Man-Up: A guy’s guide to living a man’s life with integrity, strength and a smile.

On this site I make frequent reference to MDI.  Some of you know me as the current President of the organization.  Some of you have no idea what I am talking about.  So let me elucidate:

 MDI is a 1000 plus men’s organization spread out through out North America.   It is an organization dedicated to fostering teams of men who inspire and empower one another to pursue and realize their passion. 

MDI does not actually mean anything.  As an organization we used to be known as Men’s Divisions International but everyone has come to a pretty quick agreement that that is a horrible name that doesn’t really speak to who we are.  So now we are just MDI – much like AT&T is just AT&T, not American Telephone and Telegraph, and IBM is just IBM, not International Business Machines.  We are just MDI

Of course, men being what they are some of our members still need that to mean something, so just think Mentor, Discover, Inspire.  Those three notions show up pretty much in everything we do.

We are not a monolithic organization. We do not follow one great, larger than life guru.  In part that has probably hampered our growth because people are quicker to follow someone with the “answer” rather than accepting the fact that the answer might be standing right next to them in the form of their next door neighbor.  Collective wisdom can be a hard sell but that is what we are about.  We share that collective wisdom through the process of mentoring.  We are less about teaching and more about sharing our personal experience.

In that environment of collective wisdom we get to discover something about ourselves.  Maybe it is what we are really great at.  Or what fuels our passion.  Maybe it’s about what is holding us back from attaining our goals or just being happy or it is the realization that we have this gift to share with others.

And of course once you’ve discovered your greatness you need to be inspired to give it away.  We do that through mentoring men to take on things bigger than themselves.  It is a nice little circle we have.

We inspire men to pursue a purpose larger than themselves – while we recognize that to be effective men must discover and confront their challenges and personal demons; we do not seek to devote our time focusing solely on the individual.

We empower men by providing them with the tools they need to succeed.  This can come in the form of weekend trainings or weekly courses, one on one mentoring or team inspections.  As an organization we believe that true wisdom comes not from a single source but from the diverse viewpoints of our community of men.

We pursue our passion by being in relationship with the men of our team who provide the inspection, feedback and support necessary to get the job done.  When we stumble our teammates are there to get us back on our feet, brush us off, and ensure we have learned the lessons from a set back before we get back into the game.

When we realize our passion we have a circle of men to celebrate with.  These men acknowledge our victories and the unique greatness we bring to the world and allow us to continue to carry our personal legacy forward to our families and communities.

In a nutshell, “We are unconditionally committed to men winning in their lives.”

As an organization we do not seek to define what winning means for an individual man or to dictate what passion a man should pursue.  Nor do we seek to erect the parameters of how that process even looks.

Our teams can be made up of men who meet via the telephone or who meet weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.  They can range in size from three men to more than twenty men.  Our youngest member is 18.  Our oldest is well into his 80s.  We cover the spectrum of ethnicity, political belief and vocation.  We have members who have been married for more than 50 years, who have been divorced, who are in long term committed relationships or have never been married.  Our members may be straight or gay; professional or working class.  The only requirements of membership are that you be a man of legal age, pay annual dues and adhere to our code of honor.

The code embodies the following tenets

•       Honor the truth  

•  Commitment before ego

•       Respect confidiality

•       Keep your word

•       Be a three dimensional

•       Be prepared

•       Defend humanity

•       Always be faithful to the men

•       Defend the code

•       Never engage in battles with weaker opponents

•       Fight only honorable battles

•       Earn and honor rank

•       Be humble

•       Embrace all men

•       Be an example to children

   All men are expected to strive to adhere to these tenets.

The success of our teams is measured by the following:

·         Are the men unconditionally supporting one another?

·         Are the men individually and collectively accountable to their word and commitments?

·         Are they engaged in pursuing something larger than any one man?

·         Are they bringing who they are and what they are about to the families, friends and communities?

Our men can be found throughout New England.  In New York, New jersey and Philadelphia and Atlanta.  We are all over California and in Toronto and Western Canada in places like Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria.  We are starting to bubble up in Chicago, Denver, Florida, Las Vegas, Seattle and Phoenix.  

 We are the men you have always sensed were there, we are there for you now.  Come join us.

You can find us on Facebook or at http://www.mensdivisionsinternational.com/854dir/

         While everyone is engaged in speculation over where Lebron James will ultimately wind up at the end of this NBA free-agent season, let me touch on a pretty basic premise that will ensure you are happy:  instead of wondering if there is something you are missing in your life, your relationship, or your job, take inventory of what you actually have.  Revel in the stuff that gives you pleasure and figure out how you are going to change things in your current situation that are making you unhappy.

Sounds rather simple, yes?  Yet most people pine away, fantasizing about how things would be so much better if only……. 

            If only I made more money

            If only my girlfriend was hotter

            If only my kids cleaned their room

The problem is, “if only” is a fantasy and it is not until you actually get to the grass on the other side that you can determine if it really is greener.  And even if it is greener, you might suddenly discover that it wasn’t even green grass you were interested in in the first place.

You make more money only to discover you still have nothing that stirs your passion.

Your girlfriend is incredibly hot but is lousy in bed.

Your kid cleans his room but the door to his immaculate bedroom is always closed and the two of you have no relationship.

So let me bring this back to basketball terms:  Lebron James is in the position to move to a new team.  The Knicks, Nets, Bulls, Heat and others will be making the pilgrimage to Akron to woo James with images of what could be if only he came on board.  He can win titles, be the king of marketing, and hang with the “in” crowd.   Of course none of them are touching on all the down sides – the need for fertilizer to get the grass green in the first place is never part of the conversation.  Fertilizer stinks, it smells.  Of course you would never know that unless you needed to spread it.  So from afar that green grass may look wonderful but upon closer examination you can weigh whether the odor of the fertilizer justifies the luster of the lawn.

So New York may be the media capital of the world but is that really a good thing if you want to go out for a run, walk your dog or just sit on your stoop and smoke a cigar?  Miami has the beaches and Brazilians in bikinis but it also has hurricanes, South American drug lords using it for their playground and a less than enthusiastic fan base.  Chicago is just a larger version of Cleveland but it will never be home.  And none of these cities come with a guarantee of success.  Neither does Cleveland but LeBron has been successful there.  And I submit it is easier to tinker with what you presently know to be working and discard that which isn’t then to start from scratch.

I am usually much more successful when I take stock in what I presently have and figure out what I need to change to make it suit me.  Apparently, I am not alone.  Warren Buffet who is one of the richest men in the world could probably call any place home.  Yet he continues to live in Omaha, Nebraska.  The Waltons have made it a ritual of requiring merchants to travel to Bentonville, Arkansas to pitch their wares for inclusion on the shelves of Wal-Mart.  Neither Omaha nor Bentonville is the epicenter of the financial or merchandising world but in both cases ego was trumped by the allure of knowing your neighbor and building from your strength.  Most world conquerors fail because they try to take a bridge that is just a bit too far.  Who knows what would have happened if Hitler was satisfied with Poland and Austria?

            Of course in taking inventory you might realize there are some things you just can’t change.  If you really hate snow, Minnesota is never going to be for you.  It is important to remember this in one critical area….. relationships.  Money can help you mold your environment but expecting to change another person’s DNA is just sheer folly.  So if you are in a relationship and are miserable disregard most of the above.  You are not going to change your partner.  You can however, change yourself.  But we’ll discuss that in another blog. 

I am neither a big fan of soccer nor a fan of the French but the meltdown of the French World Cup team is a great primer on what happens when you allow yourself to take things personally and lose sight of the reasons why you are there in the first place.  

As I understand it, a coach or trainer on the French team took offense to being called a “son of a bitch” by the team’s star player, the player was kicked off the team and then the team took offense to the coach siding with his staff and just refused to practice, which lead to the coach benching players in the team’s final game for voicing their opinion and taking a unified stand.  (Whether he agreed with the action or not, the coach should have given the team credit for “acting” as a team.)   Throughout the drama, coaches quit or were fired, players got benched, the president of France stepped into the fray to try to salvage things, the team eventually suffered a humiliating lose to South Africa and eventually the team plane was grounded and the French players — who were playing for the World Title in the 2006 World Cup — now had to fly home via coach with the rest of the general public.

     The only thing I get as being rational in all that is the last act.  Canceling the team plane and having the players get what it feels like to no longer be “special”.  That is a context I can get behind.  It is not a punishment but a reminder that the team was where they were because of their ability to excel, as a team.  When they stopped pursuing that; all bets were off.  If you are not going to act like a team, if you are not going to strive to be excellent, you are no different from anyone else looking to get back home from Johannesburg.  The difference between punishment and a consequence is that the latter has no context other than, “these are the rules, break them and you will be made to suffer.”  A consequence has a lesson tied to a context, it shifts the way something is heard, it provides a wake up call in the moment and a lesson that hopefully lingers long after the sting of the repercussions wears off. Read the rest

This past weekend I had the honor of participating in the first Fathering Forum Weekend.  It was held in New York City.  More than 20 men came together to explore, probe, question and understand the experience of fathering.  The concept was fairly simple, Fathering is a team sport.  Even a man who is not a biological father has the opportunity to father a child or another person. Sometimes that person is one’s own father.

If  the concept of fathering one’s own father is a confusing concept, look at it this way, being a father is being an example, a provider, a role model, a source of inspiration on the front lines of life.  By that I mean it is knowing that you actions are having a direct impact on another.  It is somewhat different from grandfathering which is the process of having the same opportunity to have an impact but to do so while observing things one step removed, from the balcony so to speak. It is the difference between fully owning your choices because you know you have to live with them versus being able to tinker and noodle knowing full well you get to go home after weekend.  So in a lot of respects we are all also grandfathers because we have all had occasion to offer something knowing full well it is offered only as a gift.

Fathers get to give gifts as well but they are sometimes tangled with issues of consistency — if I respond this way today, am I prepared to respond the same each and every day?  And what if I don’t?  Fathers are also charged with the immediacy of their actions.  We tend to be hard wired to respond in the moment.  Rarely does a father have the luxury or some would say wisdom to say, “his is an interesting set of circumstances, let me dwell on it and I’ll get back to you.”

So that being said what did we do at the fathering forum this weekend?  Read the rest

I often get asked, “What exactly is this men’s thing you are involved in?”  While it is not easy to explain because being in a circle seems to mean different things to different men, the best way I can sum it up is to say that being part of a men’s team provides me with a space where I get to be inspired and empowered to pursue and realize my passion.  So let me break that down.

At 53 passion is a tough thing to come by.  Between coping with MS and providing for a family, sometimes just getting through the day is an accomplishment.  But being able to find something I am passionate about is critical to that dance. And the inspiration for that passion comes from unexpected places.  Sometimes it comes from a man reminding me of the impact I had on another man, sometimes it comes from digging deep and understanding what is important to me and sometimes it is just witnessing another man getting out of his own way.

As for the empowerment that is equally important.  I mean let’s face it left to my own devices I’d just veg out in front of the TV watching Lost on Tivo over and over until I fully understood what was going on.  I was somewhat taken a back to realize that I have been getting together with a circle of men for 16 years now.  The circles have changed.  I don’t think I have stood in a circle with the same man for more than about six years.   The circles change even if men still stick around MDI we think it is important to shake things up so that no one gets too comfortable. 

 Our circles serve a simple function, relationship without the burden of friendship.  By that I mean we have this connection.  We get each other but aren’t burden by this fear that if we say something it will damage the relationship or hurt someone’s feelings.  Confidentiality is critical to what we do.  What happens in our circles stays there.  And what happens in those circles sometimes is pretty explosive.  I have often heard men tell me that they are blown away by how close men seem to get to coming to blows at a meeting and then just hug it out at the end of the meeting.  We can do that because men come to the circle without an agenda.

Except to inspire and empower one another to pursue our passions and celebrate when we actually realize them. Read the rest