The Path - Vision, Intention, and Means
Vision, Intention, Means to becoming the man you want to be.
Hi Everyone,
Happy Wednesday to you. Tomorrow I will be heading to upstate New York for the first time in my life for some time away with my family and my parents. Four days or hiking, swimming, and fishing is on the agenda if the weather holds up. If not, it’ll be four days of Candy Land and Go Fish. Both sound awesome.
In my last post, Why is it Called Institute of Men, I promised to begin writing a series of guides called The Path to help all my subscribers begin the journey of becoming the man they want to be. These are intended to help you with formation of character. All that I am sharing in these guides are from learned experience and study. I am indebted to the many men I have learned from over the years.
I am writing these a little differently than my normal articles. At the top of each article will be an outline. The outline can be skimmed, printed, or used as an exercise to assist you along the path. Below the outline, I am adding a brief article that explains the outline. The outline should be enough to get you started.
I added a dedicated page to the website that will function like a table of contents for these posts. See the picture below. Just head over to instituteofmen.substack.com to find it.
I began this journey at the age of 23. No matter your age, you can begin this journey. I am 12 years in and still attempting to pursue the vision I first put to paper in my parent’s basement.
I hope this is helpful to you.
God Bless,
Keaton
Becoming the man you want to be begins with two questions:
The first question begins with an honest examination of conscience and an honest examination of your life: “Am I who I want to be?” with a follow-up question, “Am I doing anything to pursue or to become the man I want to be?”
It is vital you be honest with yourself when answering this question. In the Brothers Karamazov, the Elder Zosima is giving advice to the drunken father Fyodor and he states:
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”
You are not helping yourself by lying to yourself.
The second question can be a little bit more difficult: “Who do I want to become? What is the vision for who I could become?”
When figuring out who you want to become, it is helpful to use the VIM framework. VIM stands for Vision, Intention, and Means.
Vision
A vision is what you can see but can’t quite attain. It is someone you are not yet but could become. It is your direction, your compass, and every choice either brings you closer or further away from that vision.
In Proverbs 29:18 it says: Where there is no vision, the people cast off restraint, but blessed is he who keeps the law.
A few observations:
Human nature is to cast off restraint. In some translations, that phrase is translated as “the people perish.” Solomon, in writing this verse, displays great wisdom on human nature. The desire to live without restraint, without boundaries, rules, guidelines, or laws leads to people perishing. Casting off restraint destroys personal responsibility. There is a tendency to believe a life free of restraint is a free life. It’s paradoxical. Those without restraint find themselves far from freedom and in a prison of their own making.
Casting off restraint is directly tied to lacking vision. Vision brings purpose and order to everyday activities; it gives direction, it provides an outlet to give your energies and efforts to. Vision acts like an anchor that keeps a ship from aimlessly floating. It also acts as at rudder, giving direction to the ship when it sets its course.
Then this odd phrase, “but blessed is he who keeps the law”. What do law and vision have to do with each other? Law, within a society, is purposed to help the city live up to its highest value. Law, for an individual, are the boundaries, rules, and guidelines you submit yourself to in order to realize the vision you set for yourself.
Intention
Do I intend to make every strenuous effort to become the man I want to be?
A decision must be made to pursue the vision you set out. Writing it down, without a decision to pursue it, leads no where.
A decision is at least two parts: it has a YES to who you want to be and a NO to everything else that would hinder that vision.
Indecision can lead to a lot of stress and overthinking. It will have you tossed to and fro by the waves of life.
Means
Do I have the means necessary to pursue the vision I set for myself?
Do the friends you have around you push you towards becoming a better man, or do they push you into becoming something else? Would they be okay if you dedicated a good portion of your life to prayer and to study, to spiritual discipline, to saying no to things that are fun but not wholesome?
Is your schedule so jam-packed that you have no time for reflection, quiet, suffering, or doing hard things that are outside your comfort zone?
Are you attending church regularly?
Do you have bad habits that would hinder your progress?
The thing about pursuing the vision of who you want to be is that it’s a spiritual formation exercise. It doesn’t take a lot of money, but it does take a lot of time and a lot of effort.
Choosing People to Imitate
Be imitators of me as I am of Christ. - 1 Corinthians 11:1
Creating a vision for who you will be come is difficult if you attempt to pull it out of thin air. This also cuts you off from the great saints of the past, the Christian heroes and the men who left their mark on the world and in their families. It is far better to find someone to imitate than to try to do this on your own. In fact, I’m not sure you will get very far if you do not have another person to imitate. If I were to sum up the whole of Christian philosopher Dallas Willard’s work into one line, it would be: The path of discipleship is the path of imitating Jesus Christ.
I believe it is good for every man to choose three people he should imitate:
Jesus.
A man older and wiser than you, who you greatly admire, and who you can serve.
A Saint from the past.
If you are fortunate enough to have a great father, he should be on the list too.
You can go through the VIM model on paper. I have also made a PDF worksheet to help you with this process. Paid subscribers can access this worksheet in the Perks section here.
The Background Story
I've told this story so many times that it feels like I'm repeating myself ad nauseam. I am a college dropout, or at least I was a college dropout. I did complete my degree at 30 years old in the most expensive test of resilience that I could think of. I started college at 18, and I dropped out after my junior year of college. There were a lot of reasons that I chose to do so, which I'm not going to detail here, but it is part of my story. That led to a series of steps that would hinder me for many years and force me to become the man that I am today.
After I dropped out of school, I worked at the Cracker Barrel, then I did a brief stint in IT when a friend got me a job. It was right around that time that I met God for the first time in a long time. I guess I should say I became reacquainted with God as I cried out for help. I moved into my parents' basement, re-enrolled in school, and started working at the Olive Garden. It was school in the morning, Olive Garden by night. I had big plans, big ambitions. But I dropped out of that school too. I then became an intern at a church for nine months for free, which was one of the best formative decisions I have ever made and one of the worst financial decisions I have ever made. All things being equal, I would probably do it again.
Somewhere in the middle of the story above I thought I was more mature than I actually was. Nothing I have shared indicated that I was a mature young man, yet I thought I had the capacity to be a husband, a father, a businessman, and make some girl happy. How naive. I was tired of being single. A lot of men who have not sorted out their crap think a woman will solve those problems.
I went up to the garage and I started complaining to my father, telling him about all my dreams and ambitions and how I really wanted to have a girlfriend. He stopped me. He said something that hurt but that I needed to hear. My father looked me in the eyes and said, "Son, if you try to bring women into your life right now, it's the most selfish thing you could do because you have no plan. You have yet to carry any true responsibility."
Sheesh, Dad.
Then he asked me a question that would forever change my life. He said, "Son, what kind of man do you want to be?" I didn't have an answer to that question, so I gave him the "I haven't really thought about it" type of answer because I didn't know. I also didn't know how to answer the question.
I went down to my room, pulled out a journal and a Bible to figure out in one afternoon what type of man I wanted to be. I flipped to the passage that was most familiar, 1 Samuel 16. We first meet David in this chapter and get a description of what he was like. It reads like this: "I know a man, a son of Jesse, who is skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of courage, a man of war, prudent in speech, and the Lord is with him." I wrote in my moleskin notebook, "That is the type of man I want to be." I had my first personal vision written on paper.
That carried me for a few years until new responsibilities caused me to reexamine and expand the vision of who I want to be. I have added a few things here and there but for the most part, it has stayed the exact same for well over seven years.
When it first crosses a man's mind that he is not who he should be or who he wants to be, there are endless options that he could pursue. Many men he could potentially imitate, but not all of them are good. Not all of them are noble, not all of them are virtuous, but they might have some other characteristic that a young man finds appealing, like: wealthy, handsome, successful, powerful, charismatic, a leader. There is nothing wrong with these traits if the core of his character is formed into a virtuous man.
Following the VIM method above will help you create a vision for who you could become. Along with discovering other men I wanted to imitate I found it helpful to think deeply at what it would cost me in the future if I did not get my life in order. That exercise in brutal honesty may be why I am blessed with a wife and four little ones.
Once the vision is written, perfectly or imperfectly, a decision has to be made. You can write down the vision of who you want to be and never make any progress towards it because you've never actually made a decision. A decision is at least two parts: it has a YES to who you want to be and a NO to everything else that would hinder that vision. It's similar to marriage. You can get caught up in “is this girl is the right girl for me to marry” because you are not yet ready to say YES to her and NO to every other potential option. That indecision can lead to a lot of stress and overthinking. It will also lead to zero progress in your pursuit of becoming a good man.
A decision has to be made to do everything you can to pursue that vision with all of your energy for the rest of your life. It's a decision that you will have to make every single day and every single month. Eventually, it becomes embedded in your character and it becomes an easier and easier decision, because with every choice, your character is being formed.
Are you actually in a place to be able to pursue this vision? Do the friends you have around you push you towards becoming a better man, or do they push you into becoming something else? Would they be okay if you dedicated a good portion of your life to prayer and to study, to spiritual discipline, to saying no to things that are fun but not wholesome? Is your schedule so jam-packed that you have no time for reflection, quiet, suffering, or doing hard things that are outside your comfort zone? Are you attending church regularly?
The thing about pursuing the vision of who you want to be is that it's a spiritual formation exercise. It doesn't take a lot of money, but it does take a lot of time and a lot of effort. One thing that is abundantly helpful when trying to figure out what kind of man you want to be, is having admiral and noble men you can imitate. Think of a few men who have fulfilled their obligations over a long period of time, men who are highly respected.
Instead of asking for a mentorship, ask how you could help them. There was a man I deeply admired named Scott. I decided he was going to be a man I’d help and serve however I could. I didn’t make a formal declaration to him or anything like that. I simply approached him, talked to him, and asked how I could help him that day. My first assignment from Scott was to stack chairs. I wasn't sure how that was going to help me become the man I wanted to be. But I did it. He didn't ask me to do anything except stack chairs for over a year. A couple of years in, I was able to begin having sit downs with him. He even allowed me to record some of the conversations so I could keep them and refer back to them.
I have more to say but I’ll leave it here for now. This is the first step of The Path - the rest of the journey relies on taking this first step.
What kind of man do you want to be?