E.

Have conviction in where you’re going. In the man you are and the man you’re becoming. A young man with energy, ambition, and force, who knows what he’s for, bends circumstances that would break a man who doesn’t.

Never settle beneath what you believe in. Not in love. Not in the people you keep. Not in your purpose. Not with your soul. Aim for what you were made for. Never betray yourself by holding on to what doesn’t fit the man you are. A hard season can make you doubt your worth. Don’t let it make you forget.

You cannot be formidable without constant internal pressure. But pressure with nowhere to go turns on the vessel. All that force. All that energy. Drive it into the ordinary moments. Into the struggle. Into the daily work. Into all that life has handed you. Aim it at who you’re becoming.

Within you dwells a God-given power of will. The faculty of choice. Circumstance may bombard the confines of your external reality, but it can never infiltrate your capacity to act in accordance with the man you’re meant to be. A choice. Strength, fortitude, and constancy: the choice is in your hand. Wield it.

Brush your teeth. Drink the water. Say the prayer. Lift the weights. Eat real food. Read the book. Take the walk. Write the words. Talk to the pretty girl. Say yes more. Seek out beauty. Take the photo. Chase experience. Learn the lessons. Sharpen your sword. Cut the weakness. Act with boldness. Believe in goodness and truth. Believe in love. Trust in God.

Never assume defeat. Fix your mind on the good that is unfolding, whether you see it or not. All the trials, all the misfortune, all the unwelcome events cannot stop you if you take them for what they are: training.

On the other side of the door you’d rather avoid (failure, rejection, defeat, loss) you’ll find life. Walk through it. What you experience there becomes wisdom, and wisdom becomes character. You can’t win at anything you were never willing to lose.

A lot of what you worry about never happens. And even when it does, it’s rarely as bad as the mind makes it out to be. This isn’t to say to ignore the warning. Preparing is prudence, and prudence is a virtue. But prudence acts, then rests. Worry keeps you in a loop well after there is nothing left to do. Do what you can. Then give it to God.

Write the chaos in your head on a piece of paper. Without seeing the madness within, you can never understand where it’s taking you. Do it often. What you write reveals the patterns that are helping you win and the ones inching you toward defeat.

The shame of committing a mistake you swore you’d never do bites harder than any beast. It pierces the flesh and reaches the soul with a ferocity that’s only revealed when you sit with it, when running away is no longer your defence. Letting the bite tear through you, ripping away the weak man you’ve been dressing up as, is one of the biggest wake up calls to reality you can receive. These lessons are reserved for the stubborn, for those who refuse to see the weak suit put on every day. You learn that the pain of those teeth gripping your being is the eye opening truth that begins your becoming: who you’re supposed to be, not the lie you’ve been living. Getting caught up in a false self for the sake of an image, an impulse, an inconsiderate attitude towards the weight of what it means to be a man is the mark of having no interior life. Admitting the mistake doesn’t release shame’s grip. Only when you look at the wrong you committed with honest eyes, an eager mind and a heart ready to surrender can you finally see, hear, and know that you cannot continue living this way. That you must change. That being the man you desire to be requires everything you’re afraid to do.

To be a man of rational will, he must first see with eyes wide open. He must know what is there and what isn’t, what is true and what is a lie. He must seek out his blind spots. He cannot be tethered by his impulses; he must hold the tether. And he must have a worthy purpose outside himself, one he pursues every day: when circumstances change, when doubt hits the mind, when pain pierces the soul. Reason sees what must be done. The will does it, regardless.

Not too long ago you were a kid who aimed high. Nobody had taught him he couldn’t yet. He knew what he wanted, and he knew how open the world was. Bring him back. Christ said to become like him again. Not smaller. Bolder.

Aim higher. You get one life, and it was never meant to be confined to your capacity. It’s meant to be carried by grace. Stop running from the embarrassment of being a beginner. You haven’t seen what God has already done.

There comes a point well into your twenties when you realize youth isn’t forever. That what you do with your time decides the life you’ll end up with, and the energy and vigor you have now can’t be carried into old age. So live it fully. Go out and attempt the great. Seek risk. Decide without hesitation. Make discipline the priority and find out what you’re actually made of.

When your trust isn’t only in what you can do, but rooted in God, you have no ceiling. Do everything you can. Then trust the One who can do what you can’t, who wastes nothing.

Every so often, life reminds you how good you have it. A simple heart to heart with a stranger. The autumn sun glimmering through the leaves. An idea that sets your bones on fire. Or even just a workout powered by nothing but sweat and adrenaline. These moments also reveal how good it can get if you’d only start looking. And the more attentive you become to the good in the ordinary, the more you’ll recognize it in the extraordinary.

Forgive your younger self for not knowing what you couldn’t have known. Let go of the shame and guilt and begin to live your life with boldness in every step. You must move forward in hope, with every lesson your mistakes taught you.

There’s beauty on the other side of the work you’d rather not do. Let it pull you out of your comfort. A few months of consistency will take you further than you can see right now. You don’t need to know the whole path. You only need to begin moving.

Leave the work unattended for too long and a certain madness starts banging inside the walls of your skull. You think it’s normal. It isn’t. It’s the sound of the man you want to be, trying to get out. It can only go on so long before the noise stops and a comfortable silence becomes who you are. Not because you found peace, but because you gave up.

It’s in the late hours of the night, when quiet is the time and the wind is the clock, that you begin to hear the voice of God whispering the truth in a tune that’s felt distant for so long. And when you finally listen, you realize that life is good by every measure. It carries a weight of beauty and significance despite circumstances. In that truth you receive a tremendous strength that fills you, preparing you for the next stage of your life. And with it, gratitude branches out of your soul and into the world.