There’s so much that needs to change… where do I start?
“There’s so much that needs to change in my life, but I don’t know where to start.”
I confessed this to my wife as we were driving down the interstate more than seven years ago.
I wasn’t ready to confess the big sins, but I was starting to wake up to the fact there was a lot about my life that wasn’t the way I wanted it to be.
I wasn’t leading myself.
I was reacting to life.
Floating downstream.
Something beckoned to me from a brighter future.
There was a part of me that knew I was created for more.
Way more.
Should I start by…
Getting into shape?
Getting our budget under control?
Seeking a better job?
Focusing on our marriage?
Being a better dad?
I wasn’t ready to believe that I could walk in freedom from porn and sexual brokenness, but that certainly factored into my overall feeling of “things are not as they should be in my life”.
I think the person I was seven years ago is heartbreakingly common.
I was probably the average American dad.
About 30 - 40 lbs overweight.
Some credit card debt and a car payment.
Hiding my porn habit.
No real deep sense of faith or purpose.
Loved my wife, but didn’t know how to build the marriage I really longed for.
Trying to climb the corporate ladder.
Hadn’t felt truly ALIVE in a long time.
How do you break free from the heartbreak of average?
Where do you start?
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A crossroads
If you’re not happy with the outcomes in your life, you are at a crossroads.
You have a choice between two paths, and your choice will be dictated by your mindset.
Fixed Mindset - The problems in my life are external to me and I’m a victim of my circumstances. I am the way I am, and the world is the way the world is. My current reality is the sum total of all of the external forces that have conspired to make me the way I am.
Growth Mindset - I am someone who can learn, grow, and adapt. My life is the sum total of what happens to me and how I respond to what happens to me. I have agency in my life, and I can learn to become aware of the patterns that are shaping me, and update my consciousness to respond to the truth I discover.
If you have a Fixed Mindset, you’re done. You’re going to be tempted with resentment and bitterness, which will amplify the things in your life that are intolerable, and you’ll spend the rest of your life stuck in the same patterns of blame, victimization, and resentment.
If you have a Growth Mindset, there is no upper limit to who you can become and how your life can change.
Growth Mindset
The bitter pill you have to swallow is that YOU are responsible for your life.
Yes, things have happened to you.
You’ve experienced trauma and things don’t seem fair.
But YOU have a choice to make: are you going to let the hard things in your life become the rocks that your are destroyed on? Or are you going to let the pain in your life break your heart open to love, and allow yourself to be transformed?
Are you going to take radical ownership of your life and face reality, no matter the cost? Or will you allow yourself to be destroyed by avoiding reality and staying blind at any cost?
“Mental health is a dedication to reality at all costs. Mental illness is an avoidance of reality at any cost.”
Avoidance or Approach?
Are you going to avoid the painful parts of your life?
The way you’ve swept things under the rug?
The hidden patterns that are shaping your life?
Or will you bear the cross of your life and turn and climb the hill where you will crucify the part of you that is weak and insufficient?
Will you keep running from the poisonous snakes that are biting you?
Or will you turn and face your fear?
Approach it.
Look at it.
In Numbers 21:9 God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and lift it up on a pole. The Israelites who were bitten could turn and face the snake, and be healed.
In John 3, Jesus said that just like Moses lifted up the serpent on the pole, so the Son of Man must be lifted up for the healing of mankind.
The wisdom in the Bible is clear.
Avoid the hard things at your peril.
Face the worst things and be saved.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
One of the first things you have to confront to move forward in life is the hidden patterns that are shaping your life.
If you have a Fixed Mindset and are tempted with Avoidance, you will look at the outcomes in your life and think: “that’s just fate… that’s just who I am… that’s just the way the world is.”
The enemy would love to keep you right there, for the rest of your miserable life.
What I teach men in my course in The Good King is how to start becoming aware of the hidden patterns that are shaping your life.
How to turn and face the thing that is biting them.
How to shine the light of love into the shadows of their unconscious life and examine what the patterns are that need to be transformed.
Seven years ago I was starting to become aware that the OUTCOMES in my life were not what I wanted.
The RESULTS of my life:
the quality of my relationships
my body composition,
my inner peace,
my enjoyment of my work,
my success in my career,
my net worth,
my freedom (or lack thereof)
All of these “outcomes” in my life were the result (or the sum total) of my
habits
mindsets
beliefs
behaviors
These patterns played themselves out in my life over and over for decades, and that shaped my life in a certain way.
These patterns in our life operate at the level of our subconscious, so by default we are not aware of them.
Pattern Recognition
These patterns play out in the following areas:
Sleep & Wake Patterns – When and how well you rest and how regular your sleep wake cycle is affects your energy, mood, and health.
Eating Patterns – What, when, and how much you eat determines your physical and mental health & vitality. Your eating patterns can also dramatically alter your mental health.
Movement Patterns – How often and how well you move impacts your strength, mobility, and longevity.
Thought Patterns – The way you think (positive or negative) affects your emotions, choices, and beliefs.
Self-Talk Patterns – How you speak to yourself influences your confidence and resilience.
Technology & Media Consumption Patterns – What you watch, read, and listen to shapes your worldview, attention span, and emotional well-being.
Relationship Patterns – The way you interact with people determines the health of your connections. Do you tend to give people the benefit of the doubt?
Spiritual Patterns – Your habits around faith, prayer, and seeking truth shape your inner peace and purpose.
Spending Patterns – How you manage money influences your financial freedom (or stress).
Work & Productivity Patterns – Your level of focus and how you approach tasks determines your success and fulfillment.
These patterns are like a kaleidoscope. They refract across every level of your life, at multiple levels.
One helpful tool for becoming aware of these patterns is to ask yourself: “what are the things I do to regulate my nervous system?”
You can learn healthy ways to regulate your nervous system (prayer, meditation, exercise, sleep) or you can stay stuck like I was in unhealthy patterns of nervous system regulation (porn, food, booze, shopping, etc.).
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Where do these patterns come from?
These patterns become a part of our subconscious through many different routes.
Our family of origin (generational sin, for example)
The culture we live in (the dominant stories in our culture)
The church we grew up in
Our response to trauma and pain in our life
Our memory and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves (and our place in the world)
What we choose to focus on
While we are not responsible for the origin of all of these patterns, we are responsible for becoming aware of them and letting the light of love shine on them.
Becoming aware of these patterns can feel overwhelming at first.
I was living out unhealthy patterns in many parts of my life, and just becoming aware of them didn’t tell me which ones to change first.
Becoming aware of the patterns is akin to the Israelites leaving the slavery of Egypt. They spent the next 40 years wandering around the wilderness, learning to be human again. They had been so decimated by 400 years of slavery that they had forgotten what the patterns of life are. They forgot what it means to be truly human.
God used the wilderness experience to teach them the patterns that would shape them into His mighty nation. They needed to become the kind of human beings that could take the Promised Land and live in it.
So it is with you and I.
We have to leave the blindness, slavery and chaos of Egypt. (The unconscious state of living blindly by the patterns that are causing our life to come apart).
We have to journey into the wilderness and learn who God is. We have to let him shine the light of love on our life and notice the patterns that lead to life instead of death.
We have to do the hard work of confessing (truth speaking) and repentance (mind changing) and live into the strange new patterns of life with shaky legs and a quaking heart.
We have to follow the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day and draw close to God, letting Him lead us through this wilderness.
We have to learn to worship only the Highest thing. Take our thoughts captive, and notice how our attention shapes our desires.
We have to become the kind of people who can step into the Promised Land of our life.
We have to slay the giants and face our fears in order to live in the land that is flowing with milk & honey.
Then we have to live in the Promised Land while embodying all of the life-giving patterns of a life in God so that the generations after us can also live in the Promised Land.
If you’re a man and this resonates with you - come join us at The Good King!
We’re a group of men dedicated to being apprenticed to The Good King, Jesus and walking in union with God.
I created a 56 lesson course that I’m leading men through, in community, to be more deeply shaped by The One into the men that he created us to be.
