4. Owning Collective Integrity

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Owning Collective Integrity: Why Ownership of Your Integrity Needs a Team

I’ll be honest, this page has sat blank for quite a while because “integrity” might be one of the most used words in America and simultaneously one of the least understood. I’ve struggled to put pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard – with such a word. Popularly, integrity is defined as what you do when no one is looking. I get it. It seems simple enough. Even if no one will know, you should still do the right thing. Great. Check, please!

It’s not so simple though when we start to think of our real lives. Integrity gets complicated when we put the microscope on it. If we take a hard stance, integrity means that you do exactly the right thing all of the time, in all situations. It leaves us wondering though, can’t the “right” thing be a bit subjective? If no one is watching anyway then I get to make up my own definition of what is “right”. A quick look around our society and you’ll see the pervasiveness of this idea. Everyone defines what they think is right and lives their life accordingly without apology. That guy that cut you off on your commute today? He has decided that his work is more important so it’s just right of him to take the space.

This ambiguity is exactly why integrity has been included in the Brothers LIFE Council principles. We need a solid operational definition on which to stand together. Here is our creed of integrity:

We maintain our integrity by aligning our beliefs, words, and actions to take ownership of our lives in a society increasingly willing to pass blame.

Jocko Willink has made a second career – after 20 years with the Navy SEALS – of ownership. His first book, written with fellow SEAL Leif Babin, is titled “Extreme Ownership” (if you haven’t read it, go do so). They believe, “there is no one else to blame; you must own problems along with solutions…” This is what true integrity is. Whether someone is looking or not, you can’t pass the blame. You better take control of your life and decisions. To do that, your talk and your walk have to match up.

What is “right” aligns your beliefs, words, and actions toward taking ownership of an optimized life and a better world. Let’s add some nuance though. If you believe robbing someone on the street is right, so you talk about it, and then go do it is that acting with integrity since your belief is aligned with your action? No, it doesn’t lead to a better life for anyone. She loses her money, identity, and sense of safety and you lose your freedom when the police come knocking.

To maintain your integrity, you have to do something that may sound ridiculous in 2020. You have to think of other people first and yourself second. You have to be able to detach from your own life and see your actions as they impact the world around you. If they aren’t leaving a positive mark, you’re not even on the scale of integrity and your first job is to simply learn what it means to be a contributing member of the broader tribe the worry about aligning your actions with what you mature into.

Robbing someone is an easy example but day-to-day, integrity is more difficult to nail down. A few weeks back, I wanted to cancel on some plans my wife and I had made with friends over a month prior. When we planned it, it was so far off that I just said “yes” but as the day approached, I would have rather gotten a workout in and relaxed at home. In a strong moment of pity-party invitation, I called up a member of my LIFE Council with the hope that they would affirm my anguish of sticking to the plan. “Man, this dinner thing just sounds like too much right now. I feel bad but I just don’t want to do this one tonight. How could I get out if it?” What came back at me was not what I hoped. “Well, I don’t think you do. You made plans, canceling now would just be a lack of commitment. Just make it happen. Gotta run. Have fun!” Click.

Ever have that moment you kind of hate one of your friends because you know they’re right? The Brothers LIFE Council, with our common definition, is the accountability we need to maintain our integrity. In the moments we don’t want to apologize to our spouse for a dumb comment or we want to skip that workout when it’s cold outside, we have the other guys to remind us what our integrity means.

Do the right thing whether people are watching or not (let’s be honest, with technology we have, they’re watching). Find some other people who will have the courage to nudge you out of your excuses and build your collective integrity. With integrity intact, watch your relationships, career, and everything else get stronger and more fulfilling.  

Your Challenge

This week is a two-fold challenge:

1. Make an integrity commitment for the week.

Identify one area of your life that you need to align your beliefs, words, and actions. Choose one piece of that area to work on this week. Write it on a sticky note and put it on your mirror, computer, or somewhere else you’ll see it every day to remind yourself. For example, if I need to better align my belief that I should save more than I spend, I might decide to only make coffee at home and not buy it. My sticky note might say “no coffee”

2. Identify one other guy to share your integrity commitment with.

Give them a call or send a text to let them know what you’re up to. It’s a bonus if they are involved enough to help check in on you. With the coffee example, choose someone you see in the morning at work or the gym so they can make sure that coffee cup is from home and not Starbucks. Of course, you could still cheat but you’d have to really go out of your integrity to, so be better.

Question of the Week

Where in your life do you get praise but in your own heart, know you could be living with more integrity?

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Friday Thoughts #3: Tenacious Stillness

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I don’t know if it’s the snow falling calmly outside my window or simply feeling the effects of the week that is coming to an end, but I think we all need a better ability to hit “pause”. Last Friday I wanted you to think about approaching your life with tenacity and not accept the weekend as a time to lose track of your goals and halt all progress. This week, I want you to keep living with tenacity for love, integrity, fellowship, and excellence but in a new way. In this case, tenacious stillness.

People have always described me as some version of “tightly wound”. My fourth-grade teacher had a serious conversation with my parents about possible anxiety disorders (now as an educator, I have more than one problem with her playing doctor, but I digress). My parents have a picture of me, around 9 years old, crouching next to the outfield fence of a baseball field nose-to-nose with my coach, tears on my cheeks. He wasn’t causing the tears; nothing was. I was anxious about striking out and not being good enough – a lot for a 9-year-old but I guess I’m an old soul. My wife is the angel God knew I needed because to this day she is the only person I’ve ever met that can recognize my anxiety and help to curb it which she still does on a near-weekly basis. It’s been a lifelong battle.

What has helped in my toughest moments has varied throughout my life. The first real help came when I found training. Exercise was about more than being a better ball player or looking good right from the beginning. I remember the first time I trained legs with a mentor of mine who showed me what real hard work in the gym looked like. I left tired and a little wobbly but I loved it. I felt stronger physically and mentally. In college, I found my faith and felt a peace I hadn’t before experienced. You mean every single thing in the universe isn’t in my control and it shouldn’t be?! Mind-blowing.

In fall 2019, my anxiety that had been fairly dormant for a while, came roaring back. The day before Thanksgiving, I had a full-blown panic attack in my living room and spent the day going in and out of sleep on my couch before I could manage to face the day at around 6:00 pm. In the two months prior, I had gotten married (I love my wife more than anything but the wedding itself came with stressors of planning and pleasing family) and we had bought our first home. For someone who is anxious most often about money, these two events in close succession overwhelmed me.

That day, a workout wasn’t going to happen and I struggled to find comfort in scripture because my mind wouldn’t slow down enough to even read the words. My mind had to slow down before I could do anything else. It was a lightbulb moment for me. My wife has always loved yoga and has gotten me into a few classes with her so the idea of mindfulness and slowing down wasn’t foreign but I had never taken it to heart.

I’m an academic so I needed a book to help me out. Luckily, I found two right away. I picked up John Mark Comer’s The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and Ryan Holiday’s Stillness is the Key (I highly recommend both). John Mark Comer is a pastor in Portland, OR and spoke right to my faith while Ryan Holiday has a gift for learning from ancient wisdom to apply to our lives. Here are some of my major takeaways from both combined that I hope you can find meaning in too:

  1. Stillness really is key. Our society awards the fast-movers who hide from their lives behind “busyness” but finding the ability to be still with your own thoughts is the only place you can truly begin to know yourself and your principles.   
  2. Most of your busyness is self-inflicted by wasting time. For high-achieving men, this is difficult to think about and admit but, how many hours a day do you waste? Be honest. Comer cited Philip Zimbardo to make the point – by age 21, the average American male has spent 10,000 hours playing video games. That’s equivalent to 1,250 workdays, 24 weeks, or 2 years. Play your video games here and there, if you must but let’s agree that there’s a limit and it is way before 10,000 hours. 2 years of your first 21? Time. Wasted. If you’re not into video games, you’re not off the hook. The average American spends 705 hours per year on social media and 2,735 watching TV. Imagine what else could be done with 2 years of your life. That language you want to learn? Get it! Want to be in shape? Two years of working out would get you there. O, you don’t have time to go visit your friend to champion some fellowship? I think you might be able to find some. Don’t get me wrong, when I read these books I felt as guilty as anyone but we can do better.
  3. Stillness of body and stillness of mind tend to go together. Pause reading right now, close your eyes; take a deep box breath all Mark Divine style (4 seconds inhale – hold for 4 – 4 seconds exhale – hold for 4). Feel that? You were still for a whole minute! Repeat it a few times and you’ll start to notice your thoughts slowing down too. Your thoughts transform from cars on an 8-lane highway at rush hour to a Midwest county road at 2:00 am. You can actually notice your thoughts in this state and recognize if they are positive or negative. You can discard the ones you don’t need and celebrate the ones that lift you up.
  4. Your stillness affects everything and everyone in your life. Can you think of someone in your life who always seems to be on the go? Sometimes it amazes us – “whoa, they are so productive”. If you ask their closest friends what they see, you might hear a different story. “They’re really hard to get time with” or “I barely ever hear back from them and when we do get together they can’t put their work aside” might be common. I want you to be productive but not at the expense of your life. If you can’t watch your daughter’s hockey game without checking email or sit through a movie with your wife and not be thinking of that deal you have to make, you might have a problem and I promise they can sense it too. You’re not fooling anyone (I always thought I was).

There are so many more takeaways for me but I’ll trust you to go get one or both of the books and read for yourself. This weekend, I want you to try to be tenaciously still. Here are some simple and actionable ideas from Comer and Holiday on how:

  1. Drive the speed limit and full stop at stop signs. Sounds easy but it forces you to literally slow and stops when we often speed everywhere and despise people who actually follow the law and stop at a stop sign.
  2. Keep your phone away until you spend 10 minutes quietly in the morning. Spend your first 10 minutes reading, meditating, watching the sunrise, or staring at the wall, whatever. I recommend reading and journaling (see the next tip) some of your favorite lines from the pages but no matter what, do not make your phone screen the first light you see all day.
  3. Start journaling. Before you go to bed tonight, grab a piece of paper and write down 3 things you’re grateful for and one goal you have for tomorrow. Boom. You just became a journaler. If you want more (and I hope you will), Holiday just created an amazing guide to everything journaling that you can check out here (The Timeless Art of Journaling)
  4. Actually, notice the world around you. At some point this weekend, try to get by yourself for 2 minutes. Wherever you are, close your eyes and do a “sense check”. First, pay attention to what you smell, try to name it. Then, notice anything touching your skin and describe how they feel – your clothes, the air, etc. Next, feel your breath – is it short and choppy? Finally, open your eyes but don’t just look around. Look for the colors around you, what are they?
  5. Say “no”. At least one time this weekend, I want you to say “no” to someone who asks you for something. Big bonus points if they are asking you for time. We are in an age of people pleasing but sometimes saying no is the best. Just think, every time you say “yes” to one thing, you just said “no” to thousands of other opportunities.

Start with those five small things this weekend and begin to feel the benefits of slowing down. End the hurry in your life and peace will surely follow. This post is for me just as much as it is for you. For some, this will be much harder than doing an intense workout or scaling a mountain. You’re good at moving and looking busy but can you be ok with looking slow? Your relationships require the best and most present version of yourself. Find the courage to be still and the tenacity to get there.

*I truly hope you go and pick up at least one of the books in this post. Both are on Amazon and are worth the money. Both are also offered as audiobooks. If you’re not quite a book person, here are a couple of resources from each author to give you some more of their insights that are far more developed than mine.

Featured image credit: AlainAudet via PixaBay

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3. What is Love?

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What is Love? – How to Operate with Love Everywhere You Go

Take a second and think of all the ways you heard “love” used already today. In the best of contexts, love allows us incredible security, excitement, and meaning. We get to say, “I love you” to communicate the depth of feelings for those we hold closest in life. It is the go-to phrase for when we are at a loss for what to say. It’s at the center of celebrations such as weddings, births, graduations, and birthdays. It also lives in the tears of hospital rooms and funerals. The deepest emotions wound up into a single idea. However, in other contexts of life, we can use “love” as a weapon. We hear time and again the horror stories of young people who flippantly claim love to convince someone of a positive intention or save a relationship that needs to end. Perhaps we’ve even done it ourselves and now live with the shame of our younger, less mature selves.

In my journey to help men create strong relationships and optimize our lives, I have made a stark observation. Love is surprisingly absent. Somewhere along the line, men either stopped loving one another or at least stopped telling each other. I firmly believe it is the former. The issue is communication, not love. If the reason is that love between men makes us uncomfortable because of sexuality, we need to check our security.

This conversation of love has absolutely nothing to do with romantic love – what the Greek world would have called Eros. This is more about what the Greeks would term Storge – “love that is felt among friends who’ve endured hard times together.”1 If you’re still stuck, consider that Jesus commanded His followers to love God above all and then love each other. He didn’t ask that we like other people or respect them – we are to love them. You can love someone without being physically interested in them. In fact, the vast majority of people you love fit this category (all but one if you’re married).

In the LIFE Council, we know that we are fighting against the social stigmas of love and masculinity. We might have grown up with fathers who never used the word, even toward us, or we had friends who discouraged anything but male bravado. I’m not calling men to lose masculinity (and in fact, I think the modern attack on masculinity is off base but I’ll dive into my arguments with “toxic masculinity” some other time). Instead, the call is to mature as men and people who can be secure in themselves and love people at the same time.

Instead of these old ideas, love is active in the best and worst times. Love is the deliberate and intentional movement toward people around us whether we’ve known them for life or just passed them on the street. How do you operate with love when you disagree with your spouse? How about at the gym? What does love look like with that coworker you can’t stand most days? Each of these people and interactions deserves your love, not just your energy. Sounds like a lot of love, huh? Maybe love just doesn’t belong in all these places? Ah, that would give us quite the easy out on a lot of tough moments and decisions with our conscious but life isn’t that easy and loving people is part of the deal. Love makes us put ourselves second and uplift others wherever we go.

Remember our creed on love: we operate with love by upholding the courage it takes to put others before ourselves; to be caring partners, healthy colleagues, and community contributors.

I still wrestle with what actions of love toward all of these people look like and I fail every day. Just today I turned my back on a neighbor because I was so “busy” walking my dog and listening to an audiobook (selfish anyone?). Perhaps if I could have humbled up for even a second and decided to love someone by offering an ear to hear, I could have really affected someone today. I also fail as a husband in loving my wife embarrassingly often. My selfishness takes over way faster than I would like and I can neglect to help her with things or being present when we talk about our days.

Start to redefine love in your life. If you struggle to love the people that even general society says you should – your partner, family, and dogs of course – then you have to hit the reset button and define clearly what love needs to look like. If you are more in the majority and you love those people but struggle to find love in other places of life, redefine it with a broader application.

Your Challenge

Get out a piece of paper and a pencil. On the top, write our creed of operating with love (or your own if you want to create one to fit your life). Now write down at least five names of people that are in your life at least a couple of times per week. Try to go beyond your immediate family for at least a couple of them. Next to each person’s name, write two ways that you can take action to love them this week. If you struggle, think of Gary Chapman’s now famous 5 Love Languages: quality time, physical touch, gifts, words of affirmation, and acts of service2. Let them guide you. With that tough coworker maybe dropping a simple, “I really appreciate the presentation you put together it sparked an idea for me.” (side note: be specific with compliments or they’re just lame). I recently saw someone say, “compliment people behind their backs.” I love it (see what I did there). Maybe with your spouse, you can put your phone down and listen during dinner for some quality time. You get where we’re going. If you simply committed to complimenting people and looking for the best in them, the amount of love you give to everyone around you would skyrocket. Keep it simple but write down two specific actions for each person and then actually DO THEM.

You have your LIFE mission this week. Love five people in your life with ten intentional actions.

Question of the Week

When was the last time you told one of your friends that you have love for them?

1 Mateo Sol, https://lonerwolf.com/different-types-of-love/

2Chapman, G. (2015).The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love that Lasts. Northfield Publishing.

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Friday Thoughts #2: Tenacity

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The weekend is upon you. You made it to the end of the week but the real question is what the end of the week means for you. Is it time to “let go” and live loose? After all, it is Super Bowl weekend. A time that you could give in to drinking, eating poorly, and losing all self-control in the name of a game played by teams you probably don’t cheer for. Trust me, I love the Super Bowl and I plan to watch it but I’m not willing to let it wreck my goals or progress. I wonder instead if this weekend is an opportunity to live with tenacity.

Last weekend, my Brothers LIFE Council got together for our first Six Month Affirmation. We revisited our commitments to LIFE from the summer retreat and held each other accountable for the rest of the year. A single word came up more than once: tenacity.

I’ve used the word before but had never thought much of it. We usually use it to describe someone who won’t back down in a sort of arrogant way, “that lawyer was tenacious with that witness” (or to describe Jack Black’s awesome band inspired by “tenacious defense” in a famous basketball call).

I decided to look into the actual meaning. Definitions of tenacity include:

  • Not readily relinquishing a position, principle, or course of action; determined.
  • Persisting in existence; not easily dispelled.

If you look up “books about tenacity” you get some boomers. Mark Manson’s, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck and Girl, Wash Your Face from Rachel Hollis top the list. There must be something to this idea of persistence and tenacity in all areas of our life because both are best-sellers.

The LIFE Council had talked about our relationships, training, and employment at the point “tenacity” entered our conversation. We had started our day with a workout at the iconic Red Rocks Amphitheater that required us to be tenacious to finish it. I got to thinking, “what would LIFE with tenacity look like?” It would mean we were persistent through challenges and firm on our creed (insert shameless plug for my earlier post here) no matter what day of the week it is.

This weekend, consider it for yourself. If you loved others with tenacity, what would that mean? I can promise it wouldn’t mean hiding out in your garage working on something while your family went out to dinner. I also know that having tenacious integrity wouldn’t let you put your commitment to health aside to “enjoy the game” and go off the rails. You’d definitely pick up the phone to check on that friend that called you earlier this week about an issue with his spouse. I think you would get out Saturday morning and do your workout to chase excellence even if it starts to snow and your warm bed feels amazing.

My LIFE Council taught me last weekend that to be fully alive in love, integrity, fellowship, and excellence you need tenacity in all aspects. You have to be consistent and you have to show up even when you don’t want to. If anything, you should border on being annoying to people you love and believe in. If people’s biggest complaint about me is, “dang, Ryan just won’t leave me alone about my goals” I’ll take that all day, every day.

Enjoy the weekend with the tenacity to better your life and relationships. If you train, train hard. If you go to dinner with family, put your phone away for tenacious focus on them. If you hang out with friends for the game, ask them real questions about their life and dig in.

Live well. Live tenaciously.

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2. A Creed for LIFE

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A Creed for LIFE: A Call For Intentional Foundations to Combat Loneliness

Loneliness is a state of being not a permanent identity. Last week I outlined the dangers of loneliness among American men. Where I stopped short was in examining how loneliness is changeable. You experience loneliness; you do not have to become it.

Trouble is, loneliness won’t lift on its own. As with all the best things in life, you are going to have to take intentional action to change it. Think of loneliness as a barbell loaded with weight instead of dense fog. You have to take action to lift it, you can’t wait for the sun to do it for you (although getting some sun is a good step if you’re feeling down)

In 2017, I had not quite figured out this secret sauce. I had put my head to the ground – or more accurately, my nose in a book – while I completed my Ph.D. I had friends and a great family, but the isolation of the experience made me incredibly lonely. Being who I am, I got so enveloped in the work that I turned down opportunities to spend time with people and missed out on events in the name of achievement.

When I finally peeked my head out of the graduate school abyss, I found a few friends still on the edges. We had been a group in college but turned into occasional dinner companions. Carey Nieuwhof in his book Didn’t See It Coming pointed out, “by the time you hit thirty…many once-solid friendships have dissolved” and we were feeling it.1 It was time to take action and bring us back together, but I had no idea how to do that. Building friendships all over again at 30? The days of instant alliance on the playground via a shared interest in Pokémon were gone and my adult tool belt didn’t seem to be equipped to handle the job.  

I also knew we needed more than just a “guys weekend”. Since leaving college we had transformed into husbands, fathers, leaders, employees, and other adult titles. Our biggest concerns in life weren’t final exams or midterm papers anymore. I had to believe that friendships could be more than they used to be because life had become more complex than it used to be. If we could create a new brand of friendship, we would be stronger together.

One of my friends, Matthew, and I got to work. Soon we had a goal to host an annual meeting for our group and four guiding principles: love, integrity, fellowship, and excellence, inspired by a devotional from Pastor John MacArthur.2 He noted that “righteousness” (Philippians 1:11) is produced in us as we “operate in love, pursue excellence, and maintain our integrity”. No matter your stance on faith, those three components define so much of our lives and I adopted the language. But, I also knew we were missing the call for the group. Was it friendship we needed? Nope, we had that. We needed to be champions of fellowship focused on a shared interest and aim so I added it to the original three. A foundational creed was hence laid on which to build the bricks of LIFE.

The Brothers LIFE Council creed

We operate with love by upholding the courage it takes to put others before ourselves; to be caring partners, healthy colleagues, and community contributors.  

We maintain integrity by aligning our beliefs, words, and actions to take ownership of our lives in a society that is increasingly filled with blame.

We champion fellowship by contributing to a generation of men, ourselves included, who know the power of intentional friendship to make us stronger.

We pursue excellence by optimizing our lives relationally, mentally, physically, and spiritually. We do not back down from a challenge and we refuse to bow to fear. Excellence is not a competition, but a mountain we climb together.  

This is our creed, “a set of beliefs or aims which guide someone’s actions.” I first became familiar with the power of creed when I studied the Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment. They have a creed to guide everything they do (and it is impossible to not get pumped up when you read it). Across zip codes, cultural backgrounds, areas of expertise, and family commitments their creed unites them. LIFE does the same for us. It requires all of us to be accountable to and rely on the group for full implementation.

Why it Matters

Almost a year into the Brothers LIFE Council, I have seen that loneliness cannot survive against a force of common creed. Consider organizations known for camaraderie and togetherness. Each branch of the military, firefighters, police officers, and sports teams have some version of a common creed to live by. They hold each other to the creed and support one another when they need it. The creed is the expectation and they rise to it together.  

You might be crushed under the weight of loneliness but if you can unite some men in your life around a creed to do LIFE together, you will lift the weight. You will place friendship at the heart of your daily intentions. You’ll feel challenged by a call to be more than average and will have a reason to rise to it.

You’ll feel challenged by a call to be more than average and will have a reason to rise to it.

LIFE is a creed we developed but anyone can share. Don’t like it? Develop your own. But do not wander through life on the whims of your minute to minute wants and likes. Stand firm on something and bring other men alongside you.

Question of the Week

Do you live by an established creed and set of principles? Are there other men in your circle who help to hold you accountable to them? (make both happen, it will change your life)

Your Challenge

Consider what the creed of LIFE would mean for you this week if you put a part of it into action and share it with one other person.

What’s Next

From here on out, this blog will focus on the LIFE principles to more clearly define what each is and how to actualize them. Each week, I’ll focus on one and bring to light examples and ideas that relate. I’ll also challenge you to rise and push past the boundaries of your comfort zone to get there. Love will often focus on our relationships, integrity will give space to discussions of ethics, fellowship ideas for building and maintaining friendships, and excellence will cover physical and mental training for the best life possible.

1 Nieuwhof, C. (2018). Didn’t see it coming: Overcoming the 7 greatest challenges that no one expects and everyone experiences. New York, NY: Waterbrook.

2MacArthur, J. (2002). Drawing near: Daily readings for a deeper faith. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Featured image credit to Mabel/Amber3797 via Pixabay

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Friday Thoughts #1: Legacy

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For many people, Friday marks a transition in schedule and interaction. We move from work where achievement reigns; to fellowship with family and friends where something else matters more.

My friend, Zach Mercurio (https://www.zachmercurio.com/) honored MLK this past week with a quote that got me thinking:

“Your contribution, not what you’ve achieved for yourself, is your legacy.”

Among the myriad of Tweets, this one stuck out.“Legacy” has been a topic of conversation with a brother of mine for years now. I believed that your legacy isn’t something you get to decide. By definition, you’ll be gone when your legacy is defined. Now I’m wondering if memory and legacy are different things.

Consider Martin Luther King Jr. himself. In a sermon delivered February of 1968, King told the congregation to remember him as a man who “tried to give his life serving others” along with his goal to emulate Christ’s work to feed the hungry, provide for the needy, and comfort prisoners.* Have we honored that wish 52 years later? In ways we have, it’s his legacy. But is it the first thing you thought of when I said his name? Probably not. Images of his “I Have A Dream Speech” and Nobel Peace Prize perhaps came first, they are his memory. Martin Luther King Jr. told us his legacy – his contributions on a daily basis. But, history has chosen its own memory – his personal accomplishments. 

As most men can relate, I’d like to be remembered for something when I leave this earth. I’d like to be told that I’ve done something important. I can do things to try and get there but I’m at peace with the fact that I can’t choose what memories people have when the time comes. But like King, I’m starting to think that we can choose our legacy as contributors if we place priorities on others over ourselves. 

Friendships and being in a LIFE Council may not be counted amongst your memorable achievements. What brotherhood will do is build your legacy of contribution. At the core, your friendships are a way to add to something bigger than you. A way to uplift the lives of others. To contribute to strong families, meaningful careers, and a movement of men who are stronger together.

This weekend, consider how you can build your legacy instead of your lasting memory while you’re away from work. Reach out to a friend to chat, volunteer a bit of time, give your wife and kids a hug like you haven’t in a while. Whatever it is to you, build your legacy of contribution this weekend by giving to others instead of focusing on you. As Jocko Willink has said, “You know the right thing to do. Just do it.”

“You know the right thing to do. Just do it.”

*King, “The Drum Major Instinct,” Sermon Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, in A Knock at Midnight, ed. Carson and Holloran, 1998. Via The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Stanford University. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/drum-major-instrinct

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1. Male Pattern Loneliness

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Male Pattern Loneliness: Why Lonely Men (and all of us) Have A Problem

I worry that I might be too late and the world already knows about loneliness. The “loneliness epidemic” is a popular term on the internet so it must be well-known, right? However, it also still feels incredibly urgent. No matter how much we seem to know, loneliness continues to plague our everyday experiences. We see and feel it at our places of work, sitting at restaurant tables, on the news, and in the mirror. Worse yet, is that we often don’t see it at all. We perceive it as an experience of one – something we go through alone, isolated from the world of extroverted motivational speakers and social media fame. Such a perception is false.

The truth is that we are not alone in feeling alone. A surge of articles has shown us just how prevalent the problem is. A 2015 study in the UK found just over half of men reported having two or fewer friends they could discuss impactful life events with and one in eight people overall said they had no such friends. For those of us in the stage of life that often centers on careers, marriages, and starting families it gets worse. Perhaps being together is the defining feature of feeling alone. Where we run into issues though is when we realize just how good we have become at hiding it. Outwardly, loneliness might describe one person you know. You think of your friend who constantly talks about finding someone to marry. Maybe your uncle who spends his days at home watching TV and doesn’t care to join family events. Your cousin twice removed? That guy just hates everyone and would rather be a hermit. Inwardly, loneliness is probably something you’ve felt and someone very close to you is sitting in it right now.

Ok, so men are lonely. What’s the big deal?

We have everything we need right at home and in the palm of our hand. We think “I can be entertained in a million different ways sitting on my couch. I don’t need to get out with friends anymore, I’ll just FaceTime them and hang out here. Matter of fact, I’m not lonely, I have thousands of people who love me and the pictures of Todo I post every hour.”

We’re not wrong, but we’re not right. This is an incomplete picture of what loneliness is. Physical isolation is a small, and probably rare, form of loneliness but our most common visual. Instead, picture yourself in a room full of people ready for a formal gathering. Suits, ties, dresses, heels walk the marble floors. Staff roams with choices of bad tasting but fancy looking food. There you are, right in the thick of it. You made it, you’re in, you matter. But as you look down you see shorts, a torn t-shirt from your high school team, and no shoes at all. The staff walks past you with an eye-roll and tries to find security to get you out. That conversation you hear, it’s in a language you don’t speak or understand. How are you feeling? You’re in, you made it, but you’re lonely. Alone in your experience that no one can understand. (someone will say, “I wouldn’t care about impressing people so I’d be proud to not be in a suit and still be confident.” Cool. You’re awesome. But be humble to get the point and move one).

I remember this feeling well when my dad suddenly passed away when I was in my early 20’s. I had friends who I trusted and had my back through it. But while I mourned, they went out. I cried at home and they laughed at dinner. My world stopped but everyone else kept moving. In my grief, I felt lonely because no one understood. 

I think this kind of loneliness is normal. We all have experiences that make us feel alone and those around us, try as they might, just can’t sneak through the cracks to enter it with us. Brene Brown brilliantly talked about empathy as “jumping in the hole” with someone and getting into their experience.

The real danger sets in when this feeling of loneliness persists even after we opened the entrance to our experience, peeked outside, shouted for people to “jump in”, and no one came. When we crawled back into our experience and it became our new normal. This seemingly hopeless type of loneliness is dangerous. It destroys our health as much as being obese or smoking cigarettes for fifteen years. Feeling lonely increases the risk of premature death by 50%. It can rob us of our creative capacity as we find the balance between solitude and isolation. It steals from our families as we struggle to engage.

Men face this loneliness at alarming rates. That is not to say only men feel it. They don’t. But male loneliness, at least in part, is my story to tell. Anxiety has rattled me from a young age often brought on by thinking that my experience is so unique that no one can “jump in”. I have seen important men in my life destroyed emotionally and even physically from a lack of real friendship and bonding with other people. This is a social problem but it is also my problem. And your problem.

Here we are. A problem has shown itself to us. What do we do? I argue that we can’t sit by. Articles are great and studies are incredibly helpful. I love research and have done my own in graduate school but we can’t stop there. We can’t accept loneliness among men as an inconvenient reality of our modern society. Instead, we fight back with purpose and meaning. We fight back with friendship and accountability. We fight back with the weapons of physical activity, overcoming challenges, and being strong enough to be vulnerable. We fight back with love, integrity, fellowship, and excellence.

So What’s Next Then?

Next week I’ll be giving more detail about the Brothers LIFE Council as a solution for the epidemic of male loneliness. Others are already doing great work in this space but there is room for more. Josh Glancy wrote in Men’s Health last May,

“For me, the lesson of my own experience of loneliness is that we need to put close friendships at the centre of our life plans – to work towards them strategically, wholeheartedly and relentlessly, in the same way, one might work towards a marriage or a career.”

I resonate deeply with his ideas and you probably can too. Just look at your 2020 resolutions. Any of them have to do with friends or connections? The Brothers LIFE Council is my hope to give space at the center of our lives to these relationships and make our lives all the better for it.  

Question of the Week

Do you notice loneliness around you? Can you start to soften your eyes to it in your own life and the men around you?

Featured Image Credit to harutmovsisyan via Pixabay

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