Category: personal growth

  • It’s Better To Have A Clear Conscience On An Island Than Hide From Your Doubts In A Crowd

    I just finished a compelling conversation about faith, spirituality, and what to do when one’s discoveries lead us away from the pack. I was taught at one church that people who hang out on the fringe are like wandering sheep, ready to be picked off by the wolves. This safety in the herd mentality seemed logical, so long as the herd is in the right place doing the right thing.

    But what if the herd is wrong? What if the herd has been following the tail of the cow in front of their face for so long that it has no accurate sense of direction? The herd does offer some semblance of protection, but the herd may also end up stuck in a pit or running off a cliff. Momentum in numbers is either really good or really bad.

    Don’t allow fear to choose your path. If your conscience isn’t clear, but the herd has scared you into compliance, you’re in the wrong place.

    They say no man is an island. That may be true. But equally true is that someone has to be the first to discover the island. Maybe it’s you.

    But don’t stay on the island by yourself. Bring a friend. Or twenty.


  • Should I Launch A Business Even If It’s Not A Perfect Fit For Me?

    Sometimes we face opportunities that don’t feel like a perfect match. Maybe they require us to be more extroverted than we naturally are. Or they focus on subjects in which we lack expertise. And sometimes they’re just not that interesting.

    Sometimes the right choice is to say no to the wrong opportunities. Sometimes the right choice is to say yes to the opportunity because what we really need is to build a history of success and a pattern of facing our fears. Knowing which opportunity it is that confronts us is the real challenge.

    I faced this question this year and I labored over the decision for weeks. Truth is, I could see BOTH pros and cons for the opportunity in front of me. Here are some of the benefits to consider:

    The Benefits of Saying Yes

    • I am in motion. FINALLY.
    • I am changing my overall approach to life by saying YES.
    • I am developing skills that may open many other doors later.
    • When I win at this opportunity, I will have more confidence for another.

    The Benefits of Saying No

    • I don’t take on a burden that kills my quality of life.
    • I develop the muscle of saying no because there are too many options available in life to do them all.
    • I keep my open and available for a better opportunity.
    • I save myself the time wasted heading in the wrong direction.

    It’s not always obvious which kind of opportunity you are facing. Sometimes you face options and you can benefit from either choice. But the important thing to note is that you can win if you are aware of the possible pros and cons and you remain flexible. Mental flexibility means you can adapt to new information. It means you are not stuck in a rut of either action or inaction.

    Our choices are most largely affected by our intention, our perspective, and our ability to frame the situation within a flexible, adaptable mindset. You can choose an imperfect action because you understand what you have to gain from it, and perhaps inaction has been your greatest fault.

    If you’ve never gotten started, doing and doing now is important. Momentum is a skill you can maintain after you choose to fall forward.


  • Either God is Muzzling Me or I Have a “Communication Problem”

    I really, really… keep… trying to publish something… ANYTHING… each day.

    It’s like being restrained by an invisible muzzle. What did I do to deserve this? I think God’s answer would be something like, “I called you to be a spokesperson, and you keep getting in My way.”

    Now, keep in mind that when I really start breaking things down it gets pretty confusing, so keep up.

    (more…)


  • We’ve Been Too Hasty To Dismiss Critique

    Have you ever heard someone say, “Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions”?

    It’s always easier to critique old traditions than to establish better and new traditions. That should be our ultimate goal. But let’s not err on the side of dismissing critique simply because the critic has no solution to the problem. The critic and the pioneer may come as two separate messengers. And neither carries the other’s message.

    We’ve got to stop throwing out the baby with the bath water. We’ve grown comfortable with an illogical standard that says, “If you don’t have the solution, stop complaining about the problem.”

    But what if critique’s deconstruction isn’t supposed to take place at the exact same time as rebuilding? What if we abort the process of revolution because we dismiss critique that isn’t accompanied by solutions? How many messengers have we turned away because they were “disqualified”?

    “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”

    ‭‭Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3:1-8‬ ‭NIV‬‬

    http://bible.com/111/ecc.3.1-8.niv

    When critique comes, it may just be “a time to tear down.” That doesn’t mean a time to build isn’t coming soon. And it doesn’t mean you should ignore the time to tear down just because it doesn’t present itself simultaneously as the time to build.

    We’ve cost ourselves many opportunities for growth already. Let’s move further in and higher up.


  • 60 Day Update On Intermittent Fasting

    I shared with you a couple months back that I was beginning a new diet known as Bulletproof Intermittent Fasting. You can read my post here.

    60 days in, and I’ve lost somewhere in the ballpark of half a pound each day. Weight really wasn’t my greatest concern, except for how it demonstrated that I crossed a line somewhere back in 2006. Truly, quitting smoking was the most difficult change I’ve ever made, and I ballooned while eating everything in sight.

    My wife insists that our scale is garbage. So I stopped using it. But I can still tell as major things change. Even without numbers, running my hands over my sides tells me a lot. When the bumps disappear, that’s generally a good sign.

    So as strange as it sounds, I’m tracking progress by the noticeable feel of my belly’s shape changing from day to day, but more pronounced from week to week.

    Shedding excess fat wasn’t my only goal. It was a primary goal, but there were a couple supplementary goals attached.

    Secondary Goals

    1. Reduce joint and foot pain
    2. Increase flexibility
    3. Accomplish more productive work
    4. Give a better first impression
    5. Reset my system so it works better

    Number five there is a big one. I’m not sure how to know if I’ve accomplished that goal without someday quitting the process and eating more carelessly.

    Regardless, one of the goals is to reset my system, so that I’m burning fat as a primary energy source rather than sugar (carbs).

    The goal in everything is to live in abundance. To maximize quality of life. To excel at stewardship. To not miss out because I can’t move.

    Life is about baby steps of progress toward abundance. Abundance in everything God created and called good.


  • 6,288 Pages A Year

    What you fill your mind with will control you.

    I popped a sermon tape into a portable cassette player and took it with me on the road. It was a recording of my grandfather’s radio show, and he was telling a story about how an old lady accurately prophesied his wife’s death six months before she passed.

    But that’s not the focus of today’s rumination.

    I’ll expound upon that another day. Today I want to focus on something else Grandpa Lennard said that rocked my world. He confessed to reading the entire Bible SIX TIMES per year ON TOP OF his regular daily Bible study. SIX TIMES!

    If you, like me, have read the entire Bible once in a year, you know how much perseverance that takes. Wading through the legalese of Leviticus and Numbers can be excruciating.

    But six times??? I can’t even imagine how many hours that took each day. I mean, is that even humanly possible? If he had used my exact Bible, he would have read 6,288 pages. And naturally he did other Bible study. Naturally.

    Imagine how that would change your thinking.

    I’m imagining it. If I read that much Scripture, I would eat, sleep, drink, and breathe Scripture. There’d be no room for anything else in life. And yet… Grandpa Lennard traveled the world preaching the gospel and healing the sick for decades.

    I can’t let it go. It feels like a gauntlet has been passed.

    We’ve all binged on a show here and there. The age of Netflix and DVD sets is upon us, and it’s way more compelling to follow the storyline in a short period of time than to wait a week or two or twelve between episodes (LOST anyone?). And I must confess, when I’ve binge-watched a show, it seeps into me. It alters my dreams. My precious sleep time forms storylines that relate somehow to the story I’ve watched hour after hour after hour.

    Which reminds me of a quote I can’t escape:

    You become what you behold.

    Whatever you gaze upon most often has the greatest power to shape your thinking, expectations, beliefs, and behaviors. It’s so subtle we sometimes don’t recognize it happening, but it’s happening. Music, movies, songs, videos, gossip, and social media all worm their way into our psychological DNA. They influence who we are.

    We typically don’t WANT this to be true, because it calls us to a higher level of personal accountability. But knowing that what we behold shapes who we are empowers us to decide whether we actually want to keep choosing to be the same person. If you don’t like who you are, look first at what you behold. What do you most often watch, read, listen to, eat, touch, and daydream about?

    You are forming reactions to those stimuli. You are compensating for their messages. You are adapting to make room for their truths.

    And if that’s true about less than ideal inputs, it’s true about ideal inputs. Which brings me back to Grandpa Lennard.

    The Call to Action

    I’m not pretending to try to read the Bible six times this year. C’mon, man! I got three kids, two businesses, a homestead, goats, chickens, cats, dog, and a garden. I shut down and crawl into a fetal position sometimes. But reading once a year again might be worth it.

    There are mindsets I’ve never attained, levels of faith I’ve never acquired. And I can’t help but attribute this to the quality of my inputs. I’ve dreamed of a version of me that sees the world differently. That Daniel sees into the spiritual landscape of a geographic area and calls that which isn’t into being, somewhat like lassoing a unicorn.

    But you don’t lasso the unicorn by sitting on a couch eating Cheetos (or non-GMO potato chips made from avocado oil).

    I want to elevate my thinking.

    So I’m stepping up my game to read the Bible in one year. And that’s on top of other reading I do to better myself, including poetry, audiobooks, and podcasts.

    What are YOU going to do to be a better YOU?


  • Just Because It’s Familiar Doesn’t Mean You Belong There

    Inspiration comes from the most unlikely places. I’m sitting in the theater with my wife and kids this weekend to watch Pete’s Dragon. One of the previews shows a girl who dreams of a better life who learns to play chess. It turns out she’s really good and has the potential to play her way into a destiny far beyond the simple home where she grew up. Then came the voice that said,

    Sometimes the place you are used to is not the place you belong. You belong where you believe you belong.

    It’s really that simple. That unexpected moment relieved some of the pressure building up inside me.

    I’ve known too many people who settle for very little in comparison to what is possible. And nothing grieves me like unfulfilled potential.

    It’s such a confusing decision — knowing whether staying local and loyal to one’s roots is healthy or dis-ease. Sometimes leaving the only community we’ve known is the slow but steady death by a thousand cuts we fail to notice. Other times our homes and our histories hold us back and drag us down like weights.

    Sometimes we escape the familiar because accountability is painful and restricting. Other times we stay close to home because we are afraid to try and fail.

    The first lesson here is to “Know Thyself” well enough to discern your motives when opportunity arises. Are you motivated by fear, irresponsibility, laziness, passion, duty, or purpose? Positive motivations typically lead to faster development. Negative motivations can turn around over time as well. I know that I started on a path eight years ago because I was afraid. That fear drove me to do extensive research and discovery on a topic that led me to discover the beauty, power, and extravagance of permaculture.

    I continued performing many of the same tasks as before. The difference being that my endeavors were once based on fear of loss and now are based on the desire to design and foster beauty in the form of harmonious micro climates. It’s not about avoiding my fears. It’s about embracing my potential.

    The second lesson is to embrace growth. Growth means change. Ben Affleck recently said in an interview with Bill Simmons that for the longest time, he held this attitude that he wouldn’t let it (Hollywood, success, etc) change him. He called it being true to himself. He has a whole crew of guys from Boston who hold this ideal of never letting anything change you. And those guys have the same kinds of jobs and do the same kinds of things they did as teenagers.

    Never changing means never growing, and eventually Ben gave himself permission to grow and change and develop as a person. That’s called maturation.

    Points to Remember

    You want to know yourself well enough to pursue life and achieve your potential, and you want to give yourself permission to change.

    How This Transforms Your Culture

    If you’ve read other articles on Culture Feast, you may be wondering how this subject applies to your culture. I write mostly for one specific audience, and I’d be thrilled if these ideas apply to others as well. But my single-minded goal is to chip away at the mindsets of the people I grew up with who are stuck in family traditions, church traditions, hearsay, and wives’ tales.

    You can transform yourself and your local community culture by choosing every second to be your passion. To leave behind the old mindsets that may be comfortable but never got you anywhere.

    Unless you grew up in a community where the things that excite you are valued and esteemed, what’s familiar may not be where you belong.

    Sometimes we break free to become who we truly are. If you’re afraid of losing your roots, don’t worry. There’s often time to go back and rescue others where you came from. But you’ll have no power to rescue until you embrace your very own becoming.


  • I Stopped Considering Chronic Pain “Normal”

    Basketball was my favorite sport to play as a teenager. I played three years at our private high school, at community college spring training, and multiple times per week at the local rec center.

    But I was never able to play without nagging fear after I turned 19, due to repeated injuries to both ankles.

    One of my biggest regrets in life is not heeding the doctor’s warning when he put the boot on my foot. Honestly, the whole testing and treatment phase was a blur — it barely registered. So when I took the protective boot off two weeks early and chose to play basketball in the apartment parking lot, I knew I was ignoring advice. But I didn’t grasp how important that advice was.

    Fast forward 20 years, and chronic pain is still the hardest part of facing each new day. If it weren’t for my two year old son demanding more water in his bottle every morning, I would avoid stepping out of bed and walking on painful feet, knees, and ankles for as long as humanly possible. As you can imagine, this makes life a challenge, especially considering I live with my wife and three children on a 40 acre homestead with a garden, goats, chickens, guineas, cats, and a dog. There’s lots of work and movement required, which is all part of my dream. But constant, chronic pain stands in my way.

    What Do You Mean By Chronic Pain?

    The Daniel version of “chronic pain” is constant pain that is more serious than a bruise, but isn’t debilitating in and of itself. If it were, you’d get far more empathy from your friends and family. Not being able to walk or function communicates pretty clearly that you’re dealing with a serious problem.

    Chronic pain makes everyday function a painful, undesirable process.That’s the rub. It’s constant, ongoing pain that hasn’t been resolved over weeks and months, possibly years. It changes the way every single day feels. It changes the way you feel about simple tasks and chores. Washing the dishes becomes a slow agony. Getting up to help your kids is an act of love and sacrifice that costs you dearly… every single time.

    If you’ve not experienced chronic pain for a long time, you may not identify. And when you encounter someone experiencing chronic pain, you usually don’t know it. Why? Because we are technically able to function and the pain doesn’t stop us from moving, we don’t talk about our pain every day. In fact, we often grow to consider the constant pain “normal”. And that’s where our quality of life changes dramatically for the worse.

    Once you’ve tried a dozen different methods to reduce your pain and nothing really works, most people give up trying. And pain becomes the new normal. And once pain is considered normal, Life isn’t such a great and wondrous thing. It’s a pain to endure. It’s agony, slowly killing you.

    But Just Because Something Happens Every Day Doesn’t Mean It Should Be Considered Normal

    I have seen time and time again that there is more power in choice than we ever really understand. If we choose to not accept the new normal, then possibilities open to us, because we have remained open and eager for new opportunities. That pain in my foot may have been the sum of bad life choices and poor reconstructive surgery, but I don’t have to accept chronic pain as the new normal.

    Chronic pain is something to overcome. It’s something to surpass and leave behind.

    With that belief in mind, I’ve made some powerful choices to eradicate chronic pain from my life:

    1. Lose ALL the extra weight. No lie, I started this diet least 50 pounds overweight. Some might argue 70. Regardless, I’ve undertaken the Bulletproof Coffee approach to intermittent fasting and I’ve lost about five pounds since starting last week. Reason? Losing the weight will reduce the burden on my knees, feet, and ankles, and the level of pain intensity will shrink as a result.
    2. Ditch inflammatory foods from my diet. Lots of foods can cause inflammation, depending on your blood type and your genetic makeup (MTHFR anyone?). So foods like corn, wheat, processed chips, and Starbucks sweeteners are the first things to go.
    3. Increase the number of anti-inflammatory foods in my diet. I’m eating more fresh blueberries, blackberries, green olives, leafy vegetables, tomatoes, and salmon. Reducing the number of new inflammatory incidents is great, but when you’ve got massive chronic inflammation in your body, you gotta take the fight to the enemy. These foods actively reduce inflammation over time.
    4. Clean teeth and gums extensively at a holistic dentist. Inflammation sets up camp in the body and hangs out in different locations. Despite regular brushing, I’ve had inflammation in my gums for years, but didn’t understand it. My holistic dentist explained to me that if I clean my gums extensively, I will remove things that are causing inflammation. And the more inflammation you can remove from your body, the more your body can transition from fighting to healing.
    5. Increase my body’s flexibility. I’ve begun stretching twice daily to improve my horrendous inability to touch my toes. It’s much more than that, though. Tight tendons and ligaments have caused inflammation in multiple areas of my body, which leads to additional problems like exacerbating kidney function.
    6. Exercise regularly. Since I’m starting from a total lack of flexibility and chronic foot pain, I need low impact exercise I can believe in. Tai Chi has become my first choice because of its multi-faceted benefits. It’s low impact. It helps you reestablish a centered body frame. You reopen yourself where you’ve been closed off and unhealthy. And added bonus: you establish an ideal foundation for self-defense. Some people are afraid of Tai Chi for religious reasons, but I have not experienced that yet as a problem. My response to teachings I disagree with would be to continue to accept the desirable and reject the undesirable.

    There are more steps to take, of course, but each one of these steps takes me closer to my goal of a life free from chronic pain.

    What are YOU doing to eliminate chronic pain from your life? If you want to chat or keep in touch, hit me up on Twitter or Facebook through the icons below.


  • Mastering Pop Culture Might Not Make You As Amazing A Person As You Once Thought

    A lot of you grew up, like me, burdened with the uber rules of a religious household. It was oppressive because parents were afraid of everything, from Dungeons and Dragons to Garbage Pail Kids to the Smurfs, a lot of churchy parents feared the influence of popular culture on their kids.

    The simplest answer was to remove pop culture from the home. Whether that meant removing the tv entirely or only allowing kids to listen to “Christian” music, moms and dads tried a lot of different things to keep the influence of the world away from their kids.

    There was a massive backlash eventually. After enduring the ever popular condemn-everyone-for-what-they-do-wrong stage, most kids went through a “I’m so authentic in my faith that I don’t shame others or myself into avoiding secular music and television. In fact, I’m going to always be in the know so I can be relevant in my faith for this day and age.”

    And it sounds nice, the thought that we could take the judgmentalism out of the child and leave the devotion and faith to simmer in the midst of alternative grunge rock and Ethan Hawk movies.

    The problem came with the never ending degrees of compromise. There was never really a safe place to stop experiencing pop culture. So we ended up being identical to pop culture. We dress the same, talk the same, watch the same movies, and talk about the same celebrities on Twitter.

    And while it might seem like a virtue that we no longer make everyone feel like they’re going to burn in eternal hellfire for each bad decision they’ve made, our lives are so identical to the rest of the world that whatever ideas or beliefs we might have to share wouldnt’ matter in the slightest to them. After all, why take on the burden of new beliefs and ideas that really don’t change your life AT ALL?

    Change that only takes place on the inside is theoretical change. Not REAL change. And change that only takes place in your “beliefs” or your “heart” aren’t worth adopting anyway. You can be just like you are right now, or you can believe what I believe because I say so and STILL live just like you are right now. It’s a decision that offers no point in making it.

    There MUST Be A Point To Faith

    Faith has to mean something. I know it’a cool and super accepting of you as a person to say that faith is a private personal matter like politics but it’s simply not. Sure, anyone can hold whatever beliefs they choose. That is a freedom and a right. But if they remain the same as everyone else in their behavior and lifestyle, their differences in “faith” are really not very important.

    Faith causes us to BE more. And faith causes us to DO more. Not because we’re bad if we don’t. Not because we don’t want to be shameful citizens. But because faith transforms lives. It breathes new life into old weary bones. It opens eyes to new innocence and puts to death old ways of thinking, expecting, and believing.

    What we do is the obvious, natural outgrowth of what we believe. So if we behave like everyone else, do we REALLY believe so much different than they do? Or do we just hold onto some different ideas in our minds?

    Ideas can be examined objectively. Faith comes from hearing unwavering truth and being convinced on the inside of its veracity. It causes change because Truth means the rules are way different than we used to think they were. And the difference between these rules and those old rules is life changing.

    Ideas are interesting. Faith is transformative. Let’s make sure we’re using the right words for what we have.


  • Radically Transform Your Life By Making One Tiny Change

    I get easily distracted. Shiny objects, pretty blog themes, and social notifications are my kryptonite. So when I tell you that you can radically transform your culture one decision at a time, know that this is the voice of painful, failure-ridden experience talking.

    Save Your Starts For Mondays

    It takes A LOT for me to get moving, so I time my new ventures to coincide with events that will help me see it through. For example, I don’t try to start ANY new habits Tuesday – Sunday. It’s Monday or bust. First Monday of the month? Even better. First Monday of the new year? The absolute best.

    Change feels more official when it begins on a first. Without this help, I find it much easier to feel lazy and chalk the idea of doing something new as a “fad” or “just another hair-brained idea”. Without that added bonus of beginning on a Monday, it’s more of a casual everyday decision. I don’t know about you, but I don’t get ANYTHING done when I handle life casually. So Mondays it is.

    Start Small. No REALLY Small.

    Big changes come from doing small things over and over and developing new habits. Imagine how different you will be when at the end of the first year you’ve implemented 12 changes to your lifestyle and habits! This is radical life-changing stuff we’re talking about.

    But most people who don’t see it through bail because they aim too high. Yes, this is the point when I tell you to get your head out of the clouds and focus on much smaller routine shifts.

    What qualifies as a small shift?

    Any number of things qualify. Here’s a few ideas to get you started…

    • Wake up 15 minutes earlier, make a cup of coffee, and meditate.
    • Take 5 minutes to thank God for your spouse, children, friends, job, latest victory, current provision
    • Add a leafy green vegetable to lunch every single day
    • Wear blue blocker glasses after 7PM every evening
    • Turn off wifi on phone and router before bed each night
    • Call your mom/dad every Sunday and ask about their week
    • Read 10 pages per day in a book you’ve been meaning to read
    • Stretch for 10 minutes before you get dressed in the morning
    • Spend your lunch breaks in the sun whenever weather permits

    If this list doesn’t appeal to you, that’s okay. It’s not your job to do what I would do. It’s up to you to listen to your gut, your intuition, your conscience, and do the 1st thing that comes to you. Small shifts change lives. 

    Just to give you an idea of how small the shift can be, I’ll tell you my latest small shift.

    FLOWER ESSENCES. Yes, that’s how manly I am. I have determined within myself to put 4-6 drops of flower essences in every glass of water I drink all day long. If you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about, I’ll tell you in an upcoming post. But the point for today is that my change is using a liquid dropper and putting four tiny drops of liquid into my glass of water.

    Will it transform my life? Maybe. But I’m not counting on one new shift changing my life all by itself. It’s about building momentum. My shift for this month starts a snowball of change. When next month rolls around, I’ll be in the habit of using flower essences all the time, and I won’t have to think about it anymore. Then I’ll add something else to my life in addition. One change will improve my mood and my positive attitude. That slight shift enables me to speak with thankfulness. That shift enables me to see people differently and choose to listen more. That shift opens up my channel of empathy. And before you know it, the snowball has grown so large that I’m rolling on a whole new level.

    Week upon week, month upon month, year upon year. It’s radical cultural change one tiny choice at a time.

    What will YOU choose?