ThirdWayMan

The benefits to having no enemies is obvious.

But have you considered the COST?

What do you suffer as a result of your choice?

As men, we’ve been told our whole life that reigning in our power is the smart play.

We’ve been told that playing nice and getting along is how “modern men behave.”

But you know in your belly there is a price to pay.

You know that eliminating conflict from your life does not lead to peace.

It leads to numbness. Depression. Anxiety. The back cloud inside that is always there, waiting at the edges to swallow you up. read more

Confession: I suck at consistency.

It’s true.

As much as I drone on about daily execution, incremental progress, and results borne of commitment, executed one faithful day at a time…

There is always a twinge of hypocrisy that goes off in my brain when I write that shit.

Because any measure of consistency I’ve been able to achieve in my life is a pronounced departure from my nature:

The nature of the gnat, the sloth, the meteor that burns in glory for a moment… then goes dark.

As my wife says of me, I’m all or nothing, baby. read more

Spring is near.

Time to get rid of as much house-cluttering shit as possible.

Now, of course, most people feel good after having purged said shit.

But the typical way they go about it is torturous.

It’s as though they devise a “glut gauntlet”… then force themselves to run through it, subjecting themselves to all manner of self-inflicted bruises and battering.

This glut gauntlet has three deadly chambers, each of them wholly capable of bringing the well-intended purge process to a swift, bloody halt: read more

Don’t get me wrong. The Last Samurai is one of my favorite movies.

Along with other “manly” classics like Braveheart, 300, Gladiator, and the rest.

And I understand how watching these movies can make you nostalgic for the days “when men were men.”

But we do ourselves a disservice when we hold up the men in these movies as paragons of ultimate masculinity.

We forget that this is SURVIVAL MASCULINITY we are watching here. Desperate men reacting to extreme, tooth and claw situations. Back when, to quote Hobbes, life was “nasty, brutish, and short.” read more

Here’s the quick and dirty on the fastest, simplest way to trigger a steady flood of inspiration and motivation in your life.

There are three things that must be present for inspiration to naturally flow to and through you:

1. The Ground

The Ground is the term I use to describe your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capacity to do high level work.

Ground is fertile.

Ground provides stability.

Ground has gravity.

Without Ground, you are lost: floating through space, impotent.

Most men neglect Ground, focusing instead on glittering stars far overhead, never realizing the only way to reach those stars is by first building up the ground they will need to stand upon. read more

When I flew first class for the first time, I couldn’t believe at how much more comfortable it was.

No wait lines.

No guy in front of me reclining his seat into my already jammed up knees.

No fighting for elbow placement on the small sliver of armrest you’re apparently supposed to share with the guy beside you in coach.

And suddenly it occurred to me: this is how flying used to be… for EVERYBODY.

Go to Google Images, type in “1960 airplane seats,” and prepare to have your mind blown. read more

I come from a family of “owners.”

Growing up, I was taught to BUY a house, not rent… to BUY the car instead of leasing it.

But after years of playing the ownership game, I came to realize that ownership rarely bestows the benefits typically ascribed to it.

I realized that we are seduced by the myth of ownership.

First off, you never truly “own” your house.

Your bank owns it.

Even if you’ve paid off your mortgage, you still don’t own it. The city does. Stop paying property tax and they will take it from you. read more

Years ago, back before I had corrective eye surgery, I was buying something and was all “smooth and suave” with the cashier.

For whatever reason, I was especially upbeat and confident throughout that whole exchange.

When I got back to the car, I happened to glance in the rear view mirror and saw to my dismay that I was wearing my “grubby glasses.”

That whole morning I thought I had been wearing my “cool glasses.”

If you wear glasses, you know what I’m talking about. Your “cool glasses” are the expensive ones you wear socially. They are stylish, clean, and make you feel good when you wear them. read more

A couple years ago I read an interesting productivity book called “The Twelve Week Year.”

There were several good nuggets in the book, but the one I want to talk to you about today was execution tracking.

A key part of the process the authors describe in their book is ongoing calculation of your execution rate: what actions you committed to taking versus the actions you actually took.

You actually have to express it as a percentage.

For example, if you committed to working on Project A for 5 hours last week and your actual time spent was 3 hours, then your execution rate was 60%. read more

I don’t watch the news.

I don’t read the newspaper.

Not because I don’t have time.

But because I don’t have an unlimited supply of soul for them to suck out.

You see, here’s what’s REALLY happening when you watch the news:

First, an army of journalists leverage the power of web-based networks to dig up stories most likely to nail your eyeballs to the page or screen.

Given that humans are wired to pay far more attention to BAD news than good news, that means these journalists show you the most hair-raising, toe-curling, depraved, taboo-ladled, anxiety-producing stories they can find. read more