Conquering FLAP: The Five Battles Every Man Must Win for True Freedom

[00:00:00] Every man has a battle he doesn’t talk about. For some, it’s the fear of failing the people who count on you the most. For others, it’s lust. Chasing a quick hit of validation when your soul’s running a little on empty. Maybe it’s that flash of anger you swear you’ll control next time. Or the pride that keeps you from asking for help.

But here’s the truth. Every downfall you’ve ever seen from celebrity meltdowns to broken marriages and silent midlife misery, they all trace back to one of four forces. Fear, lust, anger, or pride. We call it flap. It’s an acronym I borrow from Dr. Dave Jones. If you don’t master it, it will master you. Stick with me because by the end of the episode you’re gonna see exactly which one of these has been steering your life.

From the shadows, let’s get into it. The Driven 2 Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for [00:01:00] men, helping men go from living to thriving, purpose-filled intentional lives. Welcome to the Driven 2 Thrive broadcast where men learn to lead themselves, their families, and their world with purpose, growth, and lasting impact.

I’m your host, Brent Dowlen. Let’s get straight into it. Every man thinks he’s fighting a thousand battles. Work, marriage, kids, money, purpose. But really you’re actually fighting for, and once you can name them, then you can tame them. Yeah, I know I did it. I made a little catchy saying, and I probably borrowed it from someone else without knowing it.

But for the benefit of today, it’s worthwhile because there’s a lot of truth to it, whether I like those clever little sayings or not. Some people will say I’m oversimplifying things, but I’m a huge believer of the why behind the why behind the why behind the why. One more time behind the why. Yeah, that’s five times.

I want to get to the root of everything going on in my life so I can take [00:02:00] care of it, and I think it will help you too. When you get to the root cause of most things, you’re gonna find one of four issues. With a slim possibility of another answer, but we’ll get to that a little bit later. We’re gonna tackle a flap and you can be the judge to see if you agree.

We’re gonna use psychology to explain how these four forces hijack your mind, stoicism to teach. Why mastering them is freedom and scripture to show you who you become when you conquer them. Let’s start with the first one, the one that hides behind nearly every hesitation, excuse and sleepless night.

Fear you can be the toughest guy in the room and still be run by fear. Will Smith once submitted, he was terrified of letting people down and that was before this infamous slap. But see that same fear unaddressed turned into anger and the whole world watched him lose control in a single moment. That’s now been immortalized [00:03:00] forever and is an internet meme.

Fear doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it just whispers. What if you fail or what will they think? The brain doesn’t know the difference between fear of death and fear of embarrassment. It’s just fear and it just screams, don’t move. Right? That’s how fear works. It’s important to notate that it doesn’t differentiate any kind of fear is just fear.

It’s like the idea that your muscles have no idea what kind of weight you’re moving. They just know you’re moving weight. It doesn’t matter if it’s from a resistance band or you’re picking up sandbags or concrete bags at the hardware store. Your body doesn’t know if it’s a machine or a barbell. It just knows you’re moving weight.

Your brain [00:04:00] doesn’t know if you’re terrified of falling into a pit of boiling LABA in Hawaii, or if you’re afraid to get up and give that talk in front of your teammates, it just knows you’re afraid. We talked last week in last week’s episode about. How once the amygdala is hijacked, it doesn’t care what sets us off, right?

It doesn’t be like reason. Reason, no. Actually, once it’s activated, reason is just out the window. We’re not talking about being afraid of jumping into a tank of sharks with today’s fresh catch strapped to your body. See, that’s healthy fear. That one keeps you alive, and we don’t want to get rid of that.

We’re talking about the fears that keep you from moving forward. Taking healthy, calculated risk, trying new things, pursuing your dreams, the fear of what other people think or say. The fear of rejection. Yeah, that’s a big one for a lot of people. [00:05:00] The fear of judgment. How about the fear of embarrassment or the fear of failure?

Those are a little harder to talk about because people don’t like to talk about that. We’ll talk about jumping. Jumping into a shark tank all day long. We have to get real about what actually scares us, especially as men. That’s a difficult conversation. Those are fears, so raw and deep that they prevent you from living your life the way you were born to live it.

Seneca said, we suffer more in imagination than in reality. That’s every man who’s too afraid to start the business that they’ve always wanted to start repair their marriage that’s been struggling or have that hard conversation that they’ve been avoiding. I think most of us heard the the saying 90% of the things that you worry about [00:06:00] will never happen.

As we were growing up. I heard it all the time. Turns out it’s true. Research has proven it. Can I encourage you to stop worrying about those 90% of things and just deal with the fears that are holding you back? Why do you care what a stranger thinks or says? The internet has consumed us with the crowd of public opinion, and you don’t know 99% of those people.

So why do you care? Why does that hold power over so many people? Well, scripture adds another layer for us. Two Timothy one seven says, for God has not given us the spirit of fear, but a power, love, and sound mind. Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s though it’s obedience to do what we need to do.

Despite fear, firemen are not unafraid to run into a birding building. They just have [00:07:00] the courage to move past that fear, despite it. Police officers wonder every day if they’re gonna get shot. That’s a fact. But they have the courage to believe that what they’re doing is important to society and they show up anyway.

So let me throw you a challenge this week. This week, do one thing that scares you on purpose. No, I’m not talking about killing that spider on your wall. Just got into my studio from killing one of my girl’s ceilings. No, we’re talking about something that actually scares you. Go talk to a stranger. Go speak up in that team meeting.

Go have that conversation with your wife. The more you lean into fear, the smaller it gets. Work on recognizing the signs of fear, and we talked about this previously in last week. Use the breathing technique we talked about last [00:08:00] week because it’s the un uno reverso for the hijack of your amygdala. There will be a link if you miss that episode so you can go see exactly what I’m talking about.

But that’s something we talked about last week was how to arrest and reverse that amygdala hijack. Fear convinces you that safety is success. But the truth is, the longer you hide from fear, the more control it gains. The antidote to fear isn’t courage. Once it’s disciplined daily, and when we avoid facing fear, we usually reach for something that feels good instead, something to, you know, distract us, which leads us strange to the next force that hijacks men when fear runs the show, which is lust.

Shannon Sharp said it. Plain lust has cost me peace, and he’s not alone. Whether it’s porn power or praise, lust is desire without distraction. [00:09:00] When we talk about lust, your mind probably went straight to lusting after women. That’s the most obvious example, and it’s the one that’s most publicly acknowledged.

But what about lusting after fame power? Money recognition, popularity stuff and things. How about the lust of release self-medication and numbing for the pain? Lust for rush, for adrenaline to be entertained constantly. That is a lust issue. Lust is defined as have to have an intense desire or need an intense longing.

It’s not limited to sexual desire, and while that’s a common problem, the other things we lust after will destroy us just as fast and maybe even faster. In some cases. Psychologically, it’s just dopamine. [00:10:00] Your brain is chasing a hit to escape pain or boredom, but spiritually it’s distraction. Lust promises, intimacy, but delivers isolation.

Pictus said, no man is free. Who’s not a master of themself? That’s not about purity culture. It’s about power. The man who can’t say no is never truly in control. Sadly, these things really. Are the same thing in doing the same thing psychologically in your brain as likes on your Facebook photos do for you both are destroying your life.

Both are just punching that trigger to feel good. But neither of them, none of them are actually steering your life in a positive direction. Matthew 5 28 reminds us, anyone who looks at a woman, Lu has already committed adultery in his heart. Now that’s [00:11:00] dealing with the sexual side of it. It’s not condemnation, it’s protection.

It’s a guard rail to keep your guard rail, to keep your eyes heart and purpose from crashing. The Bible also uses the word covetness. Covetousness, we know word we don’t really use today, but it would be defined as a lust for things either way. The Bible’s very clear on his opinion of lust. It will lead to disaster in your life.

The stoics understood that not having control was dangerous. That anything that controls you and that’s what things you lust for, do, do, is they control you. Anything that takes away your control is a bad idea. So try this discipline practice sometime this week. Take a 24 hour dopamine detox this week. No porn, no thirst scrolling, no cheap dopamine hits.

And remember, for some guys that thirst scrolling is muscle cars or new tech, [00:12:00] not babes and bikinis or something else reclaim your focus. Lust is desire without direction. It promises freedom, but it delivers chains. And here’s the big picture. Every time you trade long-term purpose for short-term, short-term pleasure.

You lose more than focus. You lose trust in yourself. Rebuilding that trust starts with rest, recovery and rhythm, which is why I wanna pause for a second and talk about something that actually helps you reset your energy and focus. One of the things that thriving men like yourself tend to skip, I know I skipped for a long time and neglect was rest.

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Tire men react, and nowhere does that show up faster than in the next battlefield that every man knows all too well, which is anger. Mike Tyson once said, the only thing I fear is losing control. [00:14:00] You see, that’s what anger really is. Pain trying to protect itself. Most men don’t deal with anger, they just detonate it.

But anger isn’t the problem. It’s the signal. It mask your fear and or shame where they don’t feel safe being seen. But wouldn’t you know it? It’s that pesky little amygdala getting hijacked again. That’s right. The same part of your brain lighting up a. For fear, it’s just a different response. Why? Because anger is a fear response.

Anger is a reactive response to a stimuli. That’s why parents get angry when their kid does something that puts them in danger or really stupid, like runs out in traffic. That is the pain because your brain is already. Imagine the fallout of them getting hurt in just an instant, been that quick, and so anger comes out because we’re angry [00:15:00] at the thought of that pain.

That’s the pain when couples argue and their brain calculates the possible devastation of their disagreement in all of the worst possible ways because. Fear is not reasonable. Anger is not reasonable. So the anger comes out, anger comes out because we’re afraid of the vulner vulnerability of hurt.

Marcus Aurelius wrote, how much more grievous are the consequences of anger than that, than the causes of it? Wisdom, because anger burns whatever it touches, and you’re usually holding the match. The devastation of releasing anger is well documented in our world these days. You see it on the news almost every day where people choose unhealthy outlets for their anger.

Well, last season I had Dr. Orman on the show and he shared the three filters that we see the world with that shape our perception and evoke anger. It really boils down to three [00:16:00] things. We observe something and process that someone did something bad or wrong, that people got hurt or harmed by whatever action.

Just we witnessed. Or the person who acted is solely to blame for whatever is wrong. But if we can question that truth of the identified filter, what was it that we observed and what filter did we process it through? Once we recognize that, we can then identify what the truth is. Did that person really do something bad or wrong, or do we just perceive it that way?

We can stop the anger just by disarming it. Scripture says, James in James one 19. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. God doesn’t tell us not to feel anger. He tells us to steward it. So here’s the tip for you. Next time you feel the heat rise, try five deep nasal breaths. This is what [00:17:00] we talked about in the last episode in through the nose, nice and slow.

And deep and out through the nose, nice and slow, very controlled. Not a just blow it all out, but a slow release. Ask yourself, what pain am I protecting right now? What filter am I seeing this through? And ask yourself is that’s the truth. Anger is really the enemy. It’s just the messenger alerting you to something else.

When you ignore the message, you start burning bridges, relationships, and peace just feels well not possible. That’s where we run into the final most deceptive force that shows up in our lives. The one that tells you, you’re fine while everything quietly unravels. Let’s talk about pride. Pride is a killer.

It just moves slow enough to actually fool you. You don’t realize it’s happening. Look at Kane [00:18:00] West. Bright, creative, but I’m done by the very ego that once fueled him. Psychologically, pride is an armor for shame. It’s your ego’s way of saying, if I never emit weakness, it’ll never hurt. Pride is a fear response that protects you from being embarrassed or looking silly that keeps you from appearing dumb or just uneducated in a specific topic.

Pride has launched a lot of issues in my life for sure. I’ll be the first to admit that, and it’s caused a lot of problems in my marriage because I was afraid to look like I didn’t have answers in front of my wife at times. But pride doesn’t protect you, it isolates you. Let’s be clear, we’re not talking about being proud of something you’ve done.

So let me break out some clear definitions. I Googled them just so you guys didn’t have to because a lot of people. Get being proud and having too much pride [00:19:00] mixed up. Being proud describes the feeling of deep satisfaction or pleasure derived from your own achievements, qualities, or possessions or that of someone you are the achievements of someone you care about, typically, a spouse, a friend, a kid, and it’s typically viewed as a positive emotion that can motivate excellence and self-worth.

Thank you, Google. In contrast, pride often implies that excessive or inflated sense of self-importance, arrogance or self-sufficiency, and is frequently viewed as negative, especially in religious or moral context, it can be synonymous with hubris. Once again, thank you Google to make sure we’re all on the same page.

We are talking about the second one, pride Marcus Aurelius wrote, if anyone can show me my error, I’ll gladly change it for I seek the truth. Gentlemen, that’s real strength. That openness [00:20:00] to being taught to correction, that’s strength. Pride flies in the face of wisdom, and you truly cannot be wise and prideful at the same time.

Proverbs 1618 says, it is clear. It is says it as clearly as it gets pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall. So guys, here’s an action step for you to try this week. Ask one person you respect for honest feedback this week, and if and when you are wrong, admit it out loud. Guys, that single act builds more respect than perfection ever will.

Pride whispers. You got this. It’s subtle, it’s seductive and isolates you from the very help that could help you or heal you. Big picture, pride is the ceiling on your growth when you hit it. God stops promoting you up until you learn humility, and that’s something we talked about a [00:21:00] lot behind the scenes, the messy, honest truth.

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However, I have one change to the spelling that Dr. Dave Dave Jones acronym uses. And I wanna change it from FLAP to F-L-L-A-P, which doesn’t sound right when you say it out loud, which is why I don’t generally make acronyms. And I had to borrow somebody else’s to help explain this stuff because his acronym is blowing it out of the water.

It’s dead on, it just needs a second L. Since the beginning of mankind, we’ve struggled with flap fear. Lust, [00:23:00] anger, pride, almost since the beginning of time, the downfall of man. But in the most recent decades, we’ve had the luxury of adding this second L, which is lazy. Lazy, wasn’t a possibility in life until more modern times.

Yes, I know sloths exists in the Bible, but not to the level. You could live in it. Sloth in the Bible looked a lot different than being lazy does today. Lazy stems from a combination of evolutionary neurological and phys psychological traits within the brain. Your brain prefers to save energy. That’s the evolutionary part.

At a biological level, your brain wants to save energy ’cause it costs you a lot of energy if you don’t know the basic biology of it. Really, a lot of the energy you burn into the day goes to your brain. It takes more energy in the prefrontal prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for planning, decision making, [00:24:00] initiating action, you know, all the good stuff.

We associate with growth mindset in layman’s terms, which people like me need. It’s easier to be lazy. It’s just a fact at a biological level. Secondarily, the brain. Secondarily, I don’t know if I even said that right. The brain’s reward system can reinforce lazy behavior through immediate gratification these days, which it couldn’t do before.

Such as scrolling through social media and watching videos, which triggers dopamine release more readily than the delayed rewards, like creating a task or completing a task. We’ve talked about this extensively on this channel, guys, a donut in my hand now feels a whole lot better than being a couple pounds lighter two weeks from now, or three weeks from now, right?

It’s that simple. This creates a cycle where the brain prioritizes short-term pleasure over long-term benefits because you can dopamine yourself to death. With your [00:25:00] phone these days, you don’t have to do anything creative. You don’t have to do anything productive. You don’t have to do anything useful, and you can still just instant gratification all day.

Well before social support systems like welfare and government support programs and instant gratification in the problem of your hand, you had no choice. You couldn’t be lazy all the time. Now you can get all the stimulus you want. And all the support programs you want, and it will make up for any lack of effort or any lack of drive on your side, on your part.

It’s easy and safe for the first time in history to be lazy. It picked this road. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you’ll attend to yourself, you’ll not notice that you’re making no progress, but you’ll live and die as someone quite ordinary.

We currently live in a time when most men have lost [00:26:00] ambition. We’re not slaying dragons anymore or climbing mountains or exploring lost worlds. In fact, most men in modern society self-medicate their longings for achievement and greatness through artificial means such as enjoying sports. And there’s nothing wrong with liking sports or gaming.

Nothing wrong with gaming. It’s the problem when we start getting our achievement. And dopamine hit from watching something that doesn’t actually happen in real life or affect our real world or our achievement, but it feeds that achievement need in our brain. It crushes our future silently and efficiently.

Marcus Aurelius reminds us at dawn, when you have trouble getting outta bed, tell yourself I have to go to work as a human being. What do I have to complain of? If I’m going, if I’m going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into this world to do, [00:27:00] or is that what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

The Bible also counsels us. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those whose faith and patient inherit what has been pro, inherit what has been promised in Hebrews six 12. If you find yourself sabotaging your life. You’re not motivated to do something. Maybe try this simple. Start the two minute rule.

Commit to spending two minutes on a task. Really doing that task. Not like halfheartedly, but actually like really doing that task for two minutes wholeheartedly. All in. You’ll be surprised because once you start, you are most likely gonna finish the task. So that’s my other L. We had to repel flap. Which is why I generally don’t make acronyms.

But let’s pull back and see the big picture of all five, fear, lust, laziness, anger, and pride, and how you can start mastering them today. [00:28:00] Mastering flap isn’t about becoming perfect. It’s about becoming present. Fear, lust, anger, pride, laziness, they always whisper. They’re always there. They’re always tantalizing.

They’re always trying to draw you back in their secure hold. Like I said, if you dig the why behind the why behind the why behind the why behind the why, you’re gonna find out that most things that are holding you back tie two, one of these five issues. Each of these five forces works in silence until you name them.

When you name them, you reclaim them. Psychology shows you how they hijack your mind. Sos doesn’t teach us why Mastery them sets you free. Scripture reveals who you’re becoming, who you actually do something about these things. Marcus Aelius said, waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be.

B one, [00:29:00] John First John three 18 reminds us, let us not love with words or speech, but with the actions and in truth. This week I challenge you. Pick one. Fear, lust, laziness, anger, pride. Write it down, face it. Discipline it. Because when you control the flap flap, since I can’t use the good acronyms, you can control your future.

Gentlemen, thanks for listening to Driven To Thrive. If this episode resonated, share it with a brother who needs it. And remember, we don’t rise by chance. We rise by choice. Until next time, keep growing, keep thriving, and be better tomorrow because what you do today and we’ll see you on the next one. The Driven to Thrive broadcast purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men, helping men go from living to thriving.

Purpose-filled intentional [00:30:00] lives.