THE QUESTION: Does (X) help build these four qualities... or lead me away from them?

In This Week's Newsletter:

1. FEATURE ARTICLE: "THE QUESTION: Does this build the qualities I want, or lead me away from them?"
2. Call to MEN -- Could you use some more support?
3. Personal Update and Info

1. Feature Article: THE QUESTION: Does this build the qualities I want, or lead me away from them?

Today's article comes from the Renewed Man Boot Camp. Renewed Man is a systematic teaching and coaching series designed to help men grow emotionally, relationally, and spiritually ... developing the essential character quality of "self-mastery." Even though this community is created for men, the principles are universal -- women will benefit from these insights as well. 

We build this teaching around 12 Keys, and this week we focus on the second key. Here's how we state it:  

Key 2: PERSONAL ENVIRONMENT - We take deliberate steps to design a personal environment that supports our commitment to self-mastery and vitality. Knowing what gets us in trouble, we establish boundaries and support to deal with it.

Here's one of the daily messages from this week's teaching series. I hope this will help you:

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“Stoic philosophers adopted Socrates’s classification of four aspects of virtue, which they thought of as four tightly interlinked character traits: (practical) wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. 

Wisdom allows us to make decisions that improve our eudaimonia, the (ethically) good life. Courage can be physical, but more broadly refers to the moral aspect—for instance, the ability to act well under challenging circumstances. Temperance makes it possible for us to control our desires and actions so that we don’t yield to excesses. Justice, for Socrates and the Stoics, refers not to an abstract theory of how society should be run, but rather to the practice of treating other human beings with dignity and fairness.”  -- Massimo Pigliucci

The second key in the Renewed Man program is to make sure that our personal environment helps to live the kind of life we want, rather than making it harder. Our personal environment includes our friends, the place we live, the work we do, the church we attend, the media we consume, and so on. These dimensions of our lives influence us in myraid ways -- seen and unseen. 

What is your "personal environment" like? What does it facilitate? What does it make difficult? How can you tell if things in your environment are "good" influences or bad?

I have a great question ... and it's based on four virtues, or four values, talked about in the quote above. Philosophers call them the "big four" -- these are the four cardinal virtues, or seen like the four directions of a compass. 

Stick with me here ... and we'll get to the single most important question for you to be asking as you go throughout your day, and as you evaluate your life.

I advocate for the use of updated and accurate language, so I propose that we update two words in the list of "cardinal virtues." First, instead of "temperance" -- which is a lame word that is not really used any more -- we should instead refer to "self-mastery." That's what it's about: living with self-control over our base instincts.

Second, instead of "justice" -- which is a misleading term compared to what the Greeks actually meant by it -- I think it's better to talk about LOVE. Not "romantic" love, or the "warm fuzzy feelings" kind of love, but the big-picture kind of love that seeks the ultimate good for people. In the Greek language, they called this "agape" love. It's more like "willing the good" -- and working for the good -- of others. 

So with that in mind, here are the four key virtues or values that we aspire to:

• Wisdom — knowing how to live a good life, understanding how life works, knowing and living out our place in God’s world (aka prudence)
• Courage — the willingness to go in the right direction, and do the right thing, even if that might make things difficult for us (aka fortitude)
• Self-Mastery — the ability to moderate the attraction of pleasure for  that which is best, having “self-mastery” … what the Renewed Man program is all about (aka temperance)
• Love — an orientation towards life and world in general that seeks the good of others … what is understood to be the “agape” kind of love in New Testament Greek (aka justice)

NOW THE $100,000 QUESTION

Take a look at your environment: your books, magazines, newspapers, posters, and other stuff in your home and office. The things you read, the media you access, the web sites you surf. The friends you hang around with. Okay ... as you think about each individual component of this environment, here's the question:

Does this help me build these four qualities, or does it make it harder for me to build them?

Don't lie to yourself. The answer is a simple Yes or No. Do they make it easier to be a person with these qualities, or do they make it harder? 

I cannot overstate how important this issue -- and the exercise of asking this question -- is for your recovery (if you struggle with sexual self-mastery), for your marriage relationship, for your spiritual life, and for your stress and anxiety levels. 

If you are struggling, this is almost always why: your environment is filled with things that make it harder for you to be the person you want to be. And getting rid of these components of your environment -- and replacing them with ones that facilitate the qualities and life that you want -- will be one of the most important things you do. And this is also true even if you're doing pretty well. Making improvements in your environment will lead to major gains in your emotional and spiritual well-being.

NEXT ACTION

Today's action step is to do two things: 

(1) Reflect on the four character qualities listed above. Keep in mind that these have been identified and adopted by many of the wisest minds in history. What do you think of them? Are they qualities you want to commit yourself to cultivating? In this regard, you might look at the list of "fruits of the Spirit" in Galatians 5:22-23. These are the qualities that are the "fruit" of the Holy Spirit's work in our lives. Notice how this list -- of "fruits of the Spirit" compares with the "big four" listed above. What are you willing to commit to cultivating?

(2) In light of the qualities you want to cultivate (talked about above), start thinking about the things you are surrounded by -- the media and people in your environment. Are they helping you cultivate these qualities, or getting in the way?

What are you going to do about it?

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Would you like to go "all in" and join the Renewed Man Boot Camp? It's a 12 Week Immersion in these principles. You'll get these daily teachings, a weekly video on one of the 12 Keys of Being a Renewed Man, and access to a support group and/or a coaching group that I lead.

Find out more about the Renewed Man Program here.