WHAT THEN WILL YOU DO?
HOW WILL YOU SHOW YOURSELF A MAN?

1. Take inventory of the unique flaws and deformities in your life. Have the courage to ask those closest to you what they think these defects might be.

2. Go to the root of these issues. What has caused them? Wounds? Conditioning? Wrong beliefs? Flawed religion?

3. In counsel with friends and pastors, make an action plan. Declare war on your weaknesses and the imperfections in your life. Most of us have too many defects to attack all at one time, but by identifying the ones that most undermine your progress toward being a genuine man, you will have established the target of your battle plan.

4. Warning: We can become preoccupied with ourselves through a process like this. In a noble effort to improve with God’s help, we can spend far too much time thinking about ourselves and end up building a bigger and more disqualifying stronghold of self than we started with. Stay focused. Identify the enemies of your soul. Develop a strategy against them. Understand you have begun a lifelong process. Get on with living, aware of your flaws. This is a means of mastering yourself, not a process by which to become even more self-focused. Enough said.

5. Finally, remember wounds and deformities draw us inward. Overcoming them frees us to focus on others and love them as God intends. The measure of your progress is the increase of your investment in the lives entrusted to you. As Lincoln overcame his depression, he became a bigger soul, a grander visionary, a man more in love with his nation, and, ultimately, a more effective servant to his people. This is exactly why a man’s battle to overcome himself is often the same thing as his battle to fulfill his destiny.

“I HAVE MISSED MORE THAN 9,000 SHOTS IN MY CAREER. I HAVE LOST ALMOST 300 GAMES. ON 26 OCCASIONS I HAVE BEEN ENTRUSTED TO TAKE THE GAME WINNING SHOT . . . AND I MISSED. I HAVE FAILED OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN IN MY LIFE. AND THAT’S PRECISELY WHY I SUCCEED.”

—Michael Jordan, from The Sign of the Swoosh by Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson (1998)