Being a mentor is a perfect way to increase your influence.
I talk a lot about the importance of having mentors and what they can offer in our lives. I rarely ever talk about role models. What is the difference between role models and mentors? Lets look at each individually and then hit on the big difference. Continue reading
This article was originally posted HERE on Manturity.com back in April but I found it thoughtful and that it might help others.
Quick Note: Notice how this guy admits he is not there yet – we are all working on this stuff. Just make sure you keep working, Grappling is an ongoing fight – Don’t Get Pinned!
– By Daniel Robertson –
Do you ever feel that you aren’t doing a good enough job of preparing your kids to enter the world as adults?
I know I do. I get easily distracted by my smartphone or other unimportant things that don’t add lasting value to my life, or theirs.
Just the other day I had to make the conscious decision to put my phone away and spend focused time and attention with my kids. I found great pleasure in joining my 1 year old daughter in playing with a Noah’s Ark toy.
I showed her how to open the little door and place an animal inside, then shut the door. I opened the door back up and took the animal out. She picked up on this fun game really fast. After that we rolled a ball around. And then I put her on our little plastic slide and pushed her down. She had so much fun that our 4 year old just had to join in, so they took turns going down the slide again and again.
It’s the simplest pleasures of life that add the most meaning.
As a father and husband I have to constantly fight off the tendency to slip into unintentionality. I have to remind myself that the things that so easily distract me are sucking the joy and meaning out of life.
Here are 5 areas where I am working on being more intentional about investing in my kids: Continue reading
From the moment that my wife and I found out that we were going to have a son the rest of my week became a mix of emotions. The first emotion that swept through was excitement. I have always wanted a son and the thought of having my oldest be a boy has always been a dream of mine. (Not that I wouldn’t have loved a little girl, but you know what I mean.) Shortly thereafter, the excitement was replaced with the thoughts of what it takes for me to teach my son to be a man. How do I help him become more than a grown up male? How do I teach him to become a Real Man?
Along the way, as I ran down this thought, I realized I did not have a great idea for my self and began taking to heart the things that I was learning as they played out in my own life. It was sobering for me. I would like to share with you a few of the assumptions that were underlying for me and the results of my thought process with you in hopes that it might be useful to other fathers.
Is this a TRUE MAN?
I have spent a good bit of my life trying to figure out what a man is. It almost seems to be fleeting. What I always seem to catch however is what a man is not.
Now let me clarify this by saying that I have found numerous explanations of what a man is but have not really been satisfied with them. Many in our culture will not say that a true MAN is the guy who will demoralize his wife, cheat on his taxes and maybe even mix the two and cheat on his wife but what I see on a regular basis is men who are striving or settling for just that. As they seek after what it means to be a true man they are willing to sacrifice their relationships, even their own marriage, along with their integrity in attempts of finding it.
Know I am not out to prove exactly what a man is by saying that I am him but to help others understand a little bit more about me and what I am after. I consider myself to be a man not because I have attained some high level of stature but because I take one word very seriously, and that word is RESPONSIBILITY.
