Calvin Higgins: And welcome back to Joyce Man, everybody. Sam, how you doing? Doing good. Good. Been eating that all day. Speaking of all day, what day is it? You might ask, well, I'm not gonna tell you that. I will tell you it is Friday. But I'm not gonna tell you like what day it is, but you can probably figure it out. but it's a Friday, and that's a little out of the normal for us. That's because tomorrow, and this is gonna be a big hint, I will not be, I will not be here. I'll be at a place I've never been to, believe it or not. I've never been to Orcas Island. And I'm gonna be headed there tomorrow. So, not for vacation, to go watch a soccer game where our eighth or ninth ranked team is playing the state number one. So, that'll be cool in our division. We're not playing like 4A state number one, we're playing one B number one. So that should be interesting. Anyways, welcome back to the channel. if you haven't already, like and subscribe. That helps us out. Leave a comment, let us know where you're listening, let us know what you like about what you hear, what you don't like about what you hear, and we'll keep trying to bring you guys great content. We are on the path to 100 episodes this year. And maybe, just maybe, let me get you guys the most relevant information. But I'm pretty sure we don't have anywhere near 100 followers. But what if we tried? Okay, we have 25 subscribers right now. We are three-fourths of the way right there. It's actually pretty good. Well, it's it's more than zero. More than I expected. How about that? The guy who's on the podcast is like, that's more than I expected. That's probably not good. But you know, that's okay. but I so I mean, right now we are recording episode 76. So we are three-fourths of the way to 100 episodes, and we are three-fourths away. From 100 followers. So follow, subscribe, whatever, whatever you want to do, that'd be great. Enough about that. It's time to get serious. So Sam, what are we doing? What what is this episode all about, man? What are we doing? Well, questions that Christians dodge? things that they try to get themselves out of or talk themselves out of or or or whatever depending on you know aka questions we talk about at our discipleship group that too maybe or not you never know whether it's a good reason or not questions have been dodged. That's true. So what question are we gonna hit them with first Sam? Mmm Dude question number three So I obviously we've been going through the sheet in our discipleship group in the last couple episodes. We've been hitting different questions. Wildly out of order. That's okay. Because sometimes it's actually just better with the flow if we do different orders or hit different things. So for question number three on our sheet from our last meeting or one of our last meetings, what areas in your life are holding you back? pacifying from fulfilling what God created you to do? Where are some areas that need More dominion. I'm guessing more dominion taking. Yeah. yeah, I mean that's you know, and cause that question is really good personal question, like just to ask yourself, but it's also a good question in a group of men to ask, I I think, because everybody is gonna have a different take on that. Everybody's gonna have a different opinion on what they're missing. what they need more of. And so I think that it's interesting particularly for men to see what other men feel like they don't have enough of. And then kind of discuss that with with a group because it is it's personal. you know and the range is wide. The range is wide open. so I mean it could be anywhere from finances To physical health, to you know, emotional self-control. I mean, it really could be a variety of things. And in a group of young men who are still at school, it could be related to school things. So, you know, like for me, most recently I've been working to take more dominion over finances and personal health and a variety of things that kind of get pushed or into the second spot. It's like they don't end up holding a lot of value lots of times for whatever reason. So it's things that I don't prioritize that I'm trying to make more of a priority. and that has been that's been really good. And but again, for you could be could be whatever, but it's probably worth looking into because when you start breaking that down, your that question is assuming Everything needs to be taken to meaning of. You should care about it all. It just what are you maybe in that moment not caring about quite as much? Yeah. What do you need to pick up? Yeah. Without complaining, because that's the other thing that question doesn't tell is like, okay, without complaining, what's holding you back? Because that like if you're not careful it can easily sound like complaining. Yeah. well just It's not it's not been going so well and it's just I just kinda I don't know, whatever. But Yeah. Well, cause what's what's holding you back? The the reason that's personal is what you're doing that's holding me back. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What is holding you back, there could potentially be some excuses that are excuses don't necessarily mean that it's funny. Excuses just mean giving reasons for out external things that aren't you. And not addressing it yourself per se, like expecting something to happen about it that is not not necessarily your full attention onto it probably. Yeah. Like Yeah, so that's a very interesting like there's I was watching a thing with my wife the other day about art. And the lady was like, it's discouraging if there's a piece that you've done that you really like and you're trying to sell it and it's getting engagement but nobody wants it. You're like, so I guess nobody wants it. No, you just haven't found a person who wants to buy it yet. And so you continue to pursue So this is the external thing. She could go, Well, people are just don't want it and that means they're never gonna be able to sell it. Or she can flip it to a personal thing. She can flip it to something she needs to do and she needs to do more work finding a person who would want to buy it. So she needs to get her marketing better. She needs to post more content about it. Whatever it is, she can turn that back into a thing that she can go problem solve on. P and it was actually really interesting, once again. You're gonna see an episode in a little bit, or our next episode that we're gonna talk about is based off an idea I had very late last night. I had another idea very late last night that was we are created to be problem solvers, which is very I think anti our current culture of people. So being a problem solver, so I actually think this is why Anthropic, who anthropic is the company behind Claude. But Anthropic released a bunch of commercials a while ago that was like, there's never been a better time to have a problem. Because working on more complex problems, working on more complex things that you would need help with, the AI is supposed to be able to help you work on solving those bigger problems. And I was thinking about last night, I'm like, man, if you're not trying to solve problems in your life. Things have got to be super boring for you. And I think that, and again, the problems could be anything. Yeah. The problems could be your own personal growth and spiritual growth. And that means your personal problems that you're solving are by reading the Bible. That could be problem solving. It could also be trying to figure out how to make cars fine. So there's obviously a wide spectrum, but I think that's an interesting, like we are created to solve problems. We are not created to you know, do the opposite of that, which is to overlook all the problems. We are in a sinful world, we're in a broken world, we're in world we don't understand all of it. That means we should go figure it out. We should go take a minute, we should problem solve to be able to do that. And so I like, Huh, that's a interesting cause I think people kind of make problem solvers into entrepreneurs and it's like These are the problem solving people. I mean in a way they're right, but also in a way they're right and also everybody should be missing that yeah that point. Yeah, so it's a interesting Yeah. he fixed it. So that is a good point. Not good for man to be alone. Let's fix it. Yeah. Boom. That's a great point. so ask yourself What are you doing that's holding you back from fulfilling what the Lord wants you to do? What areas in your life need more dominion taking? Ask yourself that question, think about it, and then take action. Another question that we've been we played with at our last meeting was: Is it possible that your friends might be calling you off the path of righteousness? Do you do that to your friends? And this was an interesting question to ask because. It's assuming that it is happening somewhere. Well, it's funny because a lot of people were immediately wanting to pipe up and be like, Well, hypothetically not actually saying hypothetically, but hypothetically, my friends could be this this and this and it's like, nah, I I w I want like want like actual answers here, please. Yeah. That's just a thing, 'cause You're you're not gonna wanna pipe up Kronk's shoulder angels and be like, don't listen to that guy. He's gonna lead you down the path of righteousness. I'm gonna lead you down the path that rocks. But But the problem is we do that very subtly. and you know with this group of young men, it's a very like every every group of young men has their own unique ways of doing things. And there are just there are and I think this is where parents even particularly should pay more attention to their kids. There are a lot of subtle ways that your kids disobey and then they encourage their friends to do the same thing by subtly doing it with them and then their friends think that's okay. That's still leading your friends down the path that rats. You know, like You should be paying enough attention to your kids to know how they manipulate, even if it's subtle. Because, when your kid is disrespectful to you, but it's not a lot of disrespect and you don't really deal with it, well, they're gonna do that in the classroom. Friends are gonna start doing it. And then all of a sudden your kid maybe just sparked a whole, you know, batch of disrespectment in the classroom. That then that teacher has to deal with because you weren't dealing with your kid who was doing that. Like that happens. I'm not making that up. This has happened before. and kids, you know, especially I think it's really funny when there are kids who pretend like they are not influential. It's the kids who are the most influential who probably know they're doing something wrong. Who then say, well, but I'm not influential. My friends don't listen to me. Yes, they do. Yes, they absolutely do. It doesn't matter if you're NAQ, you can be influential in a variety of ways. You can be influential in a funny way. You can be influential in a fussy way. You can be influential in a loud way. But there are plenty of ways to be leading the culture, to be pushing the culture in the way that you well, maybe not in the way you want to be pushing it, but in the way that you are pushing it. Even if you're not loud and bossy like me. it mine is way more egregious and obvious when I am leading people down the wrong path usually. If it's subtle, I'm just being funny in class all the time. Well, are you distracting everybody? And then your friends think that's okay to do that too, and maybe the teacher didn't stop it. Now we got a big problem, so don't. Don't do that, but you gotta be honest with yourself. are you leading your friends down the right path or are you leading them down the path that rocks? Like, don't it's not very complicated, but it was interesting to ask that question and see how many people wanted to complicate it. It's 'cause it's not complicated. It just is kind of eye opening, and maybe it's too eye opening for comfort. So granted, you could one benefit of the doubt is you don't want to throw anybody under the bus. But problems need to be addressed. Problems need to be solved. So there's that too. Yeah. Which, you know, when it comes, when push comes to shove. When push comes to shove, what? problems need to be solved. Yeah. This episode might as well become a problem solvers. Bronx new groove. We could start a whole show. We could just start a whole series called Problem Solvers where we interview business people. Starting to sound like a shark tank pitch. Except we're not giving a bunch of money. Yeah, we don't have money. They're things. To do that. Like and subscribe, everybody. yeah, so Sam, dad advice, what do you got for us today? Anything good? dear. Well, if your kid If if you can tell that your kid is struggling with something and it would be longer for them to figure it out themselves and get out of it themselves, then you you should step in and help them. If if if it if it's something that they need help with, if you can tell that helping them would actually benefit them more than if they just did it themselves, or whatever, with dominion taking or just other other problems that could be how to how to react to bad things that they see going on or you know however they're running into obstacles in their life help them in such a way that encourages them as well. Perfect. You heard it here for f you well you know what guys first of all you probably didn't hear it here first. You might have. So, for the people who might have heard it here first, you heard it here first, folks. And that's gonna do it for this episode of Choice Men. Again, remember to like and subscribe. We'll be here all day grinding, putting content out for you guys. And it would mean it would mean the world. Not actually mean the world, but it would be beneficial if you did follow us. That'd be terrific. yeah, and we'll see you guys in episode 77. Joyce Ben signing off. Peace.