Q 1.2: King

King: The daily discipline of physically training the body.

Let that sink in and we’ll break it down in sections.

Daily – One should be making repeated efforts to train. This doesn’t have to mean running 10 miles every day. It does mean putting in some sort of physical effort to invest in your body. On a given day, your body could benefit from lower impact activity like stretching, walking and yoga.

Discipline – You cannot slack. You must establish guardrails or involve others who will hold you accountable because after all, you cannot hold yourself accountable; don’t lie to yourself. Identify your tendencies that keep you from physically training your body on a daily basis and put the measures in place to keep you from ditch-diving. Establishing that is an example of discipline.

Physically – As part of the Get Right, you must put the physical work in so that you can be better equipped to handle what life throws at you. Additionally, I have found that if I get a solid workout or run in, my mind is cleared of the fog and I am open to correction, new ideas and ways in which I do just about everything, better.

Training – You’ll never arrive. You are constantly putting in work to get just 1% better. Identify a goal and make incremental improvements. When you’ve reached that goal, make another goal. Improvement is not made in the completion. Improvement is a process of continual training. As you’ve heard countless times, life is lived in the process, in the journey.

Body – There is a lot of reading and study to be done in order to better understand what both Christian and secular writers mean when stating that our bodies are temples. Regardless of your view, you know the basics of that inference. You should treat your body well, and in this case, that means physically training on a regular basis to keep your temple sharp and ready.

This relationship we have with our bodies begins with Fitness, hence why that is the first F. It is not negotiable; I must be physically able to perform the physical necessities of life in order to be effective. If I am unable to carry my kid after she breaks her leg or I am unable to put a suitcase in the overhead bin of an airplane, how effective am I? I would be more of a liability instead of an asset. I never know when “the time” will come so I must train on a daily basis, utilizing a variety of methods, to be ready.

Why do I push for 1% better through different training methods? If all I do is run, I can’t carry my kid. If all I do is rucking or weightlifting, what will I do when my kid wants to run a 5K with me; ask her to walk? Integrate a variety of training methods to challenge your body and build stamina. Stamina fights fatigue. Fatigue happens when you’re not trained for that next 1%. Fatigue keeps you from stepping up when only you can step up. When no one else can, you can…you must. In the words of the late Travis Manion and now memorialized by the Travis Manion Foundation, “If Not Me, Then Who?” In the end, fatigue makes cowards of us all. Fight the fatigue. Fight for that next 1%.

It is important to understand too, that no matter how far or fast you run, no matter how much you can carry, the inevitable time will come when you can’t out-King your Queen. The Queen is the next section in Q-Source and that too, requires discipline and guardrails. For this however, I’ll remain focused on the need for the daily discipline of the King.

A few years ago, F3 PAX around the country spread the initiative of the F3-250. The spirit behind this was to encourage PAX to participate in 250 workouts in a calendar year. This could be a great measure of accountability for men. If you have another man tracking with you on your way to 250, you’re more likely to put your feet on the floor when the alarm rings in your ear. Another tactic is to let someone know the night before where you’re posting. Set your clothes out and get everything else ready. That’s discipline. Find yours. Locally, there are men among us who are engaged in daily check-ins with other men as part of their daily discipline.

It takes a want-to in order to make this a reality, no one will do the work for you. Our world is full of excuses that will entice you to take a more comfortable or faster path. I challenge you to not succumb to that excuse. Why? Inevitably, the “stuff” is going to hit the fan and YOU will have to respond in a way that requires physical effort. You will not have the time to look for the easiest route or the route with the least resistance. You will have to act because only you can. Check that, you won’t have to. You GET TO.

How will you ensure readiness? By engaging your KING and having the daily discipline to physically train your body, your temple. If you need help or accountability, I will gladly walk with you. Just know, you won’t walk forever because I’m going to push you to run or carry weight while we walk.

I love you too much to let you stay static.

Maximus

First Quadrant (Q1): Get Right – To properly align himself, a Leader takes the Daily Red Pill (DRP). This is his daily commitment to accelerate his fitness, fellowship and faith.

Get Right is usually part of my spoken message to the pax on the days I’m fortunate enough to Q. This is because the Get Right quadrant resonates with me. It rings so true because staying upright is my bane. This Q Point gives me adequate motivation to drive past my normal desires of sleeping instead of exercising, eating too much food that tastes way too good and boozing until my words slur. Maybe I was blessed with an inordinate amount of Jesters, but I think most can relate. 

Getting Right incorporates the tenants of F3: Fitness, Fellowship and Faith. Understand, that this is a very specific order. Why does the first F in F3 begin with Fitness, not Faith? “Because men who have no self-control over what they eat or drink and the daily use to which they put their bodies become captive to their lack of physical fitness. Ultimately, that defines them, primarily in their own minds but also in the eyes of those around them.” Getting up to work out at a stupidly-early time each morning helps reshape how we define ourselves. It gives us belief that we can hold our Jesters and bay and continue to Accelerate toward a better version of ourselves—a better man for our family, friends, community and workplace. 

Then, Fellowship “requires the High Impact Man (HIM) to put the needs of others before himself.” We are not prepositioned to put others first; we are engineered to survive by thinking of ourselves first. As we age though, we find that others become dependent on us. Our wives and children, our colleagues, our community all begin to need us more and more. This is a weight that can feel extra burdensome if we are not in the upright position. “Only in maturity does a man develop the discipline and desire to consistently promote the cause of his loved ones over his own and seek Preparedness.” This is not possible if we are overcome by our base desires of doing whatever we want in our pursuits of pleasure. 

Finally, we come to Faith. How do we define Faith in F3? It is the realization that we are not the center of gravity, and this great gift of life is not given so we may serve ourselves but to serve something greater. God, Yahwey, Vajrapāṇi, Zeus, SkyQ—F3 does not define this Greater Divinity, but we do recognize it is absolutely not us. “For the un-Fit man, this is simply not possible. His lack of control over what he eats, drinks and does renders him captive to other forces.”  

It is important to understand that we are not the center of the universe. It is also important to know that we cannot Serve anyone or anything without first being able to control our gluttony and sloth because “they are all-consuming.” As we continue to learn Leadership from the QSource, do not be fooled into thinking you have graduated from Get Right and can move on to the next quadrant. You, my friends, will always have a foot in the Get Right quadrant. Life moves fast. It can be difficult. Staying upright is hard. The following Q Points are a roadmap to helping up stand strong again when life drops us to our knees. 

If you see me down, know that I’m in need of your Leadership. You’ll have the same from me.  

SYITG,
Esso

If you remember no other Foundational Principles from the QSource thus far, this is the one to remember. To me, this is the basic point of all QSource and of all of leadership. It’s near and dear to my heart, and everything else contained in the QSource is simply leading us to Preparedness (that’s why G3L is called the 4 quadrants of Preparedness…). I will ask your grace as I share some personal experiences, but they are the only kind I have.

So why is Preparedness hoisted up as such an important virtue? Though this has been true for all of time, the last couple of years have pointed out in some clear ways how if we as a people were more prepared, the overall level of suffering and struggle could have been diminished. As the pandemic started to spread and so much was still unknown, we saw all kinds of behavior that was strange and often disturbing. We all saw videos of people beating each other up in grocery aisles for toilet paper. Toilet paper… let that sink in. Accosting another human being because you are so afraid you might not be able to wipe your ass in the most comfortable way you want to. But it wasn’t really about that. Because the masses live their lives so unprepared, they were reacting to a complete lack of knowing what to do next in an uncertain situation. As we learn in GrowRuck and other F3 Leadership training, in periods of high stress and limited visibility, you are likely to default to your level training/preparedness. Under pressure, we often see the results of being reactive vs. proactive.

The good news? This is all fixable with a tiny amount of discipline applied over a period of time. Like drops of water that eventually wear a hole in a rock, with the right guardrails in place, and a small but compounding effort, we can become largely immune to the tough situations that life will throw at us.

But only if we are prepared.

Q Source
F2: Language

Preparatory work (warm-up):
The F3 Lexicon contains the particularized language of F3 leadership. It is available online https://f3nation.com/lexicon/ My goal below is to show how this foundational concept of F3 leadership is both circuitous and useful. Every F3 word I use in direct reference to its lexicon definition is both capitalized and italicized for distinction.

The Thang:
When we discuss language, remember this is the area where from the outside F3 feels like a cult. I (YHC) felt like this when I first started Posting.
“Why does everyone need a special name?” *
“Why can’t we just have normal names for exercises?” **
G3L…uh? 3S2T….huh?
And what the heck is a Q?

Here’s why language is a foundational concept according to Q Source: “Every Effective group has its own Language.” For this sentence to be comprehensible, two words need the lexicon:

• Effective: The degree to which a person or Group is Purposeful.
• Language: The Lexicon of Virtuous Leadership

PAX still need to dive further still into the lexicon:

• PAX: A Member of F3 Nation (can be singular or plural).
• Group: A voluntary combination of two or more people.
• Purposefulness: Commitment to Purpose
• Purpose: An Advantage sought.

But wait, we’ve still got to dig deeper.

• Advantage: A superior circumstance achieved by Movement.
• Movement: Actions taken in furtherance of Purpose.

So, here’s the circuitous route I want us to discuss. Warning circular writing ahead:

Purpose is an Advantage sought. An Advantage is a superior circumstance achieved by Movement. And Movement is action taken in furtherance of Purpose. Remember, Purpose is an Advantage sought. So…we can gain an Advantage to a superior circumstance by Movement, which are actions taken in furtherance of our Purpose. And our Purpose is an Advantage sought. Etcetera. Because the definition for these three terms is intertwined, they must coexist. You cannot have Movement without having Purpose or Advantage. Either you have all three or we have none. Purpose without both Advantage and Movement is meaningless.

Once we can clarify a term in the lexicon or see multiple Qs use it in the same way, we understand its meaning in an F3 context. Because so many of the lexicon definitions are pared down* to one specific meaning, communication is simple using a shared language where key terms lack confusion. Communicating like this gives the PAX quick understanding. The shared language gives us the means to accomplish together as a Group what would be impossible for the individual.

The mission of F3 is the invigoration of male community leadership. With the advent of specific and particular language, PAX develop a tool to facilitate their leadership.

This circular language models our own path of Acceleration in any endeavor. (Acceleration: To increase the pace of Movement.) Because we understand that Movement is in service Purpose, we seek betterment for any Purpose we may have. Our Purpose could be leading a workout (1st F), our Purpose could be to be a sacrificial father (2nd F), or our Purpose could be deeper spiritual connection (3rd F). Regardless of what area of life we examine, our desire for Acceleration towards our Purpose remains.

Perhaps, for the veteran PAX, you’ve noticed that Qing an F3 workout is so much easier than leading at your workplace. (Maybe YHC is alone on this…?) I argue that a majority of the difficulty at work is you, your peers, your subordinates, and your superiors do not share the same language. You can use the same words and each population interprets them to mean different things. Without that shared language, we quickly relive the lessons of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9). At the university, we relive those lessons vividly every faculty meeting.

While my main income (Mammon) is from teaching music at a university, I am frequently asked to sub in with professional orchestras. This requires me to jump into a functioning Group with little to no on-boarding. One reason this works is musicians have a shared language of notation, and a flexibility to match stylistically the ensemble sound. The leader of an orchestra is the conductor (maestro or maestra). One of the main criticism musicians have of any (every?) conductor is their failure in Articulation (Q3.5): describing Vision to others. When a conductor is unable or unwilling through gesture to communicate their musical vision, they move towards verbal communication.

Musical notation developed over a long period of time. There are meanings for each meticulous marking. However even within the language of musical notation, there is an immense amount of room for interpretation. Ask a Czech musician how to interpret Dvořák, and they will say if you see a staccato note, it must be staccato. And an accented note, must be accented. Ask a Russian violinist how to interpret Tchaikovsky; they will say when you see a staccato, it must be staccato. If you see and accent, it must be accented! As an American, when I hear European orchestras play Bernstein with a European conductor, they often miss the nuances and inflection of his music. Even though they’re playing the staccato notes their version of staccato. Clearly musical language has an accent that must be accounted for.

A good conductor can effectively use language to convey much of their musical vision. But a great conductor will create language to elicit exactly what they’re seeking from the orchestra. This is especially true the longer a maestro leads an ensemble. The musicians understand the maestro’s language. The best example from my experience was when maestro said, “let’s do it again, but think Johann Strauss with Debussy’s chordal aesthetic.” That comment completely altered the orchestra’s interpretation for the better, and we were not playing a piece by Strauss or Debussy. Obviously, we understood maestro’s language. That comment probably means nothing to you without an understanding of J. Strauss waltzes and Debussy’s harmonic language.

A musical interpretation example you may be able to experience is the opening of Star Wars: Main Title. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D0ZQPqeJkk) Listen to the first chord and think of it as a downward gesture in energy. Imagine the conductor coming down with their arms to start the ensemble. Then start the recording again and consider the opening to begin with up energy. Imagine the conductor’s hands raising with the baton extending out and up to open the piece. Does the same recording feel differently depending on how you interpret it in your mind?

There is no one common language of leadership. But Effective Groups will utilize a unique language in the furtherance of their mission. Groups without a unique language still work and often achieve their missions. However, there are more unproductive or ineffective steps along the way. As leaders, let’s work towards utilizing language as a tool that will make our efforts Effective. With refinement, language is not an obstacle between our shared understanding, but a tool at our disposal.

Prayer:
Lord,
I ask, as did the writer of Hebrews (12:1-2), for perseverance to run the race you have marked out for us. But our human diligence only carries us so far with mortal strength and finite lifespans. Bless us through the Holy Spirit with the language to be effective as we run your race. That our faithful efforts emboldened by your presence would bring glory to you.
Amen.

*When you have a specific and particular name in a given context you build an identify around that. Justin wouldn’t be willing to run miles on a raining morning and do 100 pull-ups while swinging a kettlebell, but Band Camp will joyfully do that in support of a fellow PAX’s Q. (I can mumble chatter joyfully during the workout too, right?) There’s also an element to the name that signifies you’re a part of the group. Your ability to cope with a silly nickname indicates to all the PAX that you can handle hard truths with grace.

**I don’t like doing push-ups, but when they’re called “Merkins” they seem to have a different Purpose.

Greetings and happy new year.  For QSource this year I’m going to attempt putting together short articles on topics from our fellow pax around The Fort.  They will be for you to digest and discuss as you go about your week.  So, for the first week, I am volunteering as tribute to guide this effort and open myself (and this approach) up to criticism.  The first topic is disruption, which seems befitting as this is the first step in a new direction.  I’m going to try to convince you that disruption is not only a prerequisite in the process of improving one’s life but a basic necessity of life.

If we explore our existence from the basic levels, we can find some things that are necessary for our own survival which may not be self-evident.  Observing the world around us, we see all objects in the world on an endless timeline of actions/reactions that are both completely random and completely predictable all at the same time (chaos theory).  Then there is life.  With life comes a stored memory of these actions and reactions which will dictate how behavior is changed (adaptation) and how life changes through the generations (evolution).  In the same way, we need proper conditions conducive to life (food, water, shelter), life also needs something to adapt to or it can not be called life at all.  Therefore, the status quo is not only “less desirable” it is a hostile condition that renders life useless and leads to self-destructive behavior.  It may be the reason why “I’m fine” is both true and everything but.

As a Control Systems Engineer, I deal with measurement and control on a fundamental level to the extent that I see it in everything (feedback).  Because we can not learn anything about a process while it is at steady-state (read: status quo), we have to inject a disturbance (read: disruption) in order to see how the system behaves.  Only then will we learn anything, and only then will see if the system is capable of handling the process.  Only with disruption will you ever know of competence, which some psychologists are now seeing as a basic psychological need:  “Competence concerns the experience of effectiveness and mastery. It becomes satisfied as one capably engages in activities and experiences opportunities for using and extending skills and expertise. When frustrated, one experiences a sense of ineffectiveness or even failure and helplessness.”  Link

Let me give you a metaphor.  Let’s say you try to develop the ability to do a handstand.  Your entire muscle chain from your fingers to your hip flexors will develop in the process, because you will use every muscle to help you stabilize.  Your muscles will get stronger, your nervous system will develop, and your balance will improve.  With practice, you will learn how to balance with less and less effort.  This will eliminate the need for muscle recruitment and lead to atrophy… unless you don’t stop at just a handstand.  We can not become intoxicated with the pride of holding a longer handstand when it is at the cost of your overall capability.  The skill is a basic practice that is helping to become more competent at the simple activity of moving and controlling one’s own body.  The disruption that instigated the need to do handstands needs to be replaced with a new disruption.  You must now learn to walk on your hands, then walk up stairs on your hands, etc.

Because we know that disruption is needed for life, we now have to figure out how to use disruption to “influence movement to advantage”.  That’s where you, dear reader, come in to play.  Due to our own shortsightedness or perhaps even willful ignorance, we can often not see our own need for disruption or perhaps the proper disruption that precedes advantage.  Advantage is a “superior circumstance” that is not defined by our own feeble senses or fickle emotions, but by the community as a whole.  Advantage is any condition that promotes the health of all life that is influenced and helps all things thrive.  This unconditional service to all life (of which we are a part) is what is defined as love.  In other words, love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (Cor13:7)

As a leader, we must be constantly using disruption to increase competence and seek advantage, but it can not stop.  We must constantly be challenging the status quo and asking others to do the same for the health of our society.  Give them a reason.

Cultivate virtue in yourself,
And it will be true.
Cultivate virtue in the family,
And it will be overflowing.
Cultivate virtue in the town,
And it will be lasting.
Cultivate virtue in the country,
And it will be abundant.
Cultivate virtue in the world,
And it will be universal.

Therefore:
See others as yourself.
See families as your family.
See towns as your town.
See countries as your country.
See worlds as your world.

~Tao Te Ching