Firepit Chat
Chris Christopher
President
Mentor Discover Inspire
For the duration of this mission you will be working with a highly unpredictable partner. You will only sleep sporadically, frequently alone on a couch.
Failure is not an option: lives depend on you, and you alone. Likelihood of failure: >50%. Support of friends and family will not be enough. Therefore, at some point during the mission, an opportunity to join a Men’s Team will be presented to you. Take it.
Ability to ask for and receive help: strong.
Support: plentiful
Probability of disaster: greatly reduced
Sound crazy? Weird? Maybe it is, but this is the adventure awaiting men who contemplate marriage and fatherhood. How many of us have accepted the incredibly complex and difficult role of husband and father, then set out on our own – at immense risk to us, and to our spouses and children – with little or no support? (By the way, that is my own story. I did it alone way too long.)
How many of us have stood by and watched other men head off on that same mission and hesitated to offer them help? Is that really the best we can do?
Every day I have some opening, some way to make a difference; but I recognize that I often walk by those opportunities to help men. Not always, but often. I fail to ask the simple two-part question: How are you doing? No, how are you really doing?
That offering, that opening for a man to really reflect, and perhaps to answer with more than the standard, “fine,” can change that man’s marriage, his kids’ futures, his career. It can impact all of us in some small way.
When I was elected president of Mentor, Discover, Inspire (MDI),1 I became convinced we needed a more impactful way to bring men the power of what we have: the experience of being on teams.
Too many men have come, but left before they could live into the promise of our mission: before they could become “mature, masculine leaders creating successful families, careers, and communities.”2
Today, more than ever, we have a real opportunity to reverse this. By offering The Art of Masculinity (TAOM) as our introductory event, we have our best opportunity to enroll men into the promise of living life as the man – including the best husband and father – they always wanted to be, then keep them moving forward with the support of a men’s team.
TAOM combines the best of all our weekends, with a particular emphasis on the power of Men’s Teams. Imagine compressing ten great men’s team meetings into a single weekend!
Imagine men, perhaps for the first time, being a safe enough place to tell their truth; to let go of burdens they have carried for a lifetime. TAOM delivers essential teachings on who we really are as men and what it means to be masculine.
Experience suggests that men leaving TAOM weekend are highly likely to join a men’s team. They have already experienced the power of the circle, and that puts them way ahead of where I was after my Sterling Men’s Weekend ended back in November of 1997. I was wide open but I really had no idea what a men’s team was. TAOM closes that loop.
Combine all this with an immediate point-team experience – which MDI has committed to providing to all TAOM graduates – followed by a journey through our Membership Training Program (MTP), and we have a formula for success – the best we have ever offered.
And, lucky for you, there’s an opportunity to attend The Art of Masculinity weekend almost immediately: October 16-18 in Northern California.
Take the plunge. Sign up. Better yet, reach out to men who need masculinity in their lives, who need and deserve a men’s team. Bring them with you or send them on their own. It will start them on the best journey of their lives.
Register for The Art of Masculinity here.
