"The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it." -James Clear, Atomic Habits. Our identity or sense of self is merely a culmination of our daily actions. These habits solidify who we are by amassing evidence to support it through feedback loops. This works both positively and negatively. The belief that you just are a certain way is a trap of the mind. "Im not a morning person", "I've never been good at ____". These are self identifying statements that reinforce an inability to change. So how do we overcome ourselves to change for the better? Two principles can achieve this. A. First, you must practice identifying as already possessing the the traits or habits you wish to adapt as your own. For example, when I work with individuals to drop weight and lose fat. The people that adjust their mindset from "I AM fat" to "I'm an athlete, I just have some fat right now" perform exponentially better than people just trying hit a number on the scale so they can resume poor habits. Decide what kind of man, father or husband you want to be and identify as him. B. Which leads straight into part 2. When you know who you want to be, how you want to act, what habits you want to instill.... you must practice behaving like that person would now. If your goal is to lose fat, continuously ask yourself, "would a healthy person do that". If your goal is to stop drinking or smoking, your thoughts and responses should be "No thanks, I'm not a smoker/ I don't drink" not "I'm trying to quit". Deliberately make the decision to stop being that version of yourself that you want to change. It's OK if you do not succeed every single time. Your brain works on averages and majorities. Every time you make the favorable decision it's easier to do it again, and the more your subconscious expects to do it again and molds that into your new self. Eventually, the new behavior has more evidence than the old and it dies.

The whole point of this group is to bring strong strong men of faith together so we can support each other and I even tho I know everyone here personally it's still difficult reaching out and being vulnerable..... but here goes. Gents, I need prayer for my marriage. It has become increasingly rocky over the year. Over the past couple of weeks it's gotten worse. I need strength and wisdom and just the hand of the Lord to be on us to heal hearts.

This section of the page is dedicated to knowledge sharing. I will be posting explanations or videos teaching how to complete different projects pertaining to home remodel, repair, auto maintenance and repair, etc. This area will also be used for members to reach out to others to ask for guidance or instruction with tasks or challenges they are unfamiliar with. So please.... comment any project you've had on your mind but maybe aren't quite sure how to go about it and ill make a video on the topic. Or if you have project ideas shoot them out as well.

Since my last update I have been maintaining the weight I dropped down to by 2-3 lbs. Post Thanksgiving gluttony only brought me up to 234. Not mad at that!