ThirdWayMan

When I was in high school, I had this idea for a novel.

I forget the details now, but it was something about a section of the Garden of Eden that had somehow been preserved in its prelapsarian state and then discovered.

This idea captured me at a deep level. I thought it could be the seeds of something great.

But I didn’t start writing.

I didn’t dare.

You see, I told myself I should wait until I was a better writer. Wait until I was “ready” to do the idea justice.

Deep down, I felt this was my “big idea.” Perhaps my one shot at writing the next great American novel. read more

Should you follow your passion or follow the money?

I’ve tried both.

And I say the answer is NEITHER.

When you follow the money, you’re only half-heartedly invested in your work, which means you will likely fail at it, and do so unhappily.

When you follow your passion and “do what you love,” you radically limit your impact because you’ve defined your work by your own feelings and wants instead of the feelings and wants of your audience.

It means you’ve chosen work that makes you feel good instead of work that stretches and breaks you to the next level the way a worthy mission should. read more

One of the hardest things about fatherhood is the pressure to be “on” all the time.

Often, on a family road trip or while running errands with the kids, I’ll feel my emotional energy glug glug glugging down the drain, and before I know it, my tank is empty.

I’ve got nothing left to give and I know it’s just a matter of time before I “go zombie”… before I become physically present but emotionally absent to my family.

Maybe you can relate.

There’s no shame in having a dry well. read more

Do you feel angry or irritable on a regular basis?

If so, where do you think that anger comes from? What is the source?

You may be tempted to blame an external cause: you may think you’re angry because “your wife isn’t doing X,” or because “the kids are making a mess,” or one of a thousand other external irritants.

But if you’re honest with yourself, this lingering sense of anger and irritability is often (not always, but often) a message.

A message that you are not pushing yourself to the next level. read more

If I could reach through the computer screen, grab you by the shoulders and tell you just ONE thing, it would be this:

Never apologize for your strength, your edge, your restless energy.

The world may make you feel a threat and a pig, simply by virtue of being male.

But it is not your masculinity they fear… it is the fear of man’s power untempered by love.

The highest expression of a man is when his POWER and his LOVE are held and exercised in equal measure.

When you open yourself to the true birthright of your gender… when you fully embrace both the POWER and the LOVE that are equally and inextricably your deepest nature… that is when the magic happens. read more