatient, do not show it, you will only be showing a weakness for others to exploit. No one should ever know if you are feeling angry or impatient.

In your mind you must remember how others looked who openly expressed impatience or anger in a public setting. They exposed their weakness to the world, and you have not forgotten it. Neither will they forget if they see you expressing weakness though a lost temper. Suppress but do not repress emotion. Take your anger and channel it elsewhere.

The man who can be made angry can be defeated on the battlefield because he shows that he has no self-control and cannot maintain a level head in the midst of battle. Therefore, you must not be this man.

Convince yourself that you are in need of nothing. If you have no needs, then you have nothing to be impatient about.

The ideal man is in constant control of himself.

The moment you start to feel the impatient emotions stirring within you, detach from yourself. Take a breath and do not allow this thought to proceed from your mind to your facial expressions. You cannot allow this to happen, you must be in constant control of your mind. Suppress those negative emotions and do not allow them to express themselves. You must have constant self-awareness so you can monitor your feelings. Be aware of the moments when you are feeling impatient. It is extremely difficult to command yourself if you have no self-awareness.

Suppress emotion.

Be aware of self.

Command your mind.

Conduct yourself like men.

Gambling – Wasted Strategic Resources

Is there a difference between obsessive gambling away your very last penny and gambling for entertainment? I think so. That still does not mean you should gamble at all. Probably not.

“Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.”
Proverbs 13:11

Gambling is a slippery slope. Simply gambling for entertainment is somewhat like just trying cocaine for fun; one hit will not kill you or cause immediate damage, but the addiction you are likely to develop could actually kill you.

Gambling addiction is perhaps the most extreme manifestation of bad stewardship.

It is unwise to waste the funds in our command. It is also a tremendous waste of time, as most chronic gamblers spend full days or nights throwing their money into slots.

Casinos typically have no windows in the gambling area, because they do not want you to know what time of day it is. If you came in during the morning while it was light and then could see that it was dark, you might feel like it would be time to go. If you have no idea what time it is, you will have no idea when to leave, so you just stay all day. These are marketing schemes of the business.

Do not be mistaken, people who gamble usually aren’t there because they want to make money or get rich quick. They are there because they are addicted to gambling itself. The psychology of these individuals is marred. You can ask people who gamble on slots and they may tell you that they don’t even want to win, because it interrupts their rhythm of putting money in and pulling the lever. This type of gambling has hijacked the brain’s reward system and made individuals addicted to the thrill and suspense of the gambling. It has nothing to do with the winning or losing, it is all about the suspense of the game. This is a dangerous addiction, as is anything that manipulates our natural reward circuits.

Mantra

Gambling is poor stewardship in disguise.

Application

If you gamble for entertainment, realize that you are playing with fire. What you are doing is similar to drinking or smoking for entertainment. And while gambling will not have negative effects that attack your health, it will lead you directly to poverty. There are better things you can be doing with your time.

If you are already addicted, the likelihood that you will be able to defeat this by willpower alone is low. Even though the philosophy of Spartan Christianity always recommends trying to do as much as you can on your own and build your own willpower and discipline, this time you may need help.

Get help from your bank and set parameters over what can be withdrawn or paid through a card. Tell your bank to set up your cards to reject specific businesses like casinos. You are going to have to lock down all of your resources and ride out the withdrawals. While it would be easy for you to work around these parameters, it still makes wasting your money at least slightly more difficult.

Since this is a serious addiction, you may need an accountability partner for a period of time.

Put someone you trust in charge of your money. Tell them you are trying to improve your life by avoiding gambling and you need help. Get your friend to watch your bank accounts and where money is being spent. Give him the power to freeze your cards or accounts if he/she sees you going off the rails.

Get a grip. Confess your faults. Lock down the variables. Be a Man.

Conduct Yourselves Like Men.

Mentors – Find Examples of Greatness

You need mentors who you can model your behavior after. It will be hard to become great if your only mentors are your family and people in the church. You must expand your collection of inspirational men.

“Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another”
Proverbs 27:17

“And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”
2 Timothy 2:2

“Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.”
Proverbs 1:5

You will almost never reach the majority of your goals by yourself. Every man who was ever great at his craft started by apprenticing under a master of that same craft. He would study and learn from someone who had lived a full life and had hundreds of practical lessons to pass along to him.

Many men think they can be good enough at a craft by teaching themselves, but this is not so.

Very few men are self-taught masters. Men are also confused about what it means to be self-taught. If you are learning math from a book, you are not self taught, the book is your teacher. If you are not taking guitar lessons but you learn by watching videos online or reading articles and books, you are not self-taught. With your ego you tell everyone that you have “taught yourself”, but you have learned your skill from other men.

To be truly self-taught means you extracted unknown knowledge from the ether. For example, the first person to show that you can calculate an unknown length of one side of a triangle by knowing the length of the other two sides was self-taught because he uncovered the underlying principles on new knowledge. By himself he learned what was not previously known, and was therefore self-taught. Another example would be a man who learns how to tie sailing knots by himself with no book. I understand that this is an extreme definition of “self-taught”, but you are reading this because you are an extremist.

The internet has put dozens of mentors at our fingertips.

So even when we cannot find good role models within the church, that does not excuse us from finding them elsewhere. We can find men from every walk of life who are doing everything that we want to do with our own lives. We can virtually model our life after theirs and live the way we believe is correct.

Your father is not enough of a mentor, you will not learn enough from him. The men in your family are not enough for you to learn many of the most important lessons and skills of life. You cannot limit your mentors to those in your church and immediate family. What you need are men who are living impressive lives, are masters at a craft or who are intelligent. You likely do not have many of those kinds of men in your family. In fact, you rarely have those men in your church.

You need to go outside the church to find mentors.

These men are going to help you improve your life on a non-spiritual level. So for this reason you need to go outside the church to find them. There are very few men in the church who are living impressive lives. Most men have used the Bible to try to justify their lack of ambition and subsequent lack of wealth or any manner of an impressive life. Get some mentors.

If you find mentors in the church, you need a large number of them. Do not limit yourself to just a few people. You must diversify your motivation portfolio.

Mantra

You are who you spend time with.

Application

Use the internet to find masters of whatever craft you want to improve at. There are plenty of good mentors online, and you have to pick the ones that best fall in line with the direction your life is taking. You need to be active in your learning and in the ways you gain knowledge about your career path or skill. Throughout the world there are thousands of mentors for music, leadership, training, building, public speaking, thinking and infinitely more topics.

There is no reason why anyone cannot become a master at any craft they want to in the modern world. And there is also no excuse for ignorance or lack of experience in any field. There are endless lessons and lectures online on any subject matter you could possibly think of. The internet has taken away every excuse from man as to why he is not successful or at least skilled in his personal endeavors.

If we truly are the average of the five people we spend the most time with, we need to start spending time with different people.

There is no reason to hang out with losers and to waste our time. We have been given every possible opportunity to improve ourselves, so let us not squander it by allowing the influences of weak men to shift us towards mediocrity.

Unfortunately this is what commonly happens in the church. Very few men in the church are great at anything. Many christian men call themselves righteous because they are not successful. “I’m a good Christian because I’m poor”, or “I’m not a part of those upper class people who think they are better than everyone”. You mean those upper class people who fund the country you live in? How do you know they think they are better than everyone? Could it be that you simply hate them because they have more material possessions than you? That seems like a silly thing to hate someone over.

You do not want to spend time with people who are of that mentality. They can only drag you down, and you are trying to be excellent at something. So get mentors outside the church.

First, decide what skill you want to develop.

Once you know that, you can single out the best men in the world at that craft and learn from them from whatever resources are available. If they have books, lectures or podcasts you can learn from those. Otherwise you can simply learn from observing those mentors in their element. There is no reason why we cannot learn from anyone we want to.

Get some mentors outside the church.

Learn from men who are great.

Model yourself after the best.

Imitate the masters.

Gain immeasurable skill.

Conduct yourself like men.

Mental Nutrition – You Are What You Think

Whatever you allow into your mind will shape the way you think and the way you act. Make sure your mental nutrition is positive and powerful.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
Philippians 4:8

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Romans 12:2

“Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
Colossians 3:2

What you allow into your mind will define you in life. Everything you allow into your mind develops the way you think and alters your perception of the world. Whatever consumes your regular thoughts determines what you are as an individual.

The man who consumes the news in the morning and evening and ingests it throughout the day becomes an outrage addict and ends up depressed about the state of the world. That man will almost never develop a positive mindset as a result of the constant consumption of mainstream media. He built that negative mentality with what he fed his mind.

The man who fills his thoughts with social media becomes a man who never lives his own life and who wallows in an inferiority complex. The man who fills his mind with “junk food” will develop the corresponding level of mental fitness. He will be fat and lazy in mind even if his physical body is in decent shape (which usually will not happen because an out of shape mind almost never produces a fit physical body).

The man who listens to effeminate music becomes effeminate.

The man who listens to aggressive music becomes aggressive and can harness that aggression.

Whatever we think about is what we become. It follows that the man who consumes positive mental nutrition is a man who becomes a more respectable, successful and mentally fit individual. The man who fills his mind with positive stories and anecdotes of success or motivational speeches about perseverance and work ethic is a man who will eventually embody those characteristics.

The results of mental nutrition accumulate in their effects just as the results of physical nutrition accumulate over time.

No one instance of positive or negative mental nutrition will change you in a notable way because results are always gained over the long-term. The results of your thoughts are not seen until they compile into a mass. No single donut results in morbid obesity if you are already fit. No single training session will transform you if you are already out of shape.

For this reason you must commit to a long-term mental diet of positive thoughts. You cannot constantly put the negativity of the world into your mind and expect to be any better than the world. You are what you think, therefore, control your thoughts. Control what goes into your mind because that will determine what you think about. A positive mental attitude results in positive self-esteem which is the foundation for success.

Mantra

You are what you think.

Application

Start a habit of consuming a positive visual diet every day. Fill your mind with motivation or knowledge. Cut back on the visual garbage foods that you enjoy eating like the news or reality TV (if you watch reality TV as a man, you need to go outside and chop wood right now).

Staying up to date with the state of the country and knowing how you are going to vote is good, but becoming increasingly depressed and negative as a result of watching the news for hours a day is not good. If you already know your political position then why are you concerned with what other politicians are doing? Is constantly calling the other political party “stupid” really doing anything for the country?

Replace the time you would normally spend consuming garbage with a positive diet of strong thoughts.

The internet has put dozens of mentors, positive thinkers and motivational speakers at our fingertips. Do not waste the extremely valuable resources that we have been given.

You have free access to all the positive material you could ever consume in a lifetime and much more. You are certainly more likely to hear something that would change your thinking and life through a positive speaker or mentor than you are to hear it through the local news station.

Just type “motivational speech” into your internet search bar and you will have millions of results.

You need to listen to at least one of these a day. You also need to reduce your consumption of social media and other assorted mental feces. Men do not waste their lives by scrolling through the lives of other people. You must have the strength of mind to reject these common trappings of life.

Control what goes into your mind and you will have a much easier time controlling your thoughts. Through your positive mental diet you control the soil of the mind from which the fruits of correct thinking will grow.

No man improved himself through facebook.

No man grew his character scrolling down on instagram.

Nor was a great man developed through the daily consumption of the news.

Men improve from strong thinking and from learning from other men. You can improve your life or waste your life through what the internet has to offer.

So learn and grow like a man.

Improve yourself.

Do not misapply the virtue of contentment to your character.

Feed the mind with the thoughts of a champion.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Physical Nutrition – Stewardship of The Body

We have been given temporary bodies. How we steward over them based on the physical nutrition we take in speaks volumes about our character. Though this may seem unrelated to Christianity, it has it’s purposes.

“If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?”
Luke 16:11

Very few men in the church take care of their bodies. They excuse themselves from their responsibility of managing their bodies because of their “other responsibilities”. They have careers to think about. What man has time to train the body or to eat correctly. Try almost 100% of CEOs.

What weak men mean when they say they cannot take care of their bodies is that eating healthy fuel is not easy or fun. Everything men do in life can be simplified to this desire for convenience and ease. No one wants to eat grilled chicken for the fifth time in a row, especially when someone brought donuts to the office.

Physical nutrition must be important to Christian men,

We as men have no right to put garbage in our bodies on a constant basis. It does not benefit the body, but most of all it does not benefit the mind to give into weakness on a regular basis like the majority of the weak world. The mind grows when we prove to ourselves that we can command our own bodies. Our mentality improves when we choose to be disciplined rather than to constantly indulge ourselves.

I want to note that I do not mean that you have to eat perfectly “clean” every single meal. In fact, no one can clearly define what “clean” is. We as men cannot allow garbage fuels to dominate our nutrition. I do not speak against enjoying various foods and various times, just do not make it your habit.

Common Quibble I: “Jesus talked about the food that we eat, and told us that it is not what goes into the body that defiles a man, but what comes out of the man that is a result of his thoughts.” Jesus spoke about the good or evil of eating food and of defilement, not about the nutritional content of that food. Jesus would say that it is not sinful to eat a donut, but it will not build your body if you eat donuts every day.

Common Quibble 2: “It is too expensive to eat clean”. No it is not. Oatmeal, peanut butter, eggs, black beans and a little chicken will suffice if you are on a budget. These foods can be eaten at under five dollars a day. Buy the off-brands.

Men are too lazy to eat well.

Men would rather eat what is convenient. This is a problem because your mind and body can only function to the level of the quality of the fuel you put into it. You are aware of this when you eat foods that you do not burn off as energy throughout the day. If you eat ten slices of pizza, you are acutely aware of how you feel afterwards: sluggish physically and mentally.

You are more than welcome to eat junk food, just know you will have a difficult time performing as a man if you eat garbage. Know that eating weak food will make you a weak man. Make some sacrifices in your diet and you will be a better man as a result.

Mantra

You are what you eat.

Application

Skip most of the aisles at the store. The healthy foods are always kept in the perimeter of the store. The only foods you need from the aisles are peanut butter and oatmeal. Some might argue that the five foods I have outlined are not healthy. Even if they are not healthy based on the standards of some, they are definitely more healthy than the trash you are putting into your body already.

You don’t have to eat the same meals fifty times in a row, just have a collection of nutritious foods that you rotate through. Eat something you like such as donuts every now and then as opposed to eating them every day. It’s not one instance of junk food that creates the problem, it’s chronic consumption. so avoid letting donuts dominate your nutrition plan.

Cook your food ahead of time. This eliminates panic or convenience eating.

Eliminate junk from your house. Cut off the temptation entirely.

Eat like a man, not like a child.

Conduct yourselves like men.

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