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How Failure is Like Inflammation (Failure Part 2.)

Failure can be likened to inflammation in the body. When the human body is damaged, it undergoes a process of inflammation to heal itself. This same basic inflammatory process happens whether you scratch your arm or break your leg. It consists of three processes that overlap one another.

The first component is the inflammatory stage.

This period lasts about a week during which the body is trying to stop bleeding, get repair materials to the injury site and fight infection if necessary. This is the stage that is the most painful, because it begins the moment an injury is sustained. The body is rapidly performing all the “damage control” processes it can in order to limit the extent of the damage.

The second stage of inflammation begins somewhere between the 6^th and 20^th day after the injury, though many experts disagree as to when this stage actually begins.

This second section of injury repair is called the proliferation stage.

Here the body is trying to repair the overall damage of the injury by building new blood vessels, build new tissue to replace what was lost or killed, shrinking the size of the wound, and covering it with a new layer of skin. Each of these four processes happen at the same time, it is a masterful renovation of the body. During this stage, the body is recovering in a broad sense, not really paying too much attention to detail but rather simply trying to restore the structural integrity of the injured tissue or body parts. In this stage, you can move the injured site around and even poke the injury, and while it still may be tender or painful, it is much better than it was during the first week.

The final stage of inflammation is called the maturation stage; this stage can last from months to years depending on the injury.

This is where the body is finished with the rough renovation of the injury and really starts focusing on the details. It tries to line up collagen and other cells nicely so that you look like you never injured yourself.

Now what could this possibly have to do with dealing with failure? Here is the answer: when we are hit with a failure as men, we go through an eerily similar process of recovery.

Recovering from Failure – The Steps

I. Inflammation Phase: The moments right after failing a test, performing poorly in a sport, or at work are some of the most painful moments you experience. You may find that your lower back and kidneys begin to hurt. Your head may start to spin, and you question your adequacy as a man and perhaps question if it is worth it to stay alive.

The most important action you can take at this moment is to avoid ruminating on the failure. Just like you put an icepack on a new injury to limit inflammation, you must put an icepack of sorts on your mind. You need to do anything you can to distract your mind and put it on a different loop. What you are trying to do is prevent your brain from replaying the failure over and over again and also prevent yourself from thinking about what you would have done differently.

You can derail your train of thought by training extremely hard, playing a game, or diving into your favorite distraction. You have to prevent yourself from ruminating. One failure is enough, there is no need to mentally relive it for the next hour; that is the source of the majority of stress in people’s minds.

This first action is the Damage Control Maneuver.

II. Proliferation Phase: If you scratch a chunk out of your arm, the body dutifully fills that hole. If you take a chunk out of your pride or self-esteem by failing, you must repair it the same way. At this point, the pain of the failure itself is leaving, though your pride may still be aching. In this period, you can begin to assess what went wrong with your performance in a rational, detached way. You will want to wait several days to begin this process if possible because the pain and emotions of the inflammatory stage make it impossible to be rational about your performance.

You must simultaneously repair your self-esteem by winning small successes in other life areas and reassess and prepare to go to war with your enemy – be it an exam, a project, or a speech. Once you have clearly located the gaps in your ability, attack them with ferocious force. You must train and practice far more than you did in your first attempt with the enemy. You must also put your mind in a superior position. If you go into the next project or exam already demoralized or defeated, you will get crushed. But if you go into the project with a fire in your eyes and the intense desire to annihilate that enemy, you will be victorious.

This second act of mass preparation is the Sword Sharpening Maneuver.

“The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.” ~Sun Tzu

III. Maturation Phase: This is the long-term recovery from failure where you integrate the lessons learned into your character and actually learn to become thankful for the failure. You learn some of the most important lessons of your life in failure from how to manage your immediate emotions, recover self-esteem, and become more intense in your work. Once those lessons are integrated into your character, you are more masculine, and the pain of failure is essentially gone. Perhaps you feel a few nagging aches every few weeks, but for the most part, you have completely recovered.

You complete this phase of healing by looking back on the failure while completely detached and free from the painful emotions of the first two phases. From this perspective, you can see all the ways your failure actually made you better, stronger, and more mentally prepared for your future.

This final action is the Reclaiming the Throne Maneuver.

As bad as failure feels at the time, what you will notice over time is that the more you attempt anything, the more you will fail. The more you fail, the shorter the inflammation of failure becomes. Your first major failure may take you two months to recover from. The next failure just 6 weeks. This will progress until you have accepted failure as a part of life, extract its benefits, and recover within a few days or even within a few hours if you are a master. Learn to manage and appreciate the inflammation of failure and you will undoubtedly be a great man.

You also need standards for your own personal failure, weather in your physical training in personal growth. Without standards and the reality of failure, we have no way to evaluate our performance. When we cannot evaluate our performance, we cannot know when we have failed. If we cannot know when we fail, we will not know when we need to improve. When we do not know if we need to improve, we will remain stagnant. Therefore, failure is a compass of character, it directs us towards who we want to be. A man must first decide who he wants to be before he can begin working on becoming that ideal.

“Those in athletic pursuit first chose the sport they want, and then do the work.” ~ Epictetus

Be willing to fail. Do not let the fear of failure prevent you from acting. Failure is a surefire path to growth and learning. And it comes at a fraction of the cost of a modern college education.

The next time you hit failure, try to rush being thankful for that failure. You just learned a lesson you will never forget. That alone makes failure a better teacher than any egghead in a classroom.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Conduct Yourselves like Men.

Reference: Epictetus, and Robert Dobbin. Discourses and Selected Writings. Penguin Books, 2008.

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.

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.

Chivalry and Knighthood

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:”
1 Peter 2:9

Men who wear the name of Christ must conduct themselves with the highest levels of virtue. Throughout history, men have formed various orders or groups by which they hold themselves to tremendous standards in order to improve as men. One of these ancient orders was knighthood.

While it was necessary to have the proper family lineage to become a knight (or gain enough wealth to forge a coat of arms and a lineage of nobility), one could still hold himself to the high standards that the code of chivalry required of knights. Historical accounts differ as to the order of the rules on the code of chivalry.

However, the first rule of chivalry was always the same: Fear God and honor the church. This was the knight’s first and most important duty.

The other rules would lay out the treatment of women and the weak along with ways to live a life of character. Though I would argue that men should not be completely chivalrous with women. Before you throw this book out the window, let me explain what I mean by that. While it is absolutely important to treat women with kindness and to protect them, you must reject the chivalric behavior that placed a woman at the center of a man’s life.

A knight was required to pursue a lady and go through “virtuous rejection” from that lady until finally he convinced her to marry him. At that point he would have to do some grand deed to earn the right to marry that woman and finance her lifestyle for the rest of her days.

The modern knight, the Spartan Christian should not have a woman as the center of his focus.

That place is reserved for God alone. Men can love, honor and cherish their women without making them the focal point of their existence. Chivalry expected men to essentially worship women, and this is the part of chivalry we must reject.

Men in the church need their own code so they themselves can improve their lives.

Unfortunately, many men need something more than the Bible, because they do not read it. Men need concrete rules outlining how they are to behave. We as men must hold ourselves to standards that may seem impossible to meet. By holding ourselves to titanic standards, we ensure excellence from ourselves. No man ever becomes great by trying to be a good man. All great men become great by attempting to be perfect. We cannot meet that standard, but by aiming extremely high we are able to attain greatness. We ourselves must aim at standards higher than we can ever attain.

The church is a select order of men and women who wish to give up the pleasure of this world for the benefits that God’s eternity has to offer. The church is a select, royal priesthood (1 Peter 2:9) of warlords who rage and war against the powers of darkness (Ephesians 6:10-17). Implicit in the code of chivalry is the need to fight and kill in the name of greater values. The opposition must always be crushed. And the adversary must always be thrown down for the sake of the faith.

You may never have to shed human blood, but you must wage intense war against principalities, powers and rulers of darkness of the age. You must wage war against your weakness. Men must hold themselves to a code at all times.

Mantra

Fear God and Honor the Church.

Application

Set rules for yourself. Write down the characteristics of the ideal man and then visualize how that man would behave and try to mimic it in your life. The only way to be great is to strive to be perfect.

Write your own code of chivalry. Pen your own laws and principles that would drive you to become the ideal man. Frame your code and hang it on your wall. Think and meditate on your code on a daily basis. Then evaluate yourself and see if you are living up to your standards or if you are falling behind.

You must have some goal or ideal that you are striving for at all times, this is the only way that you can make progress and attain excellence Keep records of how you conduct yourself and of how well you keep to your code. Have a notebook where you have written your codes and desired behaviors, then draw a small chart where you can track your behavior. This allows you to measure progress and make adjustments to your strategies, and what gets measured gets accomplished.

You should have a code with women: Never be alone with a woman who is not your wife.

Because the chance that you will try to have sex with her are high, even if you are a complete beta-male.

Do not raise your voice. Because any man who raises his voice in a way that is not calculated, controlled and purposed has not even fully mastered himself and is weak. Make sure you are not that weak man. By controlling your voice you show tremendous strength and power over yourself and your emotions.

Be honest.

Keep to your character.

Make difficult decisions.

We must always be trying to change and improve, this is the only way to live.

Think about your code.

Honor the church.

Think like a man of honor and then act like one.

Aim at perfection constantly.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Fasting – Mental And Physiological Benefits

“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
Matthew 6:16-18

“Why have we fasted, and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves, and you take no knowledge of it?’ Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers. Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself?

Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? “Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?”
Isaiah 58:3-7

Men do not talk about fasting anymore.

No one likes to fast because everyone loves pleasure and comfort. Many people view food as a god in the way they think and speak about it, including many Christians. This section is not going to be about bashing food and eating. Some Christians feel the need to avoid any and every type of pleasure including the enjoyment of eating. That is not the purpose of this section, though people do tend to bow to the altar of food.

“For forty days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry.”
Luke 4:2

When Christ spoke to us about fasting, He said that “when you fast” you should conduct yourself in a certain way (Matthew 6:16-18).

We place emphasis on the word “When”. Christ expected us to fast, it was not simply a suggestion. And while it seems like fasting is just another commandment, it actually brings several physiological benefits. As always, God, the Great Scientist, directs us towards actions that benefit us in the long run. Here are a few of the assorted benefits of fasting, and the sources for these statements are at the bottom of the page:

Fasting has been shown to have anticancer effects. It can also reduce inflammation in the body. This is beneficial if you have inflamed joints or any kind of sickness that involves high levels of body system inflammation. If you have blood pressure problems, fasting can help mediate those symptoms to a degree. Fasting protects brain cells and prevents the onset of dementia. This is known as the neuroprotective effects of fasting. It also promotes the growth of new brain cells in a process called neurogenesis. Overeating and gluttony may be prominent contributing factors of all the various types of dementia that we are seeing in the world. Weight Loss is an obvious benefit of consuming less calories during a fast. Fasting also increases growth hormone secretion in men, allowing for more muscle growth and better hormonal biochemistry overall. Lastly, fasting, and calorie restriction in general, can increase your lifespan.

Fasting can be uncomfortable, but the benefits it provides are numerous.

You save time during fasts because you do not have to prepare food. When Christ gave the command to fast, He wanted us to replace the time we normally spend eating with prayer.

We gain more time besides what we spend eating meals. All the time it takes to buy and prepare food is saved. Besides all the health benefits, there are benefits for your mentality that come from fasting. After you go through the hunger pains, you might have greater focus and mental clarity though these benefits are more subjective and tend to vary from person to person. Whatever your motivation for fasting is, you must fast. Christ expects it from us.

Mantra

I Sacrifice the pleasure of food for the profit of prayer.

Application

If long-term fasting scares you, you are weak minded and must strengthen yourself. You will need to start with the easy path of Intermittent fasting (IF). IF is where you fast for a portion of the day and then consume all your calories in a small eating window. Most people practice 16 hours of fasting with an 8 hour eating window. Obviously you will want to sleep during part of the 16 hours fasting window. If you have a standard job and are hungry in the mornings, you may want to start eating at 10 AM and stop at 6 PM. 12 PM – 8 PM may be the most reasonable eating window if you can wait until lunch time. IF will give you some of the benefits of fasting without the pain of long term fasting.

I think full day, 72 hours and longer fasts are the best. Work yourself up to the point where you can hold these fasts. There is no advice and there are no tips for fasting. You simply do not eat. Be sure to drink water. Easy.

Build the strength of the mind.

Behave wisely and with honor.

Prioritize action over emotion.

Conduct yourselves like men.

Sources

1 – Brandhorst, S. “Fasting and Caloric Restriction in Cancer Prevention and Treatment.”, Recent Results Cancer Research, 2016.

2 – Lavin, Desiree et. al. “Fasting induces an anti-inflammatory effect on the neuroimmune system which a high-fat diet prevents”, Obesity, Aug. 2011

3 – Anderson, B. Et. al. “Acute effects of short-term fasting on blood pressure, circulating noradrenaline and efferent sympathetic nerve activity.”, Acta Medica Scandinavica. 1988

4 – Manzanero, Silvia et. al. “Intermittent fasting attenuates increases in neurogenesis after ischemia and reperfusion and improves recovery”, Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow Metabolism. Feb. 19, 2014

5 – Ho, K. Y. et. al. “Fasting enhances growth hormone secretion and amplifies the complex rhythms of growth hormone secretion in man”. The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Apr 1988

6 – Carlson, Anton J. et. al. “Apparent Prolongation of the Life Span of Rats by Intermittent Fasting: One Figure”. Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Mar 1, 1946

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