166 – Seizing The Opportunity

SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY… You know I’m always talking about looking for opportunities to be a better man in your daily life.  I realize that just saying that might seem kind of nebulous…like what does it mean exactly? Today I’m going to give you a practical example of what I mean by seizing opportunities to be a better man, from my own life. I’m going to be alone for the next week, because my wife is visiting family out of state.  This situation provides me with a huge opportunity to be a better man.  I’ll explain what I mean. There is a part of me that wants to revert to my caveman persona, simply because there isn’t anyone here to tell me otherwise.  I don’t have to do anything in particular, because I’m the only one here at the moment.  I can leave dishes piled up, I can leave my shoes wherever I want, I can leave my clothes laying around wherever I take them off.  I can act like a teenager whose parents are gone for the weekend and do stuff…just because I can, or, I can be a better man. I can honor my wife, our home, and myself, by doing the things that I should do.  By ignoring my base tendencies and instead being focused on being a better man.  That means instead of goofing off I will tend to the household.  I’ll wash the dishes and I will maintain the household in the manner that my wife and I have agreed to.  I’ll do these things because I have decided thats the right thing to do, and for no other reason.  In so doing, I am making a choice to be a better man. It’s a fairly simple choice to make, a reasonable, responsible choice, an adult choice.  However…if I was not in a frame of mind to be looking for opportunities to be a better man…I might have missed it.  I might have just went “woo hoo…I’m on my own for a week and I can do whatever I want.”  Instead, because I am focused on being a better man and looking for opportunities to be so, the first thing I recognized was the opportunity to be better. Thats why this podcast exist, and that is how it works.  I’ve heard from a lot of guys that said after listening to a few episodes this philosophy kind of gets under their skin.  When you become aware that a choice to be better exist, its difficult to ignore it without consciously making a choice NOT to be a better man.  If you are a regular listener and have experienced this sort of change in the way you think I would love to hear from you.  So when you hear me talking about going through life looking for opportunities to be a better man…this is the sort of thing I’m talking about.  In almost every situation that occurs in normal life we have this choice.  We can choose to be a better man than we were yesterday, or we can choose to not be a better man.