A dear friend and I were enjoying some open and raw thoughts; the words came pouring out unbidden. We didn’t get into it much more than that as some distraction or other took our attention off the subject. It was only later as I spoke to my wife that the gravity of my words hit me and shook me to the very core.

In a nutshell, it would seem my identity and self-esteem are heavily invested in other peoples opinion of me. What they think of me is key and I will usually do everything in my power to maintain a good opinion of others. This is usually manifested in keeping the peace, always deferring to other peoples beliefs and principles, avoiding confrontation and such other things.

The challenge is that in the absence of these key people, I can’t readily tell you who I am. I mean I can tell you what you want to hear or what is expected of me. But I can’t really tell you who I am.

And that scares me. A lot!

Read the rest of this article at The Readers Cafe Africa

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The thing that I walked away with is that you simply cannot be passive about your manhood. You must take it seriously because in the end, God holds men doubly accountable. In the movie, the fathers realise this and all make a resolution to live by. I’ve got a copy for you to reference from time to time. But make no mistake, you will need God and Courage to live this through.

THE RESOLUTION

I DO solemnly resolve before God to take full responsibility for myself, my wife, and my children.

I WILL love them, protect them, serve them, and teach them the Word of God as the spiritual leader of my home.

I WILL be faithful to my wife, to love and honor her, and be willing to lay down my life for her as Jesus Christ did for me.

I WILL bless my children and teach them to love God with all of their hearts, all of their minds, and all of their strength.

I WILL train them to honor authority and live responsibly.

I WILL confront evil, pursue justice, and love mercy.

I WILL pray for others and treat them with kindness, respect, and compassion.

I WILL work diligently to provide for the needs of my family.

I WILL forgive those who have wronged me and reconcile with those I have wronged.

I WILL learn from my mistakes, repent of my sins, and walk with integrity as a man answerable to God.

I WILL seek to honor God, be faithful to His church, obey His Word, and do His will.

I WILL courageously work with the strength God provides to fulfill this resolution for the rest of my life and for His glory.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. – Joshua 24:15

Shalom

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The other day I was watching a feel good movie called Real Steel. A great movie I must say. I mean who wouldn’t enjoy giant robots smashing themselves to bits at the screams of the people? On the surface, it’s just another story of the underdog triumphing against all odds.

The thing that struck me the most was the story beneath the metal carnage; a story of a father creating a relationship with the son he never knew existed. Now this was for me the true highlight of the film.

You see, before meeting his son, this guy was selfish and unfocused in his endeavors. A has-been pro boxer who is now deep in debt, appearing in backwater arenas to place his robot in fights to the death.

However, when the son enters his life, he starts seeing things a different way, he learns how to put someone ahead of himself and very importantly, he learns to dream again and believe in himself.

There is a way you begin to see the son affirm his father and encourage him to be the great man he used to be which culminates in a scene where in the final fight, the son urges the father to take manual control of the robot which has had its audio receptors destroyed.

The son believes the father’s excellent boxing skills can guide the robot to win the fight but the father still feels he is a has-been. The complete trust and love from his son gives him the confidence to win the fight. In that moment I realized a very fundamental truth.

Fathers need their children too!

Yes, we’ve heard over and over how children need their fathers to speak life, blessings and love into their children in order for them to become wholesome esteemed individuals. However, who speaks into the fathers? And whose voice is louder, more sincere and loved filled than that of his very own children?

God made it in such a way that children see their fathers as super heroes. Children will always say things like “My daddy can beat your daddy”. Hopefully it’s true when they do cause they could get you in quite a spot of trouble with the school bully’s huge dad.

But the point is, children have a very powerful voice of influence on their fathers. There are few things that fill me with strength after a hard unsuccessful day like my daughter looking me in the eyes and telling me she loves me. This helps me get up and fight again.

In the movie, the sons influence turns this father from a has-been into a legend. Our children do the same for us. So to all my brothers out there, take time to let your children speak to you and build  you up.

So today, remember in as much as your children need you, you need them too!

Shalom

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

“Why should we wait a whole year for one supposedly special day to celebrate our love and affection to one another?”

Believe it or not but we were still young and in the throws of a blossoming love when my now wife asked me this question several years ago. We were still dating and the thought of making babies together hadn’t even crossed our lightning fast minds.

I admit I was really relieved. You have to understand there’s incredible pressure on us men to deliver a spectacular once in a year romantic experience every 14th February for the women in our lives. Plus I was quite broke at that time so I was bound to disappoint.

But isn’t it funny how valentines isn’t so much a holiday for couples to celebrate their love as it is for the ladies to out-do each other by having their romance inept men very publicly shower them with gifts, treats and excessive excursions? I never see the women going crazy about what they must do for their man or the men spending the whole day waiting for cards and chocolates. I think that says a lot, don’t you?

Anyways, back to my story. I was relieved that not only did I not have to break the already broken bank to impress this amazing woman with usual expensive repertoire for Valentines but more so because I found someone who shared my own appreciation for the shallowness of the whole thing.

Here’s the reality. You simply cannot claim to love someone on one special day in the year and then spend the other three hundred and sixty four treating them like your servant or doormat. Yet that’s the deception we have bought into. There is no one special day in the year to show your love for your mate. Every day is special.

I can boldly say that this sort of thinking is actually killing our relationships. Remembering how special your mate is, usually the ladies, once or twice a year simply doesn’t cut it. Now while this may not affect the males as much, seeing as women are the more emotionally intelligent of the species, over time it does get both parties feeling less than valued when acknowledged so rarely.

So my wife and I decided we won’t celebrate Valentine’s. There’s no point. Instead, we came up with a much better way born out of a simple, wild thought spoken out loud.

“Instead of ‘Happy Valentines Day’ once a year, how about “Happy Our Day”, every day of the year?”

The key principal of Valentine’s is to celebrate love through unique, uncommon and often very public gestures. Those amazing feelings aroused at the end of the day prove we all love the doting and attention in front of our friends and peers. Now imagine the impact it would have on your relationship if you did smaller shows of love every day throughout the year instead? Dynamite!

It’s in the simple things. A wild rose picked from the wayside on one day, a slice of her favorite cake the next, a bow wrapped beer for him after a long day at work the other. The options are only limited to your imagination. Be creative and find ways to use the common mundane things in a fresher, newer way to express your love.

As you celebrate your mate in this simple daily manner, I guarantee a ground swell of love and affection will be reciprocated from the other side. Now ladies, I urge you to take the lead on this as we men are a little slow when it comes to expressing love but show us the way and if that’s really the man who’s good for you, he will follow soot. You merely need to agree on this ‘every day is valentines’ way of doing things.

And if you still believe in the magic appeal of Valentines day, please by all means go ahead and enjoy it. Just make sure it’s a grand finale to a year long, daily celebration. One that marks the end of one yearly love cycle and the glorious start of the next.

Happy Our Day.

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

You give me your word? Puhleeaase!

I give you my word.

There was a time when that used to mean something. Something worth more than gold. That’s not so true anymore.

When was the last time you heard that phrase and believed it completely without a flicker of doubt? When was the last time you made such a promise and lived up to it? I know its been a heck of a long time for me. I’m not proud of that.

The word of a man is his bond. You ever hear of that one? These phrases exist because a man is supposed to be a person of the highest integrity. When a man says he’s going to do something or be somewhere at a given time, it’s supposed to be a given.

I live in a country where integrity is a bad word. Actually, the word simply doesn’t exist in most people’s lexicon. All around me, I see men cheating, lying, breaking promises, unfaithful in work and relationship. It’s appalling to say the least. I’m not sure which is worse, that they do these things or that they don’t care at all about their integrity?

Finding a man of his word is harder than finding a blue grain of sand in the Sahara desert. One of my favorite verses from the good book says, “God is not a man that he should lie”. I love that.

God is the ultimate truth; you don’t get more solid than that. When God says he’s going to do something, He will. And He won’t be late or early but right on time. Now, I don’t always understand His timing and it pisses me off to no end but that’s a discussion for another time.

The point is, God never goes back on His word and neither should we. Now, I believe men are supposed to be representatives of God — nothing chauvinistic here, just a belief based on my Christianity. Therefore we are supposed to strive to be more like Him which means the highest integrity.

Gentlemen, it really is true, your word is everything. If you become known as a man of your word, it doesn’t matter what may happen or what the gossips say. People will trust and respect you because of your proven past ability to always live up to your word.

You should be of the highest integrity that you could hypothetically walk into a bank and ask for a loan without any security and they wouldn’t hesitate to give it to you because your word is worth more than your weight in gold.

Awesome. That’s exactly the kind of strength of word I’d like to have when I grow up. Seriously, I think Integrity is one of the key defining traits of manhood. You simply aren’t a man if you don’t have and continuously strive for integrity.

I love that my wife always tells me that she married me because she believes I’m a God fearing man of Integrity. I feel like a super hero when she says that. Now I only need everyone else to say the same thing.

So today, be careful with your word. Don’t give it lightly and always deliver mightily on it. Go out there and start creating a legacy of integrity. Start keeping your word, first in small things then the bigger. Work that integrity muscle till you become the mister universe of integrity. As a result, your life will become more wholesome, people will give you the respect and admiration you crave, your kids will sing praises for you and your woman will do anything for you. Not only that, but God Himself will move heaven and earth for you, because you’ll be a son after His own heart.

You have my word on that.

Shalom

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

Call it a mid-life crisis but given that I’m only 32 years old, it’s come a little early. Hang on though, the life expectancy of an average black male is about 50 or something so I guess I’m right on cue. I have a confluence of anger, disappointment, frustration, weariness, dashed hopes, failures and shame swirling around on the inside.

My life looks nothing like what I’ve dreamed or hoped or planned. I’m nowhere near the caliber of man my wife deserves or father my daughter needs. I’m no successful writer or entrepreneur and I don’t have the impact in positively changing people’s lives like I want to. I feel horrible. My heart aches. It sucks.

Yes, I feel sorry for myself. It feels good. Great even. I’ve been brooding and not spoken much to anyone. I’ve enjoyed the concerned questions of my wellbeing and the prayers. Narcissm I think is the right word.

Yes. It’s been great. But enough!

Why would I give up something that clearly I seem to be enjoying? Well because it’s been a terrible time too. It’s made me feel worse about myself, knowing I know better. Feeling sorry for yourself is ok for a little while, emphasis on little; but after that it really becomes self-destructive. Ask any pig farmer and he’ll tell you, the longer you wallow in the mud the harder it gets to clean off – not to mention no one wants to touch you to help!

So I’m writing this as a declaration for myself and all those currently feeling like sickly swine in the mud.

*Bitch Slap* “Stop it right now!”

There, that should get your attention.

Feeling sorry for myself hasn’t given me any new bright ideas or inspiration on how to change anything at all. It certainly has propelled me forward. On the contrary, I feel I’ve thrown myself several steps back. I feel blocked off from faith, joy and love — the very things that inspire creativity. So I’m stopping it right now.

Funny thing though, is it’s a lot easier to wallow than just look yourself in the mirror and forgive yourself and move on. Believe me, I’ve been trying. It’s hard but I’m getting there. Why don’t you encourage me too, huh? I could use it (clearly I’m still enjoying the aforementioned attention). Either way, I’m on my way out of the doldrums. I just want to encourage all of you out there feeling like I have been that it’s ok to feel that way for a little bit but now is the time to get your butt in gear. Now is the time to forgive yourself, forget the things that lie behind you and press forward to your greatness. Yes, it will be hard and you’ll probably go through many more times like this. Just don’t stay there. When you’re going through the mud, don’t stop moving. The best thing you can do is slow down and keep your movement steady and even. I know this from driving off-road. It takes longer, is a lot scarier but you will get through it soon.

So here’s to you. I forgive you. I believe in you. Your dreams are reachable. You can do it. You must. It’s what God created you for in the first place.

Shalom

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

I read a whole lot from all over the internet, books, magazines. I watch videos and listen to audio tapes about being a leading man of God.

Each time I do I marvel at the writers prose and speakers eloquence and vast depth of knowledge and experience that make you hang onto every word they say as gospel.

I often catch myself, longing to be like them, wondering why I can’t be as deep and insightful? Why I can’t get people to hang onto my every word like I was an eastern zen master? Why don’t I get hundreds of comments to my articles?

As I pondered these questions, it hit me. The answer is actually very simple. These people(well, not all of them) are merely talking about what they are living. Period. When Bill gates speaks about multibillion dollar businesses, you listen, because he has one. When Tiger woods speaks about golf, you listen. When Muammar Gadafi speaks about being a dictator, still you listen.

The point is all these guys are talking their walk. But all too often, the majority of us tend to talk more about things we aren’t personally walking. The whole, do as I say not as I do mentality. It’s hard to admit but writing about being an awesome man when I’m not actually living out the very values I speak of leaves a huge character gap.

I can’t preach to you about courage when I’m too cowardly in my own life. I can’t preach to you about great marriage when I’m getting divorced. I can’t teach you about being a great father when I’m never around to actually parent the children in my life. I can’t lead you if I can’t lead myself.

It’s always a lot easier to speak authentically about what you know than to try to do what you speak about self-righteously. I have made a decision to do a lot more walking than mere talking in my own life. It is only by doing, failing, learning and succeeding in my own authentic way that I can teach others to do the same.

I want people to respond to me as someone they feel is authentic and living out what they would want to be doing so. I’m not interested in fame but rather in influence. And influential people are those who have weight behind their words, those who walk first and talk later.

In my last post, I talked about putting only real stuff here. (Oh and by the way that’s not an excuse to write less frequently –that would go against my walk)

So gentlemen, less talk more walk.

Shalom.

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

However, today, I had a revelation that I believe will simply catapult my efforts to being my most awesome self.

As you may know, I do a lot of reading about success, growth, self-actualization, generally being the most kick ass version of yourself. The simplest and most common formula for success out there is:

 “Find your passion. Live your passion. Make obscene amounts of money from your passion”.

And when you live your passion, work is no longer work but pure bliss and every area of your life is infused with energy and enthusiasm because of this. Simple enough right? I mean, don’t we all know what we’re passionate about?  Yeah right!

Statistics show that only 5 out of every 100 people is ever going to be successful. So that means only 5% of the entire 7billion people on this planet actually know what their passion is and are living it out; not to mention successfully earning a living out of it. Chances are most of us don’t even know anyone in that elite five percentile.

As you can imagine, I’ve been super frustrated because I don’t have that “Oooh Oooh, I can’t wait to get up in the morning and go do this. I’m so blessed to have this job” special feeling that the successful talk about.

I mean even the disenchanted and rather suicidal sounding Preacher in the bible puts it like this:

 “For people and animals share the same fate—both breathe and both must die. So people have no real advantage over the animals. How meaningless! Both go to the same place—they came from dust and they return to dust.  For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down into the earth? So I saw that there is nothing better for people than to be happy in their work. That is why we are here! No one will bring us back from death to enjoy life after we die.”

So really, what’s the point in spending 12hours of your day everyday for your whole life, doing something that you don’t love? It’s been driving me crazy trying to figure out what I would love to do every waking moment of my life and not get tired of it. (Oh and travelling around the world enjoying good food, fine wine, fast cars and the company of exotic women does not count!)

So today it hit me. Why stress myself out looking for my passion when I can simply live passionately and let my passion find me?

Simple right? Alot of these successful men and women have shared that they actually didn’t start out where they are now but by simply grabbing life by the horns and living fully, they eventually found their destined path. Sure there were probably alot of false starts, bankruptcy’s, broken hearts and eating out of garbage cans but sometimes, there’s just no damned clear path with neon signs telling you what you were born to do.

Sometimes, your lucky, your blessed and you just know what you were born to do. Most of the time though, you get there after massive trial and error. Some would say it’s Gods way of testing whether your truly worthy of you destiny or your just a charlatan who would squander it away.

I think most of these people out there mislead us into believing that finding your passion is so easy, like, how you just know what you’d like to have for dinner friday night. I have come to believe its much more difficult than that for many of us. It’s more like finding your true self in the clutter of the expectations and labels thrust upon us by parents, friends, society as a whole. It takes courage, time, effort and even pain.

So here’s my advice to all of us who are struggling to find our destiny, our passion or simply work that we enjoy.

Just live your life passionately! Stop chasing passion and just be passionate about everything you do.

Be open to all the possibilities. Try things you’d never consider doing in your right mind. Do what you think you’d like to do. Embrace pain, failure and embarrassment.  Because it’s in the multiplicity of lifes seemingly random events and experiences, that we find out who we are, what we can not stand and very importantly, what we are most passionate about.

Most of all have faith in God. He will, in His perfect timing, set you in the right place and straighten the crooked paths you’ve taken.

Ahhh, I feel a huge burden off my chest now that I let go of that nagging need to find my passion. Go a head, try it. And be sure to leave a comment telling me all about your new found freedom.

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

Its been quite a while since I last posted anything here. I admit it’s been a crazy emotional time for me. I’ve been borderline depressed for over 2months actually. You see, even though I share alot of ‘wisdom’ on this site about being a man, living your best life and all,  I’ve found lately that being true to what I preach isn’t so easy. I came to realise that I am certainly not walking my talk or in this case, blog.

Truth is, I’ve been living way below my potential as a man, simply whimpering in the dark sewers of manliness while hiding behind brave words and polished blogs; nothing more than a whiny sack of narcassitic negativity and complaints.

There. I said it. I’m certainly not proud of it. But I have to be honest with you. And it’s time to stop!

I owe it to you my readers and more importantly myself, to live up to everything I write here. While I have never professed to be the ultimate man or a guru in all things manly, I hate the hypocrisy and disparity between what I write and my real life. So I have been seriously reconsidering my life, my marriage, my work, my mission. I shared with you in a past article  the importance of always questioning yourself and your motives.

But.… a lot of times, it’s really hard to look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, “what the eff am I really doing with my life, forget what I’m trying to make people think?”

So, from now on, it’s all about authenticity. I will not write anything here that I don’t personally believe or practice in my own life. I will work on every area where I am living beneath my dignity. And I will share with you my journey and lessons as I become more manly. That’s the promise of the Apprentice blog.

It’s not about having arrived. Its about getting there; the daily, dirty unglamorous struggle for all of us to be the men we know we can be and maybe, just maybe even greater than that.

How about you join me? Lets get back on the horse and start living to the maximum of our potential. Screw status quo. Lets rock this thing.

Let us be men again!

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work

Thats what Beyonce Knowles wants us to believe with her hit new song. So does Alicia Keys who sings Superwoman. Our local stars Blu3 sing that they are strong women. A lot of these songs are coming up lately. Call them womens empowerment anthems. There is a tsunami of women’s lib and empowerment that is sweeping modern society like never before. It’s great to see women finally being recognised and appreciated for their uniqueness and all that it adds to this world. However, the down side to this is that men and manliness are being swept under this same wave. I see more than ever, men being despised, stepped on, degraded, pushed aside, valued less and in some cases, vilified and loathed.

In the last couple of thousands of years, men have been top dogs and women have been merely considered property or at best, baby makers. I laughed when I saw a scene from the Disney animated classic Beauty & The Beast, where Gaston the antagonist tells our damsel Belle, that women shouldn’t read because they’ll start thinking and that could become troublesome. Was it because men at the time knew education of women would expose their domination as a falsehood? I don’t know but as funny as it was to hear such a ridiculous statement, many men in the past believed it and practised it. That’s why girls were never sent to school. It was a rather neanderthal way of keeping women in check.

However, as we entered a more enlightened age in the last few decades, women have finally broken free of so many of those cave man ways. Women are educated, highly successful career driven individuals contributing so much more to modern society than making babies and keeping the house clean. We even have affirmative action and various gender based incentives to help women succeed faster and further than ever before. Thank God we now value women as they deserve. Well much more than before any ways.

Women have more say, more exposure, more opportunities than any other time in history. So then what’s the problem?

The problem is an ever increasing sense of reprisal against men and manliness from the self empowered women. After years of being considered no more than property, there is an almost genetic anger possessed by a majority of women who feel it’s time men paid for all the suffering of mistreated women going back millennia. An undertone of loathing and vengeance permeates the attitudes of a lot of women today. Too many generations of abused mothers passing on their pain and frustrations on to their daughters has left very little room for men to considered anything more than cave men who want to hump anything in a skirt(and now even anything not in a skirt)

It doesn’t help that these feelings have been justified by millions of men who have continued along the path of selfishness and false domination. A lot of women are justified in their feelings. Too many actually. So many generations of single mothers and by single I mean mothers forced to raise children alone because they were abandoned by the fathers not widows, has led women to believe they can actually do it all and only need men as sperm donors. Single mothers work and provide, protect and teach their children. Why bother with a father? Many men are beginning to believe that women are actually superior creations and won’t even try any more to be responsible man in the home.

There’s a rising trend of young successful career driven women who want to find a suitable sperm donor so they can have and raise a child on their own. They have money, time and historical proof on their side to show us, that indeed men aren’t necessary. They are more of an inconvenience to be avoided if possible. Interestingly, I’ve observed that one of the overriding allures of Lesbianism stems from women believing that women make better lovers and companions than men. Hmmm.

So what about manliness then?

Well, thats very quickly on the way out. Chivalry is dead. Women don’t need us to open the door for them or go out and toil for her all day while they stay home with the kids and the kitchen. The buzz words these days are sharing, feelings, getting in touch with your feminine side, being vulnerable. Oprah is the biggest talk show in the world. And that’s what you see on there. Men crying and sharing their feelings and being vulnerable in front of total strangers on global television. It’s just not enough that we aren’t needed as fathers and providers but now we’re being asked to become more like women. We’re now being asked to feminize our looks, do our nails, wear makeup, use moisturizer and go to the spa for mud baths. Wear earings and shave our chest hair. Yes, it’s getting that bad.

Rex harrison would truly kick himself now that men are being more like women

Traditionally, men are supposed to be the strong ones, protecting their women and children from the elements. Men are supposed to go out and sweat to provide a life for their family. Men are supposed to lead with boldness and courage, turning chaos into order. Men are the vanguards of morality, education and progress. But no more.

So where does that leave men and manliness? What are we supposed to do? Who are we supposed to be? If all the traditional manly roles of provider, protector, head of the home can easily be handled by the modern woman, what then? If we aren’t needed to be fathers who care, nurture and teach their children, what then? If we aren’t the head of the home, looked to for guidance, strength and direction, what then? If we can’t be rugged and brave and chivalrous because they aren’t necessary any more, what then?

I’d really love to hear what you think about this. Write a comment as to whether you think men are obsolete or if there is still a great need for us?

Shalom.

The Apprentice - Lessons for Men in life, love, faith and work