Feb 16
Starting today I’m going to bring everything under one, digital roof, my website deelauderdale.com. This site will remain up but will eventually only have the individual Playbook for Men teachings and related resources. Everything, else will be on the other site. So book come on over, take a look around, and bookmark the site.
Feb 01
SPECIAL TEAMS- SMALL THINGS THAT MAKE THE BIG DIFFERENCE
PLAY #3- GENEROSITY
Do you ever get the feeling that the entire world has their hand in your pocket? Everybody needs money.
And you haven’t even gotten to church!
Everybody wants money, your money.
But how do you give? How much, when and why? We need wisdom and discipline to know how to manage the money we’ve been entrusted with.
Not only do we need to be wise about how we give away money, we need to have some sort of grid to evaluate giving opportunities against. Here are a few points to consider before making a contribution:
The fact is wealth presents substantial dangers for every man, even more so for today’s increasingly more affluent Christian man. So how does a guy keep his heart and mind pure in the area of money? The following are three simple, but highly effective disciplines:
1) Be Careful – Money is powerful, it can cause men to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. That’s why a man needs to keep up his guard. Three evaluation questions to help you keep money in it’s proper perspective.
2) Be Generous – One of the best antidotes to greed is giving. When you’re generous, something significant happens in a man’s heart. Suddenly, the things you couldn’t live without aren’t so important after all. Giving keeps us from clinging onto our possessions too strongly.
3) Be Thankful
Simple, yet profound.
Here’s a bible verse that helps keep me living generously. This verse was written by a dad to his son, to help him learn what it means to be a man. There are times as men when it’s our job to provide resources to those who need them.
“Blessed are those who are generous, because they feed the poor.” Proverbs 22:9
Jan 25
SPECIAL TEAMS-PLAY #2 HONESTY
There aren’t many words that can have as much of an effect on every part of a man’s life than “honesty”.
Honesty is just everything.
Total honesty is a tough way to live. Men live in a world that sends them mixed messages- be honest, but at the same time do whatever it takes to get ahead. Because men are wired to succeed, lies become a tool they use to climb. The reason is they think they’ll be at a disadvantage if they don’t.
If that weren’t enough, men have been raised to distinguish between small lies- like when you answer “no” when your wife asks if her jeans make her butt look big- and real lies. Some people even call them “beneficial lies”, lies that protect another person’s feelings. But all lies are significant and have huge repercussions.
Why don’t men tell the truth? Why is it so tough? Here a few reasons people lie:
The weird thing is we think there’s safety in lies, when the reality is there is safety in the truth. My friend Brad Johnson has a great quote about honesty “The ugly truth is better than a pretty lie.” That pretty much sums it up.
Steps to Honesty:
Wondering what to do if you struggle with honesty? I got a verse for you
“First, help me never to tell a lie. Second, give me neither poverty nor riches! Give me just enough to satisfy my needs.” Proverbs 30:8
RED DOT TABLE TIME
Think about how you felt the last time you found out somebody had lied to you.
Jan 19
PLAYBOOKFORMEN.COM
SPECIAL TEAMS: SMALL THINGS THAT MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE
PLAY #1 FAITHFULNESS
“Finishing is better than starting”
Ecclesiastes 7:8
I’ve seen countless men set out with the best intentions, only to fail because they lacked the virtue of faithfulness. But I’ve also seen many others succeed despite the odds being stacked against them because they had developed faithfulness
Developing Faithfulness
Becoming a more faithful man will require you to dig deep and find the desire to overcome any obstacle that pops up in your path to achieve your goal of faithfulness. Nobody can do that for you except you. But here are few suggestions that may help as you seek to become a man of faithfulness.
1. Decide how you will act when faced with a challenge, before you are faced with it.
There are certain moral and ethical questions you will face at some point in your life. The worst mistake you can make is to make a decision in the heat of the moment. Why? Because chances are your human weakness will take over in the heat of the moment and you will choose the easier and most of the time, wrong choice. That’s why you have to decide now what things you will and will not do. Not only does this protect you from your emotions, it also reduces the number of decisions you have to make.
2. Write down your goals everyday.
By writing down your goals every day, you focus yourself on the tasks you need to accomplish and avoid wasting time. This will also help you motivate you to maintain your faithfulness when times get hard.
3. Learn from your mistakes.
People often lose their faithfulness because they don’t have success. But often times success doesn’t come because faithfulness is impossible, but because they were using the wrong strategy. Albert Einstein famously said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” If you see something in your life isn’t working, change it up. You must be flexible in your quest to succeed.
RED DOT TABLE TIME
What decision do you need to make NOW?
Jan 11
DEFENSE-PLAY #3 ACCOUNTABILITY
Nothing short of a prostate exam causes a man to quake in his boots more than the word “accountability”. It conjures up images of calling in weekly or daily to check in with your parole officer. Most men think the conversation goes something like this:
BOB-“Hey John, it’s me, Bob”
JOHN-“Bob, you’re two minutes late calling me, were you looking at porn?”
BOB-“Uh,no I was on the phone with my biggest customer. Sorry.”
JOHN- “Oh, come on Bob, you don’t expect me to believe that do you? Admit it, you were looking at porn!”
BOB- “No John I really wasn’t, just talking with a customer”
JOHN-”Well, then how many times have you looked at porn this week? I KNOW you have now tell me the truth”
BOB-”Actually John, it’s a been a really good week. No porn at all but I am having a little trouble sticking with my budget. Could we talk about that?”
JOHN-”Money, schmoney, never mind budgets, let’s talk about you and porn!”
Get the idea? That’s why most guys refuse to even talk about being close friends with another man, much less have an accountability partner. The sad truth is well over 90% of men over 30 do not have even one close friend. They have lost of buddies: golf, fishing, hunting, whatever, but no friend. No one they can call on in times of stress. No one to be totally transparent with. And that’s sad, because no one stands alone and no man is capable of doing life on his own.
Here are few ideas about accountability:
How do you develop friendships? What do they look like? It’s seems obvious but most guys miss this first step: to have a friend you have to be a friend. But how do you that?
Four keys to friendship.
1. Loyalty
2. Commitment to a common set of values.
3. Be an encourager.
4. Able to keep a secret
Aren’t those the qualities that you’re looking for in a friend? If you found a guy who had all four do you think it would be difficult to be open and honest with him?
RED DOT TABLE QUESTION
Which of the four qualities do you need to develop in your own life?
Dec 07
DEFENSE: SHUTTING DOWN THE OPPONENT
PLAY #2-PURITY
“I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl” Job 31:1
How about that for a verse to tape on your mirror, your computer or TV? This is the one that gets every guy. 100% of us have dealt or are dealing with this issue at any given time.
Purity is not very popular these days. We live in a society that glamorizes and exploits sex. Sex is everywhere: on the Internet, on TV and in magazines. But the ubiquity of sex has only cheapened a once sacred act and turned it into just another consumer good to be selfishly consumed.
Purity covers a long list of issues but for this discussion we’re going to focus on what we look at.
As guys our eyes can get us into trouble. Ever thought your eyes have a mind of their own? It’s like it’s a reflex action that we have no control over. Some guys try to rationalize looking but the reality is it’s not innocent; it’s not “window-shopping”. What begins, as a fairly innocent glance can be the first step down a very hazardous road. A road that can take you places you never imagined, a place where you risk losing everything, a wife, kids, a job.
The rub is looking is part of our God-wired DNA. It’s part of how God designed us to be fruitful and multiply. We’re attracted to women and want to have sex with them, thereby continuing the cycle.
Statistics reveal that the majority of men who engage in extra-marital sex do so for primarily physical reasons. Basically, she looked good and I wanted to do it. The majority of unfaithful women however cite relationship issues as the cause of their affair. A guy paid attention to her, paid her compliments and husband wasn’t. Thankfully women are not as shallow as men and looks are not as important. Exhibit “A” Lyle Lovett and Julia Roberts.
But guys are visual. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s kind of like fire. In a fireplace it’s helpful and safe but take it out and all kinds of bad stuff happens. Same thing with our eyes. Keep them on your wife, it’s all good but the second you let your eyes wander, all kinds of bad stuff happens.
How do you protect yourself from this? What boundaries can/should you put into place? The first is:
GET SERIOUS.
Stop messing around. Do the tough stuff that is necessary to get this out of your life. Why? The bible teaches that God sees all sins the same. But that doesn’t mean the consequences are the same for all sin.
In fact I’d make 2 statements about sexual sin:
Here are a few steps you can take:
You have to be very focused and relentless to defend yourself. Purity is for men not boys
RED DOT-
How would you feel if every web page you’ve visited in the past week was on a billboard in the middle of town?
Nov 23
DEFENSE: SHUTTING DOWN THE OPPONENT
PLAY #1 SELF-CONTROL
When it comes time to play defense, you need to learn a few basics. The first basic to master is self-control, because everything else builds on it. Self-control is the discipline to act as an adult and not a kid.
One element to developing self control is delayed gratification.
There was a great article in The New Yorker, about the positive impact of delayed gratification, called “Don’t! The secret of self-control” The article is all about a research project done at Stanford University in the 1960’s. 653 children were put in a room with marshmallow and were told they could eat the marshmallow immediately or wait 15 minutes and get a second marshmallow as a reward.
The kids were observed and then rated on a scale. Kids who ate the marshmallow immediately were labeled “low delayers” and kids who waited the full 15 minutes were labeled “high delayers”
What’s interesting is the research team has tracked these 653 kids over last 40 years and made some surprising discoveries. The high delayers:
A quote from the article “A child who could wait fifteen minutes had an S.A.T. score that was, on average, two hundred and ten points higher than that of the kid who could wait only thirty seconds.”
The psychologists doing the study assumed the children’s ability to wait had to do with how badly they wanted the marshmallow, but they turned out not to be the case. Instead the researchers discovered the high delayers had the skill of “strategic allocation of attention”. These kids didn’t focus on the marshmallow; instead the high delayers distracted themselves. In other words, they wanted the marshmallow as much as the low delayers, they just forgot about it. The doctor in charge wrote, “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it. The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”
Later on he said, “Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.”
Why Self-Control Is So Important:
Self-control seems like a restriction but it’s actually a protection. Here’s a verse from the Bible that paints a great word picture about the importance of self-control:
“A person without self-control is like a city with broken-down walls.” Proverbs 25:28
This verse is saying if you don’t have self-control you have no defenses and with no defenses, anything is possible.
RED DOT TABLE TIME
Two tips to practice and develop self-control
Here’s a video of an updated version of the experiment
Nov 16
OFFENSE: ATTACKING THE OPPONENT
PLAY #3 Moderation
A word you don’t hear very often these days is moderation; instead our world is filled with extremes. Think about it, there are extreme sports, extreme deodorant, extreme energy drinks, and even extreme TV channels. Everybody wants the extreme whatever because they erroneously believe the more intense an experience is the more pleasurable it will be.
But the truth is there’s a very important paradox at work, as you increase your stimulation your appetite rises to match it. Then you need even more stimulation to achieve the same pleasure the previous level of stimulation gave you. What you used to feel with two beers, now takes four, then six. At some point everybody reaches a point of diminishing returns. You just can’t get the same snap or buzz no matter how much eat, drink, or do and that’s when trouble starts. The pushes for the extreme actually begins to damage the parts of your brain and body that receive and process pleasure. You basically overload your pleasure circuits and then you become numb to future activities that should give you pleasure.
What to do? How do you avoid extremes?
Reconnect with Your Senses- An example is to slow down and enjoy a meal, instead of eating while you’re driving down the road.
Retrain Your Attention Span. Men have notoriously short attention spans. That’s why sitcoms are filmed in 7-9 minute blocks. Men have a tough time staying engaged for much longer.
A good project is to start retraining your attention span. A few ways to do this are to read the newspaper or a book without pictures.
Stop Multitasking. It’s not uncommon for me to watch TV, surf the web on my laptop, and text somebody AT THE SAME TIME. That’s insanity.
A good antidote to this is fasting. The bible talks about fasting from food but what if you did a technology fast? Could you take a day or part of a day and disconnect from technology? I admit the idea makes my palms sweaty and I twitch a little but remember, too much stimulation overloads our sensory circuits. If a total technology fast seems like waaay too much too fast, why not start off slowly with an Internet fast. Take one evening a week at home when you don’t go online. No email, no Facebook, no Twitter, nothing. Try it once then see where it leads.
Delay your Gratification. The more you hold out for something, the greater the pleasure you’ll experience when you finally attain it.
Finally, learn the peace that comes from living a balanced life, avoiding the extremes that cause us to burn out and sin.
“….The man who fears God will avoid all extremes” Ecclesiastes 7:18
Nov 09
PLAYBOOKFORMEN.COM
OFFENSE: ATTACKING THE OPPONENT
PLAY #2-INITIATIVE
A big difference between men and boys is that boys only talk about doing things while men actually get things done. Men develop a plan and get started on it while boys come up with all kinds of excuses. 3,000 years ago a guy named Solomon put this into words.
“Work brings profit, but mere talk leads to poverty!” Proverbs 14:23
There are way too many guys who want to talk about all the things they are going to do. There are way too many guys who are “idea” men. But the world doesn’t need another great idea or great speech, what the world needs is men who actually accomplish something.
Work is hard. Accomplishing something that will outlive you is a challenge. God told Adam it would be like this: “And to the man he said, ‘Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat the ground is cursed because of you. All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains. By the sweat of your brow will you have food to eat….’” Genesis 3:17-19
The world is full of great businesses, products, and inventions but unfortunately they are in the heads of guys who won’t or haven’t gotten started. So what do you do?
HOW TO START DOING INSTEAD OF JUST TALKING
Break Projects Into Tasks.
Eat The Frog Every Day-Do the worst thing on your list first!
Develop SMART Goals:
Be Flexible- Don’t be afraid to change strategies
Celebrate EVERY Win
Tools To Help You Get Stuff Done:
1. Master Task List-sit down and write down everything you need to get done.
2. Daily Task List-Stuff from Master Task list moves to this list to give a list of stuff to accomplish that is doable.
3. Use a Calendar to Help You Organize Your Time and Not Forget Stuff.
4. Write It Down: Develop a method for writing down project ideas, assigned tasks, etc. then you can move to some sort of storage system or master task list. Here’s a few ideas for ways to do this.
Pen-and-paper: A notebook (I used to use Moleskines, but now I use a cheap, spiral bound from Staples, but whatever works) can be easily modified to make all your lists accessible.
Desktop software: If you’re using Outlook or Lotus Notes, you have a task list manager at hand that can easily hold other kinds of lists by assigning categories to them. Other options include using a note-taking program like Evernote or OneNote, with a separate note for each list.
Web Applications: Any task-list manager that allows categories (Todoist is a great one, since it literally allows you to create multiple lists), or most GTD apps.
Smart Phone- I use the Notes app on my iPhone
THE SECRET TO GETTING STUFF DONE:
JUST GET STARTED
RED DOT TABLE TIME (guess I need to explain the “red dot”. When you’re looking at a map in a mall or amusement park, there’s always a red dot showing where you are in relation to everything else. So the red dot time here is for you to figure out where you are in relation to the topic)
What steps do you need to take to move from dreamer to do’er?
Nov 02
Here’s what we covered last night in the first Playbook for Men session. I’d really appreciate any feedback, just leave a comment to this post. Remember, I’m trying to develop a way to train men that is not dependent on a speaker so that men or groups of men can do this anywhere. I’m also no writing this specifically for a church crowd. In fact my primary focus is men who don’t go to church. But the biggest goal is to be practical. There’s nothing worse than reading something that sounds good but you don’t know how to do it.
I’m not fishing for compliments, so please be brutally honest in your assessment. My goal is not to write a book, my goal is to train men so I don’t want to waste my time doing the wrong thing, that’s why I need your help.
OFFENSE-ATTACKING THE OPPONENT
PLAY #!
ORGANIZATION
Every man wants to improve. Be a better father, husband, student, employee, employer or whatever. One reason is that the desire to be the best is built into guys, the desire to be recognized as the best at something. Who doesn’t want to be recognized by other men as “the man”?
But being “the man” takes work. It takes effort, desire, and focused attention. No matter how talented you are, it still takes work to be the best. Tiger Woods is incredibly talented, but he’s also known as one of the hardest workers on Tour. Fellow PGA superstar John Daly tried to get Tiger to hang out in the locker room after a round but Tiger declined, saying he had to go practice. Daly told Tiger that he didn’t have to practice all the time. Woods’ response was “John, if I were as talented as you I wouldn’t have to practice.” As of this writing, John Daly was won 6 times, including 2 majors. While Tiger has won 65 times, including 14 majors. It takes work to improve.
What’s tough is when we try to juggle all of these areas we want to be the best (the best softball player, best mechanic, best golfer, best dad.) How do you decide what comes first? What do you focus on and what gets pushed to the side. Because we’re guys, most of the time we choose what gives us the most pleasure or glory and that’s not always what’s the best long term plan, but that’s what we choose. The result is we end not accomplishing much of we say we value or the things that we need to accomplish and life just sort of melts away.
If you don’t know what you want to be good at and constantly run from one activity to another, the result is predictable: CHAOS. Nothing gets done. What we need is a clear set of priorities to serve as guardrails for our lives. It’s not a bad thing to need guardrails, even Jesus had specific objectives and priorities.
Jesus modeled the principle of living a life that was focused on achieving a few, very specific God given objectives. When He said that He had completed the work the Father had given him to do, he was basically saying that he knew exactly what His life objectives were and He had strategically designed and arraigned His life to just those few things and removed anything that didn’t fit into the plan. John 17:4 (NLT)
There was a guy in the bible that figured this out and wrote about it. His name was Solomon and he talked about it in Ecclesiastes 10:10 “If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success.” I love this verse because it’s such a clear picture for guys.
We’ve all used a tool that wasn’t ready to be used (drill bit, wood chisel, saw, or ax) because it had become dull and it takes way too much more effort to get any results. Have you ever noticed that the process of becoming dull is subtle? One day you’re whacking away with an ax wondering why it’s so hard when the light bulb goes off and you realize the thing is dull.
Eventually even the densest of guys figures out that it’s not going to get any better until he sharpens the tool. So the question is how? Let’s figure out where you’re swinging a dull ax and get to work sharpening it.
To get started you need to know that there are 3 laws that will govern everything you do and can either work for you or against you, but all WILL affect everything you do.
MAN LAW
LAW #1: Your life is a checkbook and you write a check every day
Too many of us never consider the value of day. When you go to bed at night, you will never, ever get that day back. Spend every day with purpose so you never feel remorse at the end of a day. Even if you did “nothing”, the day was not wasted if it was part of the plan.
LAW #2: You must have a WRITTEN plan
A written plan will keep you from wasting time, money, and talent. It’s really the only way to keep yourself from drifting and that’s important because we are all drifters by nature.
A written plan will also give you a blueprint to lead your family with. Help you get a woman. Women like to know a man has a plan (planning details for date).
Advantages of writing it down:
LAW #3: Everything in life costs something (time, money, etc.) and you must count that cost.
Most of us don’t consider what it costs in time, only in money. Take changing the oil in your car, the cost is far more than the 20 minutes it takes you to actually do it. There’s the time involved getting the oil and filter, then you’ve got to get rid of the old oil. So now you realize that that 20 minute job actually cost you an hour and a half. 90 minutes that you could have spent with your kids or having a date with your wife. You’ve got to decide what cost your more willing to pay, $39.95 or 90 minutes. Remember you can always make more money but you can never make more time.
The list here is endless but here’s a few to evaluate
Basically, you need to evaluate your life and determine what things would actually have a lower real cost if you farmed them out.
2 QUESTIONS TO REGAIN CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE
Question #1: Can I do it?
Do you have the abilities, time, and interest to do an activity?
Question #2: Should I do it?
Just because I can do something doesn’t mean I should. That’s why I need a written plan that will help me evaluate opportunities before they come up.
RED DOT (YOU ARE HERE) TABLE TIME
What is the balance in your life checkbook? Positive or Negative?
What do you already have in the way of written plans?
Is your life more chaos or order
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