relationships – Page 7 – Team Quadzilla

4 Things Married Men Should Never Do

December 7, 2017June 3, 2020 teamquadzilla

So, you’re a married man. Congratulations! Being married can be awesome and liberating. You get to spend the rest of your life with your best friend and someone who complements you completely – it’s tremendous.

The thing about marriage is that it actually provides a framework for you to thrive and flourish, to become your true self rather than someone who is just angling for another score.

But even though marriage is a time for you to feel free, there are a few things that married men should never do. Here are four of them.

1) Get emotionally vulnerable with a member of the opposite sex

Whether you’re unburdening yourself or whether they’re pouring out their heart to you, this is just a bad idea. Look, we all want to be the person who is kind and loving and who is “there” for those in need. And that’s a great person to be!

Just don’t be that person for a member of the opposite sex. Especially if it’s just the two of you.

Look, we’re not afraid of a man being friends or even being close with a woman that he’s not married to. But we also understand the realities of the way the human heart works, and we know that emotional vulnerability can wind up leading either – or both – of you to places you shouldn’t be going.

Someone else can be there for them. Or there for you. It’s not worth it.

2) Keep score

Hey, you want to know a great way to kill intimacy with your wife? Try keeping score!

When you get into a heated conversation (i.e. argument), don’t try to find resolution – just try to win. When your wife asks you to do something for her, remember it so you can use it later to force her to do something for you.

Oh, and when it comes to sex, definitely keep track of who initiates and when and then take it personally.

Of course we’re being sarcastic here. Keeping score is great when you’re playing actual games, but a terrible thing to do in marriage. You and your spouse are in this together, meaning you either both win or you both lose. Grow up.

3) Try to fix your wife

The great thing about your wife is that she is a wonderful puzzle of occasional contradictions who sometimes just needs to think out loud.

And at the risk of generalizing, we’re going to say that when she does think out loud, she’s not really looking for answers so much as a confidant and someone to back up the way she feels about something.

She probably doesn’t really want you to fix her situation, and she definitely doesn’t want you to fix her.

She wants an advocate.

You aren’t responsible for your wife’s emotions or actions. You know who is? She is. Let her be. Listen, be kind, back her up, and let her vent.

4) Stop doing the little things

You know how when you were dating you did all kinds of cool, fun, romantic little things? And you know how that made her feel?

Yeah, you should keep doing that stuff.

You probably already know this, because it’s in, like, every marriage book, blog, video course, conference, and getaway weekend. But there’s a reason for that: because it’s true.

You have to keep doing that stuff to let your wife know you still cherish her and respect her and have a desperate desire to continue surprising her, even after all these years.

And now it’s your turn, married guys. We’ve given you some ideas – take them as a springboard and start thinking of what you shouldn’t do as a married man, as well as all the many, many things that you can do. Get started. Live free.**

**This entire article was written by Craig Gross who started http://www.xxxchurch.com. He provides excellent resources for marriage and common struggles men in particular face. I enjoy sharing helpful and encouraging content from other subject matter experts. I hope this is helpful to you as it is to me.

faith, Family

Why Fear Is Worse Than Greed

November 16, 2017June 3, 2020 teamquadzilla

To be honest, I didn’t want to share this article. It sat in my inbox for months while I read and re-read it several times with an ever increasing conviction that it was written directly to me. Has that ever happened to you?

This hits me right between the eyes. Not every detail of course, but Dr. Raymond Force pretty much nails the subject. I’ve never thought about fear this way, even once I admitted that I had some fears (fear of rejection/ failure primarily) that keep me from being an awesome husband.

It is because of my fear that I don’t want to share this with you. So here I am facing my fear head on making myself vulnerable to you. Dr. Force’s complete article is below (in red). My personal comments follow that. Read on.

Dr. Force’s Article

There are two emotions in life that cause hardships in our relationship with God, our spouses, and our children. Though one seems to get a pass on many an occasion, both are extremely destructive. These menaces are fear and greed.

If fear and greed were villains, greed would probably have a higher price on its head. However, I believe fear to be a little worse for the following reasons:

Fear is not as easily identified as a problem in the mind of the fearful

Everyone that is fearful feels justified in their fear-based approach to life and relationships. In their mind, they are protecting their marriage and the ones they love. However, it should be noted that though we should be cautious in some areas, there is a fear based in our unbelief, our idiosyncrasies, and our insecurities that can destroy healthy relationships.

A fear-based spouse will often see darkness where there is simply light, feel hostility when there is peace, or read something into a situation while others are just doing life. Nonetheless, the results can lead to as many fights as a marriage that is plagued with a greedy, self-centered spouse.

Fear-based people do not take the blame

People that are prone to fear-based actions are more likely to blame others around them for not being equally afraid. Thus, it is harder to identify the true culprit in the relationship because the focus of the blame is often misguided at best.

Fear-based people often have logic and scriptures to back up their actions

Though their logic and scriptures will often be faulty or out of context, they seem all the more believable and sincere because of their arguments.

Dr. Raymond Force’s Story

I like to tell people that I have better me-sight than insight on subjects like this. In other words, I was a horrible fear-monger in our marriage during the early days, and I still have to watch my thoughts and actions. There was a time when my wife was afraid to be herself. She hid behind a shell of stoicism as she never knew when the next fear-based bomb was about to drop. To make matters worse, my fear was cloaked with religion (which is the worst kind), and I failed to see how debilitating it was to our marriage until about 5 years into the marriage.

Here is what I found that helped me to move into a more loving approach to my marriage and life in general:

I had to enter into a John 14:21-23 relationship with the Lord.

In other words, sensing the presence of my Heavenly Father helped me to relax and see goodness where previously I saw the opposite.

I had to stop blaming others in the marriage and home.

The Greek word for devil in the scriptures is diabolos. The word is actually translated slanderer or accuser in a few places. I had to realize that though I was religious, I had many of the characteristics of the evil one in that I was proud and a slanderer of those around me.

I had to become a man.

Manhood means taking sole responsibility for your actions instead of blaming others. It also involves taking the consequences of your actions on the chin and doing whatever it takes to ensure that the original actions that caused negative reactions from others are no longer in play.

I had to detox my mind.

I often encourage spouses and families to do what I call a Philippians 4:8 detox. In this passage, Paul tells us to think on things that are praiseworthy. Mark it down. When you stop beating dead horses of negativity in your mind, you will see a release of tension in your spirit, marriage, and the rest of your home.

I had to realize that fear was greed.

When people are fearful, their focus is hardly ever on God’s glory. In fact, the energy swirls within them and around them, but it hardly ever is an energy that causes the focus to be on God and the true betterment of others. Truly, love, agape love, never fails and it certainly “casts out fear”.

Chad’s Story

I believe most people are quite unaware, clueless really, of their negative behaviors and how they impact their relationships. I am no different, having spent the majority of my adult life believing that most of the relationship problems I faced were the fault of my circumstances or someone else. In just the last few years though I finally discovered something radical. A key part of my healthy living journey is to become more self-aware through a frequent process of “sober self-assessment” (Romans 12:3) that I learned in a really good Bible study resource.

It is by this prayerful self-assessment, the therapeutic exercise of journaling, and a study on the topic of hidden idols in my heart that the Lord revealed to me my issue with fear of rejection. I realized that I had made an idol out of approval/ acceptance from others- particularly from my wife Angie. I won’t get into the details about fear as an idol here, but if you are intrigued how they are connected, I recommend you take a close look at the last link about hidden idols. Read the book.

My point is that it’s humbling to learn that the source of my problems in life and relationships is my own fault and I’m responsible to make it better. What hits me hard about this article is that fear is actually very selfish. Greed is selfish obviously. But fear is even more selfish than greed. Ouch. Here’s what my fear of rejection looks like: (Gulp)

I work really hard to earn approval or acceptance from Angie. I work my butt off because I NEED her approval like a fish needs water. I feel like I can’t live without her acceptance & approval. I fear failing her and I fear her rejection of me, so I knock myself out by doing things that I think will win her. My self-esteem is based upon how I perceive Angie feels about me & my performance.
My fear of rejection and my NEED of her acceptance/ approval are tied together. What happens is inevitably I do not receive the acceptance/approval I EXPECTED for all my “sacrificial efforts” so I feel rejected. My expectation is entirely selfish. I am not working my butt off for her sake; I’m doing it for me. I’m trying to feed my idol of “acceptance/ approval of others.”
Once rejected, I reason that I must protect myself from this horrible feeling so I quit doing anything for Angie. I blame her for rejecting me. “How dare she?!” I foolishly believe I will feel better if I don’t do anything for Angie because I will save myself all the hard work and I won’t be rejected. How ridiculous is that?
The results are obvious. Angie does not feel loved in the least. She loses. She does not accept or approve of my behavior at all. Her rejection of me continues. She is conditioned to wonder if anything I do is really for her, or just for my own selfish motives. I am a mess, because from my point of view I can’t avoid rejection no matter what I do. I lose too.
We both lose and our relationship is stuck in a rut because I am afraid of rejection.

To remedy this, I have to keep reminding myself of the list of items above. Particularly the ideas of ownership of my behavior, detoxing my mind from all the lies Satan tell me about my value, claiming key Scriptures like Phil 4:8, Psalm 23, 27 & 139, Romans 8:28-39, Joshua 1:9, 2 Timothy 1:7, etc., and realizing how selfish my fear really is. Fighting my fears is a battle that I expect to fight to my grave, but I know I will get better with practice. And the truth is that I have an awesome advocate on my side. His name is Jesus. His great love for me wipes out all my fear – if I let him. I wonder, do you know him?

I’m embarrassed to share all this with you. I feel like I should have it all figured out by now. The truth is, the older I get, the more I find that I don’t have figured out. But here is what I know for sure:

-Fear is real and it can be debilitating.

-Fear is a selfish choice.

-The perfect love of Jesus casts out fear, so I will forever cling to him.

-Focusing on Jesus, his love for me, his attributes like mercy, grace, & forgiveness, instead of my fears is a key way to experience victory over it.

I’m so thankful to have Jesus on my side to help me through my life journey. I can’t imagine how I would handle this struggle without him. If what I’m saying here sounds completely foreign to you, or you think I’m crazy, I welcome your feedback. I would love to chat with you personally to discuss your thoughts on fear, faith, marriage, etc.

Fitness, Nutrition

The #1 Habit You Need to Lose Weight

October 5, 2017June 3, 2020 teamquadzilla

Do you know how many “weight-loss habits” there are? When you ask Google (you know, THE authority on ANY topic) you will find 34 million or so articles to tell you what to do, what not to do, common advice that is bad, etc. Ask 100 people what the one habit is that makes someone successful at long term, sustained weight loss, and you will get nearly 100 answers. So how can you really know what you NEED to do to lose weight?

To be fair, a habit is sort of nebulously defined. I think we can all agree that a habit is anything you do regularly, but according to the definition used in psychology, a habit also needs to be done automatically — as in, without really thinking about it. Which is why identifying habits by yourself is so hard. How can you think about the stuff that you don’t have to think about?

You see, all habits need a trigger — a little reminder that says, “Hey, you should do this action now.” They also need a reward — a little reminder that what you just did was a good thing. But these are really hard to identify by yourself because they happen below our level of consciousness. It’s really hard to remember new triggers, and it’s hard to remember to reward yourself. Habits are hard. Isn’t crazy that bad habits seem to sneak up on you, while the healthy habits are so hard to keep? This one habit makes all the other healthy habits easy. So without further ado, The Number 1 Habit You Need to Lose Weight is:

FINDING PEOPLE TO SHARE YOUR JOURNEY

Permanent lifestyle changes happen in relationships. Whether they take place with peers, a coach, family, friends, coworkers, the other anonymous people at the meetings, or the participants in one of my healthy living challenges, new habits happen when people get together and help each other out.

Finding your own triggers is hard. Seeing other people’s is easy. Remembering to tell yourself, “Great job!” is hard. Remembering to tell other people is easy. Figuring out how to work new foods, new activities, and new steps into your own life is hard. Watching and learning from a whole bunch of other people like you who are trying to get to the same place you are is just so much easier!

This all-important, Number 1 habit can also be called, “Creating a community of consistency.” And it can be as big a commitment as hiring a coach, or as simple as telling a friend what you’re doing to lose weight or inviting them to join you in a Team Quadzilla Healthy Living Challenge. Whatever you can do to share the load of learning, planning, remembering and rewarding will be one less thing you have to worry about.

Life is meant to be lived in community with others. In today’s virtual world people can easily connect with one another even though there are many miles between them. People are looking for others with the same struggles so they can relate, find encouragement and help, and to be a help to others. That’s a key reason why I started Team Quadzilla. We are all on a journey to do what is right and to be our best. If you are struggling to make progress in your journey, whether physically, mentally/ emotionally, or spiritually let this be your encouragement to find a community to plug into.

Special thanks to Coach Stevo for doing the heavy lifting on this article. Coach Stevo is the nutrition and behavior change consultant at San Francisco CrossFit. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and an MA in Sport Psychology from John F. Kennedy University. He teaches habit-based coaching to wellness professionals all over the world and he contributed to Intervention by Dan John in 2012.

Fortitude

I Took a Social Media Sabbatical – Here’s What I Learned

September 7, 2017June 3, 2020 teamquadzilla

Whoa! What am I crazy or something?!?

That’s what I thought too when I first had the idea to take a break from social media.

Could I really do it?

Am I addicted to social media?

After contemplating the idea for a couple weeks I decided it was a healthy living challenge I needed to accept. So on August 1, 2017 I pulled the plug. Man that sounds old school. There are no plugs! These are wireless times. I hid the apps from my phone and removed the tabs on my laptop Google page. I’m going cold turkey. I told my wife that I was actually looking forward to the break, especially since much of my social media engagement is for my fitness/ nutrition/ healthy living business and I was feeling a bit burned out. I also fretted a bit because I knew my business would suffer without engaging people virtually, but then I thought, “Would anyone even notice that I’m offline?” I know. I’m weird like that.

In no particular order, here are a few things I learned during my sabbatical.

I WAS addicted to social media.

Not addicted REALLY bad that I salivate when someone mentions the Facebook news feed, but I admit to catching myself reaching for my phone to check Facebook or Instagram out of habit (& boredom honestly, or is it ADD?) only to remember that I’m purposely disconnecting. This happened a couple times the first day or so, but after that I was pretty happy to be free from it. I even left my phone behind when I went places so I wouldn’t be that guy who checks his phone all the time when in the company of other live humans.

I realized I don’t NEED social media.

Crazy as it may seem, but I thought I would feel lost without knowing what all my peeps were up to. I don’t watch the TV news and I don’t do radio much, so I had relied on social media to fill me in on the “important news,” LOL. I didn’t miss it a bit. Turns out that I don’t need to know what so-n-so is up to everyday. What a relief.

I realized that no one really needs to know what I’m up to everyday either – and they likely don’t really care anyway.

It’s kind of a blow to my frail male ego to first believe that there were crowds of people who wait for every insightful post, comment or photo that I share only to realize that others are probably just like me. They don’t ACTUALLY care what any particular “so-n-so” posts – including me. If it’s in their news feed they may read it, or not. If I’m not in the news feed, people move on with their life no problem. Shocking.

Social media isn’t evil.

I sound very negative toward social media so far don’t I? It’s not all bad. There is good news transmitted there if you can get past the emotionally charged intolerant political posts – oops, keep it positive here Chad. It is nice to keep up with family & friends, connect with old friends or make new friends. Social media can be a forum to find great deals or local events too. It’s also an important tool for business.

Without the distraction of social media, I can think about important stuff.

Yeah, this is probably the greatest benefit to my social media sabbatical. As I hoped, I was able to use my extra time to think, pray, study, write, dream, plan, and spend more focused time with Angie & Brandon. I realized how much I need such time and how much I enjoy it. It’s refreshing. I double dog dare you to try it.

The bottom line is that I’m really glad I took my 4 week social media sabbatical. I will change the way I engage it from now on. In my opinion, there are so many better ways to use my time than to mindlessly scroll the news feed constantly or to agonize over the text and photos I want to share to “change the world.” I think of social media in a similar way to work in that at the end of life no one will say, “I wish I spent more time on Facebook.”

What about you? Are you addicted to social media? Take a 30 day social media sabbatical and see what it does for you. I’d love to hear about it.

faith, Family

God Doesn’t Want Religion

July 24, 2017June 3, 2020 teamquadzilla

Let me break down this whole God thing into this simple contrast that has made all the difference in my spiritual journey. This is what religion looks like:

We are tempted to pursue a religious approach to God instead of a relational approach to God. It seems easier, I guess. Like Emmet in the Lego movie who said, “Just tell me exactly what to do and how to do it,” we all just want to know the requirements to get us to heaven. We want it all laid out for us. No thinking required.
Religion places a major emphasis on rules and rituals that are supposed to either manipulate God or earn his favor. Let’s be honest, this is us. We are comfortable with religion (however we personally define religion) because it allows us to feel good about being ‘good’ and following the ‘rules’. In religion, we define what ‘good’ and ‘rules’ means in terms that fit our desired lifestyle.
Religion has a “one size fits all” approach. Much like our popular western culture that tells us that is cool, what is acceptable, what we should do, think, believe, etc., the Christian church has a popular culture that tells its congregations how you must behave and worship to please God. Certain music is taboo, you need to dress a certain way, talk a certain way, etc. to fit into church culture. Everyone needs to fit into the same mold or model of what a good person looks like. Who decided the rules for this stuff anyway?
The fruit of religion is a judgmental heart. Those who don’t follow these church “rules” are outcasts, or otherwise considered unspiritual by the “rule followers” who judge them. It’s true, isn’t it? Even if you’ve never set foot in a church, when you see anyone who is not like you, or who does things, says things, looks different than you, etc. you (subconsciously or out loud) cast judgment that they are wrong. Have you ever seen the Facebook news feed. Sheesh!

The beautiful truth is that God doesn’t want religion. God just wants our heart. His desire is to have a deep loving relationship with us. This is what relationship with God looks like:

We give God our time. We move from being institutional to intimate in the way we communicate with God. Much like you would never punch a time clock for your time spent with your spouse or children, God doesn’t want you to relegate your involvement with him to just an hour at church and 2 minutes of prayer at dinner time. Instead, we recognize God as our ever present friend with whom we can talk to ( and listen to) at any time. He wants to hear from us.
We are transparent with God. We move from being guarded to genuine. Much like you would never talk to your spouse or children with a pre-written script that you repeat every day, God doesn’t want that either. He already knows our hearts so there are no secrets with God. We can and should speak freely with the Ultimate Creator of the universe! How cool is that?!
We submit to God. We move from being ritualistic to relational. Make no mistake, there are still ‘house rules’ in God’s family. There are certain things you need to do, and some things you can’t do without negative consequences. This is not surprising. We were raised with some house rules and if you are parents now, I’m pretty sure you have some house rules of your own. While the rules of your house apply to all, the consequences of breaking the rules likely vary according to the rule breaker and the circumstances. For example, say your son lies to you. His punishment is to take away is favorite toy for a while because you know that he could happily sit in time out for a long time. Conversely, when your social daughter lies, taking her toy wouldn’t be much of a punishment, but sitting in timeout for just 10 minutes would set her straight.

My point is that God relates to each of us as individuals and according to our relationship with him, in a much more perfect way than we relate to our kids. Does that make sense? We are not God’s robots and he is not our cosmic vending machine. God wants to be our friend. He wants a relationship with us. When we finally get it and invite God into relationship with us, we will find all that we have ever been looking for.

My personal spiritual journey includes a constant tension between me trying to please God by being good (and failing miserably) and me just seeking God as my heavenly Father and friend. Though I can be pretty stubborn in my old ways, I find much more peace, joy, contentment, and blessing when I simply love God and relate to him honestly and often. #preachingtomyself #underconstruction #workinprogress

**Special thanks to Pastor Ryan Wright and Bedford Alliance Church for inspiring this article from the sermon series Toxic Religion.**