As Christians, we believe that God is sovereign over all things, including the governments of the world. In Romans 13, Paul writes that earthly rulers are appointed by God and are to be obeyed, except when their commands conflict with God’s commands. This means that government, at all levels, is an institution ordained by God and should be respected and engaged with as such.
That does not mean the governmental institution is beyond criticism. Just like we can critique marriages that do not follow the pattern God set [one man + one woman for life], we can also criticize the government when it does not follow the commandments of God.
Christians are called to be salt and light in the world. Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:13-16 that we are to be a blessing to the world and to let our light shine before others, so that they may see our good deeds and glorify God.
This includes being involved in the political process and using our voices to demand righteousness. We have to do this because the standard for justice and righteousness comes from God and the Bible. Without the knowledge of that standard, how will the government, ordained by God, Approved by God, be able to act in accordance with the will and justice of God?
No one else is going to push Christian values besides Christians. Therefore, Christians have the just responsibility to involve themselves in politics and push those values.
One of the reasons that the government exists is to protect citizens, punish wrongdoing, and reward good behavior. As Christians, we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves and to do good. By participating in the political process and fighting to shape the policies and laws that govern our communities, we can help ensure that our government can fulfill its God-ordained role of promoting the values of God and righteousness.
That is truly the main point, working to change government and policies so that the result is God-approved law.
It is also not moral to just do nothing, to ignore the political arena and hope everything works out for the best. We are required to be active in making a positive impact in the world. This includes being engaged in the political process and working to bring about positive change in our communities and beyond.
Even though God always works things for the good [Rom 8:28] and has all things under His control, that does not excuse us from taking action.
God having everything under control has never excused His people from taking action.
God was in control when Israel crossed the Jordan into the promised land, but you don’t see the children of Israel saying “Well, God is in control so we don’t have to do anything. We can just chill and He will take care of us”. No, they had to obey the word of the Lord even though He had all things under control. And this included taking action and going to war, against the pagan inhabitants of Canaan.
1. Promote biblical values and principles through your voting.
Many of the issues that come before governments at all levels have moral and ethical implications. Morals and ethics can only be understood from a religious perspective as God is the source of the moral compass within us all. By getting active in the political process, Christians can advocate for policies that embody biblical principles, such as the sanctity of life, the importance of family, and the value of hard work and personal responsibility which each coincide with the avoidance of socialistic policy.
As Christians, we have the right to freely practice our faith and share it with others. That is not the case across the world and will not permanently be the case if Christians continue to choose to bury their heads in the sand instead of vote. Being involved in the political process guarantees that we can work to protect this freedom and ensure that it is not infringed upon by government policies or legislation.
3. Someone must hold politicians accountable
And they must be held accountable according to a higher moral standard that comes down from the mind of God in His scriptures. Christians can use their voices and their votes to hold politicians accountable for their actions and to ensure that they are working in the best interests of their constituents.
Christians are called to be salt and light in the world (Matthew 5:13-16).
Being involved in the political process is one way to be salt and light in the world.
Therefore, Christians should be involved in politics, government, and elections.
The government exists to protect citizens, punish wrongdoing, and reward good behavior (Romans 13).
Christians are called to love their neighbors as themselves and to do good to all people (Galatians 6:10).
Therefore, Christians should be involved in politics, government, and elections to help shape policies and laws that promote righteousness, promote the punishment of wrongdoing, and provide protection for citizens.
Furthermore, it is not moral to do nothing and hope everything works out for the best. Therefore, Christians should be involved in politics, government, and elections to actively work toward bringing about change in the world.
I gave two views on monogamy: one view states God designed men for monogamy and the other is that men are promiscuous by nature and that they must harness and manage their sexual urges for the betterment of humanity and for the betterment of their own spirituality.
For years I have held the position that men are not wired for monogamy. Male biology does not seem to be wired for it. We seem to crave sexual variety and quickly grow discontent with our singular source of sexual access. Granted, mere biological optimization speaks neither for nor against the morality of something. Much of Christianity wars against our nature. Man’s biology seems to naturally pull him towards promiscuity. But one new perspective is that this nature is merely the result of no mental discipline.
It is worth performing a thought experiment and analysis on, though I still believe that men are not purpose-built for monogamy. It seems to me that both men and women have internal wars they have to fight against their own very nature in order to be obedient to God. Men resist the urge to spread their sexual seed as far and wide as possible. And women resist the urge to constantly trade up, or they try to reorient their thinking to find Christianity attractive [not arousing] and value those traits in a man.
I think one of the places I have gone wrong before in writing about monogamy is not separating man into his different drives. I do not believe we should think of monogamy as something that man as a whole is or is not wired for. What I mean by this is that man has multiple layers.
The libido of man is not optimized for monogamy. If a man is trying to remain sexually disciplined – his biology will be warring against him. The Coolidge effect and subsequent experiments are demonstrative of that reality.
There is no way for one singular source of sexual access [a wife] to compete with a variety [multiple girlfriends/pornography] of novel sources in a one-to-one comparison. Again – we are speaking strictly of the amoral male libido in this circumstance. When the question is simply about sex and sex drive, men are wired to want multiple partners. This is something that Christian men have to discipline themselves against in order to manage.
The spirit of man is optimized for monogamy. Now the higher mentality of man may want to be monogamous. Maybe this is natural, maybe it is the result of feminine-centric society indoctrinating him about “Soul mates” and other common myths, it is difficult to truly tell.
I think when the higher mind of a man competes with his libido, most libidos will win. The discipline to manage themselves is simply not present in most men. I believe I’ve read before by another author that “biology trumps conviction”. I believe that statement – which is why environmental control is so critical to any form of discipline.
Want to be monogamous? Create an environment that supports monogamy. Because your biology is doing you no favors.
This is the bedrock philosophy of why men shouldn’t be alone with other women. And I think men and women cannot be friends at all. Why would a man have to avoid being with other women if he were naturally monogamous? The answer is: he isn’t. And if a man was alone with a woman, his biology would be waging total war against his conviction, and it would be difficult to see who would come out the victor.
The best-case scenario is to never engage in those battles. This is done by environmental control. Do not trust in your character, trust in habit and environment.
On Mental Training
If you never provide a child with any direction, he will grow up to be an uncivilized man. If you never train a dog, it will grow up to be disobedient and feral. Could it be that men are the same way with regard to sexual training and discipline?
Perhaps men actually are designed to be monogamous, but they lack training and direction with regard to sexual discipline. They have never been given any direction on how to manage their sex drive. Men receive no training on how to handle their own physiology or use it productively in order to be successful in the world.
And it is no wonder. Because what do men in the church know about this? They have obviously failed on the front of sexual education for young Christians for generations.
You have two basic types of men in the church. These are opposing extremes, and they are certainly not all there is, but they are the most glaring examples.
The unfaithful man acts on every sexual impulse he has and eventually relinquishes his religion and goes into the world or finds a church tolerant enough to ignore the bible’s teaching on marriage and accept his adulterous lifestyle.
And on the other side, you have the castrated beta male. These are the men who come out of the womb without testicles. They are subservient to females, pedestalize them, and mindlessly self-sacrificer to the vagina gods in order to receive their good favor. This man loves to tell you about how “rewarding” and “fulfilling” his marriage is, despite observable evidence to the contrary.
The former makes up about 20% of the church and the latter makes up the remaining 80%.
What would a man look like if he was actually trained from his youth to manage his sexual impulses? Or better yet, to convert them into success? That would be a rare breed of man. He would not fall into any of these two categories.
But there will never be any type of training like that because what religious man knows anything about sexual discipline? Most religious men either have no sexual access, or babble on about sexual purity one minute and are masturbating to pornography the next minute. Have any of these men seen the heat of the sexual battlefield, claimed victory, and lived to tell the tale?
The majority of men who are masculine and high value commonly fail to save sex for marriage. So we cannot listen to their advice – they lost their war. Those who are beta males are the ones we want to avoid imitating our actions as well if we are interested in avoiding sexless marriages.
But men could be built better [regarding sexual discipline] from a young age, no one can deny this. One of the problems is far too much feminine influence at the expense of masculine influence. When kids spend all day around mom is it any wonder when they start acting like mom [even the sons]?
Men could be raised and trained to manage their urges, channel their sex drive and transmute it into something better. Convert it into a drive for success until it can be used morally, based on the principles of the Bible, within marriage.
I always hesitate to make comments about “biblically correct sex” because there is no way to talk about it without looking and sounding like a loser. Probably because the only people who talk about it are losers on the scale of masculinity.
However, I can acknowledge the fact that men are likely built to crave sexual variety, but then required to sacrifice that drive for the sake of Christ.
Notice that this is not a sacrifice made for the express benefit of women. Christ has asked us to do something difficult – limit our sexual relationships to one woman for life.
That’s not easy. That is not a light request. That is a heavy request and a painful sacrifice. It’s not a sacrifice made directly for women – it is a sacrifice made directly for God. And it is something that is difficult to reason through, especially at the height of a sexual urge that you have no religiously justified outlet for if you are a single man.
This walk of faith comes at a cost to your pleasures. The Bible tells us that sin is pleasurable [Heb 11:25], anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. The sins of this world are very enjoyable to engage in. And to give them up for Christ is a major sacrifice.
It is a sacrifice because we want those pleasures badly, we are built to crave them, yet we must deny ourselves. And we are left to hope that trading all the pleasures on earth will be worth the pleasures of heaven. It doesn’t matter how good heaven is made to sound by your preacher, that is still a hard trade for a 19-year-old guy at the height of his natural testosterone production trying to stifle a sexual urge or hide his erection while sitting in a church pew.
How about instead of continuing to say “Well it’ll be worth it. Heaven will be worth it. Marriage will be worth it. Everything will make sense”, we start to accept the fact that the trade is difficult. It is just difficult. It may very well be true that marriage is “worth it”, whatever that may mean, but that does not mean marriage is any less of a sacrifice and a risk [professional, financial, social, sexual, emotional, psychological] for a man – especially in the 21st century.
Closing
Job said that he made a covenant with his eyes never to look at a woman lustfully. What kind of mental training does that involve? Sure, we could sit around and argue all day that Job did not have the same temptations and pressures that men today have. Many modern women are walking advertisements for sex, and we can always point fingers and say Job had it easier. But the reality is that this man set rules and regulations for the proper use of his own mind. There were certain ways that it was to be used and certain ways that were not allowed. He likely passed this training on to his sons as well.
We should work to replicate the mind of Job, the man who imposed complete control on his own body. And if we work to train ourselves and to train our sons from a young age, perhaps they will be in a better position than most Christians. Because while the people in the church want to sit around and pretend like sex does not exist, their sons are already learning more about sex from school and the internet than they could ever expect.
The difficulty in managing sexual drive demands better sexual education in the church. Again I note that most men do not know anything about sex. They know little about purity and warring against urges successfully because women find the majority of men unattractive and low value, and these men will never have to struggle to attain their purity. But perhaps if there is the one in a million man who is high value but sexually disciplined – he could teach men how to manage and redirect sexual impulses.
Now perhaps it’s a silly question because most people will be forgotten in the annals of history. And there’s nothing wrong with that. And a thousand years, should the world still stand, nothing we do here will matter, outside of how we acted in relation to our God.
However, on the off chance that there is one small line said about you in a book of history, wouldn’t you want that to be a positive note? Or would you even care?
I’m not saying there’s a right or wrong answer. Some of the more old-school style thinkers would want you to establish your name throughout history through assorted virtuous actions. And that’s fine and good, just remember that the only problem with the legacy is that you’re dead.
The only point of establishing a legacy is to alleviate the guilt you feel in the present for not leaving one. People feel negatively while they are alive about how they will be viewed when they are dead.
In that sense, it almost seems like a little bit too much to worry about during our brief lifetime.
However, just to learn a lesson from history, if there were to be a note written about you, it would be likely that you wouldn’t want it to be a negative one.
Well, there was a negative note left about the Nobles in the days of Nehemiah. The Bible takes a valuable line to let us know that the Nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of the Lord.
There was work to be done for good, and they chose not to do it. And that choice of action Echoes throughout history.
The Bible takes great care in Nehemiah 3 to tell us about everyone who is working in the city of Jerusalem, In this instance concerning the walls that were broken down. But in all the examples of people who worked, to repair, defend, and rebuild that city of Jerusalem, we have the lesson that the Nobles did not put their shoulders to the work of the Lord.
What a shameful Legacy to leave. And in their defense, they are dead. They could probably care less about their legacy. With some of them enjoying their reward and some suffering punishment, as is the normal delineation of human beings in the afterlife. But I would suppose that even those who are enjoying their reward would prefer to go back and have this element of their history blotted out.
A legacy of laziness is not the name that anyone would want to leave on this earth after they die. But it’s the name that the Nobles of Nehemiah 3 left.
If you have an opportunity to put your shoulders to the work of the lord, do it, even if it’s in a small, seemingly insignificant way.
But beyond that, do not forget to hold fast to your daily disciplines: reading the scriptures [try Nehemiah 3], praying, and obeying the statutes and Commandments of God. Holding the line of discipline against a culture of worldliness.
You have to manage your presentation. The way you present yourself to others is key to your success.
The only way to maintain a degree of control over the impression you deliver and the power you have is through your visual presentation. Your body language, your expressions, your verbal articulations. All other power maneuvers come down through this outlet. Presentation is the delivery mechanism by which you make your move in this world.
This is a lesson you learn from the scripture as well. Nehemiah was a cupbearer for the king of the time. This is a highly trusted position, as one of Nehemiah’s roles would be to screen the king’s drink for poison.
When working in the presence of the king, he always managed his presentation. You cannot have a bad day in front of the king. You cannot be negative in front of the king. Your very life may depend on the king’s emotional equilibrium, which will be affected by the way you present yourself.
It was not until Nehemiah was aware of the condition of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 2:1-2 that he was unable to maintain a positive appearance in the presence of the king. In fact, look at what the scripture says.
“And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before. 2 Therefore the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.””
Nehemiah had never once been sad in the presence of the king. If you want an example of self-control this is it. Or if you want an example of managing your presentation in public appearance, this is also it.
Where do we go wrong when we interact with others? It’s when others can tell just by looking at us that we aren’t ourselves. It’s when we give away that we’re having a bad day by our facial expressions. I’m not saying that we can’t have bad days, stress, or difficulty. I’m saying we don’t let it show. If people can tell something is wrong with you just by looking at you, they are in a perfect position to manipulate you. The emotional man is the manipulated man.
It is the role of a man to suppress that type of behavior. I know it’s no longer popular to say that men should do traditionally masculine things like manage their emotions, but as you well know as a reader of Spartan Christianity, I don’t really care what people find popular. A man has to manage his emotional state and, if he is having a bad day, return it to its original state of equilibrium as quickly as he can.
The man is the Bedrock of the family unit. If he’s unstable, the entire family unit’s unstable.
So even though he doesn’t have to be an emotionless robot [though I think he should manage his emotions as well] he does have the incredible responsibility of never letting the people he is leading [his family] know that he’s having a bad day. Men don’t get to have bad days. The crushing burdens of performance will beat a man down if he starts to show his bad days.
Let’s learn our lesson from Nehemiah: manage your presence in front of other people, and other leadership. If you’re working, never let your boss or customers know you’re having a bad day. You don’t get to have a bad day. Additionally, no one cares if you do have a bad day as a man. And in fact, if you act like you’re not having a bad day, it won’t take too long before you forget that you weren’t having a bad day, and that will be back to a neutral day, maybe even a good one.
But it doesn’t matter how it turns out. All that matters is how you act. Actions are everything. Emotions and intentions are nothing. Motivations or nothing. Don’t obsess yourself with how you’re feeling, obsess yourself with how you’re acting.
Manage your presence in front of the king. Don’t let anyone know that you’re having a Down day.
You are an actor on stage. And your mask is one of masculine self-control. The goal is to eventually replace that mask with truly integrated masculine self-control that has no choice but to leak out of you. But until that moment comes, act like a man. Even if you don’t feel like one, act like one. And by acting like one you’ll eventually feel like one.
Last week we talked about progressive overload and its use in training for muscle hypertrophy. With that groundwork, you can better understand this week’s article: how to apply the principles of progressive overload to your personal development.
In developing yourself, you use many of the same tools that you would use in developing your body.
Tracking and measurement of Performance.
Precise Exercise Selection for precise results.
Emphasis on weak or lagging areas.
Application of the specificity principle.
Application of the overload principle.
Continual development of the self is key to everything in life. Whether improving your work performance, relationships, or social skills – all can be improved by progressively overloading these elements of yourself.
I. Understanding Progressive Overload in Personal Development
A. Defining Progressive Overload
If you missed last week’s article, progressive overload is a key idea in physical training. It requires you to apply a stimulus that will activate growth of the body [overload], and continue to apply and increase that stimulus to maintain progress.
Your development must be progressive because what improves you today will be too easy to improve you tomorrow. This applies to weight training as well as personal development. Addressing your basic weaknesses in socialization will require some basic tools. But as you become advanced, those same tools will be insufficient for allowing you to progress even further.
What pushes you beyond your zone of comfort as a beginner may be a warmup for you as an advanced person, both as a lifter and as a charismatic [or whatever/whoever you are trying to become].
B. Establishing a Baseline
The process of improvement always begins with an analysis of where you are right now. You cannot get better if you do not know where you are currently.
When an athlete sits down and writes down the primary demands and requirements of his sport, this is called a “Need’s Analysis”. And it is an excellent way to articulate the basic necessities of your sport.
The same applies to your life and personal development. What are those basic, intermediate, and advanced skills that you need as a human being?
Write these down.
What do you need to do to be able to function in society, succeed in society, and thrive in society [novice, intermediate, and advanced categories]?
If you are going to improve, you have to be self-aware and self-critical. Not to a pathological degree, but no one ever improves by pretending they have no faults.
Life Skills
* Time management and organization * Developing a growth mindset * Basic problem-solving and decision-making skills. * Effective communication skills (listening, speaking, and writing) * Financial literacy and budgeting * Self-awareness and emotional intelligence * Goal setting and planning * Health Discipline (exercise, nutrition, sleep) * Stress management and resilience * Adaptability and openness to learning * Self-Discipline (push yourself when you don’t want to)
Business Skills
* Basic understanding of business ethics and professionalism * Familiarity with common business terminologies and concepts * Work Ethic * Basic customer service skills * Basic project management skills * Basic knowledge of marketing principles * Basic financial analysis and budgeting * Basic problem-solving skills in a professional context * Understanding workplace etiquette and teamwork * Basic networking and relationship-building skills
Relationship Skills
* Active listening Eye contact mastery * Body LanguageConfrontation and conflict resolution * Building and maintaining trust in relationships * Effective communication skills in relationships * Showing appreciation and gratitude * Setting boundaries * Developing and nurturing friendships * Negotiation and compromise skills * Understanding and navigating emotions in relationships * Developing empathy and understanding others’ perspectives
Spiritual Skills
* Mastering daily Bible reading * Showing up to church despite how you feel * Interacting with other Christians in positive ways * Being uplifting * Developing a consistent prayer life * Waging perpetual war again sin * Developing an accurate understanding of the Bible * Attending a doctrinally correct church * Obeying the Gospel through the process of salvation
These are just a few examples, but you can see how you can easily list out skills that you need to be able to survive in the world.
Then split these into categories like novice, intermediate, and advanced that are unique to you. You will be advanced in some skills but novice in others. And no two people will be alike.
This is a critical chance for you to take an honest look at your weaknesses, write them down and analyze them from a third-person perspective, and then actually make some improvements.
II. Identifying Areas for Progress in Personal Development
A. Self-Assessment:
Assessing yourself starts with honesty and humility. Most people live their entire lives ignoring their flaws and weaknesses. This is understandable because it is painful to look at our flaws and weaknesses at first. But avoiding this responsibility robs most people of the level of self-development they could otherwise achieve.
With the groundwork of humility and honey laid, you need to identify your goals. This will be based on a combination of your current levels of development and where you want to go and how you want to improve.
If your social skills are lagging, then you need to set some goals for how you are going to improve.
What do people with strong social skills do?
They make consistent eye contact during a conversation
They add to the conversation
They are funny
They stay engaged and off their phone
Look at people you admire who have the skills you want to develop and identify what it is that makes them so good at socializing. While studying them, see what you can model. What can you attempt to copy?
B. Setting Challenging Yet Attainable Goals
Your goals have to be crystal clear. They have to be attainable, yet demanding in order to achieve.
Some promote the SMART framework for goal setting (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant/Realistic, Time-bound) in personal development.
This works for some while others have a hard time with it. You have to decide what will work for you.
But the specificity of goals is critical. You will not get better at a thing without specifically working to get better at it. Just like the biceps will not grow from sets of squats, so also social skills do not improve from sets of “work ethic” for example.
III. Implementing Progressive Overload Strategies
A. Expanding Knowledge and Skills
For growth to be continued there must be a persistent demand placed upon them. And this demand must progress on a linear basis.
There has never been more free information available than what you can find on YouTube.
You can learn social skills from Charisma on Command. Or You can Learn about Discipline from Jocko Willink and the Jocko Podcast. You can Learn about neuroscience from College lectures or from Andrew Huberman.
And the list goes on forever. Whatever it is you want to learn, or whatever you want to get better at, you can find people teaching it online – and they give away much of their material for free!
There are also courses and workshops offered around you. You can find these with a simple Google search.
Do you want to get better at public speaking? See if your city has a local chapter of Toastmasters. Want to learn self-defense, find a jui-jitsu dojo in your town. Some colleges offer free workshops and seminars with speakers.
The only limit in finding ways to improve yourself is your own ability to think creatively and find out where the people with the information are. Find them, then learn from them, and place progressively greater challenges on yourself to improve.
B. Cultivating Resilience and Mental Strength
The ability to recover quickly from failure and get back to work is a skill that will propel you to success. Because if the average Joe writhes around in his state of failure while you get back on the horse immediately, you are already that much farther ahead of him.
And this is certainly how most people live. We hit difficulty or failure and then just wallow in it. We get down in the dumps and invite our negative emotional state in for dinner. Some might say this is a normal part of processing a negative event, but I would argue that this action makes one adverse event far worse than it should have been. Something that could have been processed and ended is now a long-term emotional event.
Emotions exist to motivate action. We are not supposed to feel negative and then just sit there in a negative state. We are supposed to take action. Take some steps in the direction of our goals. Get back on the horse and we find that the emotion will resolve. It is just there to get us to press on a little more.
So when you hit failure, get excited. Know that it is one of the pathways for growth. And it is a pathway that so many people rarely experience because they hide from it.
The average person spends their whole life hiding from failure. As a result, they never attempt anything worth accomplishing. They are so afraid to fail that it prevents them from ever even attempting. This keeps them in a perpetual state of mediocrity in all of their life endeavors.
And as sad as this is, it presents you with a potent opportunity. You can get ahead of the vast majority of people in life simply by building a different mindset, taking different actions, and not shrinking back from failure when it appears.
Everyone fails – do not be the loser who stays down when he fails.
IV. Monitoring and Adjusting
A. Tracking Progress
Monitor progress towards your goal. Just like you might keep a training journal, it may be worthwhile to try keeping a personal development journal.
This journal should have your primary goals as well as notes and field reports tracking your progress.
If you are working on socialization, you can track how many people you approached to talk to at church. Record your performance and your emotional state before, during, and after the event. This will serve to teach you that you can act in accordance with your goals regardless of how you are feeling emotionally at any given time. This is a great lesson. You have to know that you can act with discipline and push yourself to do anything you want despite your emotional state at the time.
Learn that and you will be ahead of the world.
B. Adjusting the Load
It is critical that as you progress, you increase the demand you are placing on yourself. If you push yourself to talk to 5 people at church, at some point it needs to become 6. Or the conversation needs to progress to a deeper level. Whatever it is, you have to increase the difficulty or volume of what you are doing. That makes your development progressive.
As you progress, you may find that some goals no longer suit your purpose. Maybe you realize that you will never be able to be at a master level in some skill without a lifetime of work. Or perhaps your personal development in the social area caused you to find areas of weakness in other aspects of yourself.
Whatever the case is, you are not married to your personal development plan. You can pivot, shift, and change all along the way.
V. Overcoming Plateaus and Preventing Burnout
A. Recognizing Plateaus
Just like in physical training, as you progress, you will hit areas of stagnation, places where improvement becomes slow or impossible. This is not a problem, just a part of the process.
The first thing to do when hitting a plateau is to keep cool and keep your wits about you. Most people throw in the towel right here. That’s right, at the very first hint of weakness, they give up. While sad, it means that all you have to do is not give up to ahead of the average person.
Next, examine your current plan. When you hit plateaus in the gym you can switch out exercises, rep schemes, splits, etc. What can you adjust or switch out in your personal development plan? If the only socialization you get is at church, and you continue to interact with the same people over and over again, that is the equivalent of doing the same exercises, with the same rep range, with the same intensity for months on end. Of course that will get a little stale and slow your progress.
Maybe you can add some additional socialization. You can attempt to talk to people in public (I know, the horror) or at events or shops. You have to introduce some form of novelty to your plan to break the monotony and allow for continued improvement in new dynamic situations.
Look at those you are modeling and see what they do in different situations. Look to them to develop advanced skills.
B. Avoiding Burnout:
Anyone who has attempted to improve themselves over a long enough time will tell you that there are moments when they want to quit the entire thing. They are not making progress on any fronts, they are frustrated, and they want to go back to the way they were.
When this happens in exercise, we introduce a deload, where we reduce volume, load, intensity, or a combination of any and all of these in order to allow the body to recover and potentiate the potential for gains.
In personal development, you can do this by simply backing off the advanced versions of skills and going down to a baseline.
What level of performance can you consistently generate without conscious effort?
The benefit of personal development is that at some point, your skills at a specific level will be able to be automated. You behave better automatically.
Whatever that level is for you, back off your personal development to this level. Instead of quitting completely, just deload to a level that is manageable without you having to think.
This will allow you to not give up completely on your habits, but also give yourself a break from what you are doing.
Incorporate these strategies for applying progressive overload to your personal development and you will be ahead of the crowd.
