The power of listening is that it creates bonds of love and ultimately, goodness.
All in Building Character
“I hope you are persuaded that our freedom, from the ever growing reach of rules and institutions, is inextricably linked to goodness. But for that to happen, more and more people have to choose the work to walk the path of goodness, rather than power. And that my sons, starts with us and the choices we make every day of our lives.“
Listening is a skill that builds character. To build the capacity to listen, I need to be comfortable with discomfort.
For sure, every person is capable of terrible things. But we, as men, don’t have to believe the delusion that we were born with a monster inside us. We have to stop believing that. We can build our identity as men around the parts of us that are most good.
If listening is the key to love, relationships, and trust, choosing to show up is the key to listening.
Thinking about how to treat aliens, helps us think about how we treat each other.
What has given me organizing principles for living is thinking honestly about what I would be contemplating in the waning moments of my own life.
The greatest of all choices is choosing whether or not to be a good person.
The question of how to raise good children starts with figuring out how to be a good person myself.
Learning how to win ugly is an essential skill. And yet, I feel like the world has conspired to keep me from learning it.
They key to finding our purpose is setting goals with much longer time scales.
Courage is the king of all virtues. Developing it on purpose can make a huge impact on our own lives and on the people we seek to serve.
As it turns out, the antidote to “I can’t” need not be “Of course, I can, I’m the shit.” It can also be, “I have something special to contribute, just as everyone does. So I’m going to figure this out, even if it’s hard.”
I don’t want to live in a fear-driven culture for the next twenty years. I’ve grown tired of it.
It seems to me that “know thy self” is good advice to end an attachment to fear. If we have something more compelling to focus on, we have something to think about that’s more compelling than the fear others are trying to project into our lives.
Holy is an interesting word. Most people kind of know what it means, without knowing what it means. What is holiness? I’ll know it when I see it.
But what about me, what does it mean to be holy? Am I holy? This post is an attempt to put words to holiness without having to depend on just knowing it when we see it.
Unless I define “enough”, surplus doesn’t exactly exist.
I am committed to helping us - on this journey to be better husbands, fathers, or citizens - all rise together.
This exercise has helped the best version of myself to show up more than he would otherwise. It’s a “dress rehearsal for the day.”
I snapped out of the LinkedIn doom loop by thinking about the sacrifices a counterfactual world would’ve required.
How I respond to feeling used up is a choice. It’s a choice. It’s a choice.