People who love themselves, don’t hurt other people. The more we hate ourselves, the more we want others to suffer.

Dads. It’s time to show our sons how to properly treat a woman. It’s time to show our daughters how a girl should expect be treated. It’s time to show forgiveness and compassion. It’s time to show our children empathy. It’s time to break social norms and teach a healthier way of life! It’s time to teach good gender roles and to ditch the unnecessary ones. Does it really matter if your son likes the color pink? Is it going to hurt anybody? Do you not see the damage it inflicts to tell a boy that there is something wrong with him because he likes a certain color? Do we not see the damage we do in labeling our girls “tom boys” or our boys “feminine” just because they have their own likes and opinions on things? Things that really don’t matter?

My request today is simple. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Find somebody, anybody, that’s different than you. Somebody that has made you feel ill-will or even hateful. Somebody whose life decisions have made you uncomfortable. Somebody who practices a different religion than you do. Somebody who has been lost to addiction. Somebody with a criminal past. Somebody who dresses “below” you. Somebody with disabilities. Somebody who lives an alternative lifestyle. Somebody without a home.Somebody that you, until now, would always avoid, always look down on, and always be disgusted by.Reach your arm out and put it around them.And then, tell them they’re all right. Tell them they have a friend. Tell them you love them.If you or I wanna make a change in this world, that’s where we’re gonna be able to do it. That’s where we’ll start.Every. Single. Time.

Children are gifts. They are not ours for the breaking. They are ours for the making.

Don’t we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be… doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs right.It has everything to do with being a good human being. A good person. A good friend.

Dads. Do you not realize that a child is what you tell them they are? That people almost always become what they are labeled? Was whatever your child just did really the “dumbest thing you’ve ever seen somebody do”? Was it really the “most ridiculous thing they ever could have done”? Do you really believe that your child is an idiot? Because she now does. Think about that. Because you said it, she now believes it. Bravo.

Dads. It’s time to tell our kids that we love them. Constantly. It’s time to show our kids that we love them. Constantly. It’s time to take joy in their twenty-thousand daily questions and their inability to do things as quickly as we’d like. It’s time to take joy in their quirks and their ticks. It’s time to take joy in their facial expressions and their mispronounced words. It’s time to take joy in everything that our kids are.

Dads. Do your faces light up when you first see your child in the morning or when you come home from work? Do you not understand that a child’s entire sense of value can revolve around what they see in your face when you first see them?

Do you not realize that your kids are going to make mistakes, and a lot of them? Do you not realize the damage you do when you push your son’s nose into his mishaps or make your daughter feel worthless because she bumped or spilled something? Do you have any idea how easy it is to make your child feel abject? It’s as simple as letting out the words, “why would you do that!?” or “how many times have I told you…

I think it doesn’t matter if you or I or anybody else thinks homosexuality is a sin. It doesn’t matter if you or I think anything is a sin. It doesn’t matter if homosexuality is a sin or not. In fact, it doesn’t matter if anything anybody else does is a sin or not.Because sin is a very personal thing! It always has been and it always will be!And it has nothing to do with love.

Loving my son, building my son, touching my son, playing with my son, being with my son… these aren’t tasks that only super dads can perform. These are tasks that every dad should perform. Always. Without fail.

Having a religion doesn’t make a person love or not love others. It doesn’t make a person accept or not accept others. It doesn’t make a person befriend or not befriend others.Being without a religion doesn’t make somebody do or be any of that either.No, what makes somebody love, accept, and befriend their fellow man is letting go of a need to be better than others.Nothing else.

I promise you it doesn’t matter what you believe, how strongly you live your beliefs, or how true your beliefs are. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks you are in the wrong. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks your beliefs are senseless or illogical. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks you have it all wrong. In fact, there are a lot of people in this world who do.

Share your weaknesses. Share your hard moments. Share your real side. It'll either scare away every fake person in your life or it will inspire them to finally let go of that mirage called "perfection," which will open the doors to the most important relationships you'll ever be a part of.

Saturday mornings, I’ve learned, are a great opportunity for kids to sneak into your bed, fall back asleep, and kick you in the face.

It’s time we stand up and demand more of the fathers of this world. It’s time we stop buying into their rationalizations and their sorry explanations. It’s time we give our kids a fighting chance.

Sometimes to be a good parent... You have to laugh when you want to be angry. You have to be angry when you want to laugh. And that is why good parenting is tough.

Parenting is the greatest pay it forward system on earth. We don't owe our parents anything. We owe our children everything. The same was true for our parents. The same will be true for our children.

Fishing is much less about the fishing, and much more about the time alone with your kid, away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday.

Do we not see the influence we have when we say we believe in one thing, but our children see us living something else? Do we not realize how little we encourage our children to actually decide what they believe, declare what they believe, and then live by it? Whether it’s religion, politics, sports, or societal norms. It is not our place to tell our kids what to think. It is our place to teach our kids to think correctly. If we do this, we need have no fear of what they will decide for themselves and how strongly they’ll stand behind it. A man will follow his own convictions to his death, but he’ll only follow another man’s convictions until he steps in manure.

Dads. Do you honestly expect anybody to believe that you can’t find 20 minutes to step away from your computer or turn off the television to play with your child? It has to happen every single day. Do you not understand that children will hinge their entire facet of trust on whether or not their dad plays with them and how involved he is when he plays with them? Do you know the damage you do by not playing with your children every day?

And if you are a mom who has watched your child’s father leave, my heart goes out to you. I also pray that you had no part in it. I pray that you didn’t make it impossible for him while he was there. I pray that you didn’t try and force him to live up to impossible expectations. And, I pray that if he is a good man and he wants to be there in his child’s life that you love your child enough to let him. Even if that seems impossible to you.

I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I’m a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child’s life, and in a child’s level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad.

Dads. Do you not realize that your child needs to feel your skin on his? Do you not realize the incredible and powerful bond that skin on skin contact with your daughter will give you? Do you not understand the permanent mental connections that are made when you stroke your son’s bare back or rub your daughter’s bare tummy while you tell bedtime stories? And if any idiot says anything about that being inappropriate, you’re gonna get kicked in the face, first by me, and then by every other good dad out there. Touching your child is your duty as a father.

Good fathers, and by that I mean real fathers who are there, have the ability to change almost every social problem we now find ourselves facing. I’d be assumptive enough to say that there isn’t a single type of crime or a single problem so big that it couldn’t be fixed or wiped out if fathers would just step up.

Every time we look at the clock, we must learn to feel a sense of urgency. We must learn to realize that “now” is happening and will very soon be gone. We must look at the digits on the display and be overcome with an urge to do something before those digits change. Before “now” slips through our fingers. We must look at the ink on the calendar and see an immediate opportunity to do something wonderful, incredible, or beautiful.It’s that simple. We need to change our thinking from “when the number changes” to “before the number changes”.

If you want to change the world, first change yourself, then tell others how you did it. Never demand that people change. Inspire them to change using your own change as an example instead.

I really believe that it is honesty about our imperfect selves that makes everyone do better and be better.

Once your past no longer has the power to define you, your future is, quite literally, yours for the taking. Every single beautiful thing you could possibly want or imagine will be yours.

Everything we think we know, everything we think we see, everything we believe we feel, taste, smell, or hear, everything we “remember” (our pasts), everything we want to happen (our futures), everything that has ever existed or will ever exist, only exists right now. All of these things are nothing more than electric signals being passed through our brains and bodies, right now. It is all energy flowing through us right now. “The past” exists only in our minds. We are the ones who bring it into reality. We are the ones who bring it into the present. We are the ones who make it “real”.

Having a college degree does not make you educated. Always learning new things is what makes you educated.

Our greatest mistakes, if we look at them, and digest them, and interact with them, and learn from them… they can be the greatest moments of our lives.

Only those willing to truly risk everything will gain everything. No person ever rose to greatness without the willingness to lose it all.

One of the greatest acts of service you can do is to find someone who is secretly lonely and be a friend to them, if only for a day.

Who do you want to surround yourself with? People who can pull you up to their level of greatness? Or people who will happily pull you down to theirs?

You’d be hard-pressed to find an old person who would trade in a true friend for any amount of popularity or fame. You'd also be hard-pressed to find a young person who wouldn't.

I’ve watched my dad move our family from extreme poverty to extreme wealth and then everywhere in between. Never once did I see or hear him be anything but a cheerleader for the accomplishments of others. It didn’t matter if he was down or up in life, he wanted everybody around him to succeed. I’ve even watched him praise the very people that have tried to destroy him over the years and then very publicly wish them success and happiness. He taught me the enthusiasm that should always come at the success of others. He constantly taught me that when others succeed, it gives us all more opportunity to succeed. He taught me that when there is conflict, minor or major, you can almost always walk away at the end with a handshake.

If bullies actually believe that somebody loves them and believes in them, they will love themselves, they will become better people, and many will even become saviors to the bullied.

If I could give one message to the bullied, it would be this: You are not alone. You are strong. You have a voice. You are beautiful. You are intelligent. There are many kids who want to speak up for you, but they don’t because they are afraid of becoming bullied themselves. There are many of us in the world who love you. I love you. You have the power to end this now. That power is in your voice. Find it. Once you use your voice, bullies want no part of you. If you feel that you lack the courage, fake it until you do. Finally, I know it’s hard to see a life that exists beyond high school. It is there, and it is beautiful.

Don't hate the bullies. Experience tells me that hating them, or being angry with them, will always make it worse. Instead, put your arm around them. Love them. Tell them that they are valuable. Tell them that you expect great things from them. They will stop the bullying. They will stop, because they will start to love themselves. And people who love themselves don’t bully others.

If I could give one message to the bullies, it would be this: You are incredible. You are bound for great things. You have the potential to be anybody you want to be. There are people who believe in you. There are people who love you. Be what we know you can be, even if you don’t believe in yourself right now.

As much as I don’t want it to be true, the reasons I don’t do something define me as a person even more so, perhaps, than the reasons I do something.

The more you put your arm around those that you might naturally look down on, the more you will love yourself. And the more you love yourself, the less need you’ll ever have to find fault or be better than others. And the less we all find fault or have a need to be better than others, the quicker this world becomes a far better place to live.

I have known a lot of people in my life, and I can tell you this… Some of the ones who understood love better than anyone else were those who the rest of the world had long before measured as lost or gone. Some of the people who were able to look at the dirtiest, the poorest, the gays, the straights, the drug users, those in recovery, the basest of sinners, and those who were just… plain… different.They were able to look at them all and only see strength. Beauty. Potential. Hope.And if we boil it down, isn’t that what love actually is?

Mirrors have three purposes. To show you who you are. To show you who you were. And to show you who you want to be.

Happiness comes from striving to make tomorrow better than today and being at peace when yesterday was better than today as well.

If you don’t want your past to own you, try owning your past.

I am just a guy, doing my best to be the best person I can be.And, every once in a while, I fuck up the moment I’m in.Please. Get over it. Get over yourselves. Get over this weird need to be morally superior to me and to the other people in this world.And let me be imperfect. I assure you, my imperfections drive me to improve.Let me love myself. I assure you, loving myself despite my faults will only make me a better person.Let me be my own judge. I assure you, I’ll be more fair and just than you ever will.Let me be the owner of my own intentions. I assure you, there isn’t another soul on earth who knows what my real intentions are but me.Love and acceptance despite ongoing and glaring imperfection is all I’ve ever tried to attain with this blog. For me. For you. For everyone. And I’ll never stop.

The goal was never dependent on the route that took me there. It was always dependent on the heart that got me through whatever route opened itself up to my efforts.

If your dreams and goals get derailed, they're not dead. Derailed simply means off-track. Pick 'em up and put 'em back on again.

I’m not going to miss 95% of life to weigh 5% less.

I am, for some reason, actually happy with who I am and the muscle, the bones, and the flub that exist beneath these clothes.I don’t need to lose 20 lbs. to be attractive.I don’t need to starve myself of the good things of life to be healthy.And, I don’t need to chase someone else’s ideal of what I should be looking like.

Think of the most discouraging thing that you are currently carrying or the biggest project you can’t seem to tackle. Forget about how it happened, forget about how you got there, just look at the clock, and before that number changes, do one little thing to make it better. After you do, enjoy your moment of victory, and then do it again. In less than the time it takes you to blink, the past will burden you no more.

The skinnier and more toned I got, the fatter I felt.The more in shape I got, the more out of shape I felt like I was.And the more I made myself look good to the masses, the less attractive I felt like I was.

I’ve been chained to my bathroom scale for two decades now. I’ve used the number on my scale to tell me if I’m valuable or not. I’ve let the number on my scale destroy many beautiful opportunities in my life such as scheduling family photos, having fun at the beach, or giving myself 100% in intimacy. I’ve let the number on the scale tell me if I should be confident in who I am. I’ve let the number on the scale tell me if I am worthy of kind thoughts from others. Ultimately, I’ve always let some ridiculous number on the bathroom scale tell me whether or not I should love myself.

I enjoy a torture session on the rowing machine and I also enjoy my mom’s homemade peach cobbler. I enjoy flopping like that dead fish with hips that can’t lie in dance class, and I also enjoy ordering pizza with my kid, renting a movie, and downing popcorn while we share some special time together. I enjoy seeing how much I can lift at the gym and I also enjoy stuffing a fresh chewy chocolate chip cookie into my face when I’m having a hard day.

Be real. Embrace that you have weakness. Because everyone does. Embrace that your body is not perfect. Because nobody’s is. Embrace that you have things you can’t control. We all have a list of them.

People who love themselves, don’t hurt other people. People who love themselves have no reason to ever judge another person on looks. There is simply no need. People who love themselves no longer look at beauty on a sliding scale or as a competition. There is nobody more beautiful or less beautiful than anyone else, including themselves. People who love themselves no longer see fat or skinny, tall or short, fair or dark skin, gay or straight, strong or weak. They only see people. Beautiful, beautiful people.

When you do talk to people, share what you are. Stop focusing on all the things that you aren’t. Stop focusing on all of the physical features that you think people won’t like about you. Stop focusing on your inabilities or lack of talent. Instead, focus on those physical features that you know people already love about you. Focus on your abilities and the talents that you do have. You have been blessed with all of the above, and that makes you worth getting to know in my book.

Smile at people everywhere you go. Don’t just give them one of those half-smirk/head nod things. Raise your eyebrows, show those teeth, and chuckle while you smile. Next time you’re at the store, give a full-hearted smile to at least three complete strangers. You’ll be amazed at what this does for them and for you.

Do you love yourself? The test is simple. Do you look at others and see anything besides another beautiful human being? Do you see somebody who is more beautiful or less beautiful than you? If so, look down a little deeper and ask yourself why. It may be painful. The whys usually are. Do it anyway.

So you were talking crap about me? Hm. I missed it. I was too busy being fabulous.

When someone points out your past mistakes, look at them dead in the eyes and follow with, 'and I’d do it all again to have the life I have now.

A lot of people don't like me. I take that as evidence that I have done something beautifully different or something extraordinary.

The world is so obsessed with defining sexuality for everyone and attaching labels to it. Any time any person openly leaves the sexual norm, their sexuality becomes, more often than not, the absolute defining characteristic of that person. It becomes the first thing people think about and often the first thing they mention. Every other part of that person all but disappears.

At the border of where I will literally not survive so long as I keep living in so much fear of the harsh judgments of others, I am finally conceding the truth to you all.I am finally conceding the truth to me.I am something other than straight.

If only I could change the world around me, perhaps my truth won’t one day be the end of me.

You want to be popular? It’s easy to do. Just be a total weirdo and love yourself for it.

Make life easier for those around you, not harder.Every person you know is fighting their own great battle. Few of us ever know what those battles entail, and so often we say and do things that push others deeper and harder into the front lines of those battles. I know such has been the relentless lifelong reality for me.Love a person for the person that they are.Or dislike them for the person that they are.But don’t love or dislike them for the sole reason that they see people differently than you do. Don’t love or dislike them because they experience the world differently than you do.And please don’t eternally and wholly define them with sexual labels just because they were among those who finally found the courage to acknowledge their truth.

For twenty-one years, I have been paralyzed by the fear of what this society will do with me if they ever were to know of the thoughts that I continually push away. For more than two decades, I have made a choice to be straight. After all, it’s as easy as making a choice, isn’t it? This culture has made sure that I know that. Anyone who is anything other than straight was just someone deceived by the devil. He is unnatural. He is confused. He is mistaken. He is weak. He can control it if he desires to control it. Such a compelling and ongoing argument has been made that I have always trusted it.I believed that if I hid it long enough, and ran from it long enough, and refused to acknowledge it for long enough, I could indeed succeed at living up to their decrees. I believed that I could force myself to never be anything else.

We all have to escape from this thing called life sometimes. Maybe we use substances to do it. Maybe we use religion. Maybe we use exercise. Maybe we use anger. But we all have to do it. *How* we do it is what defines us.

The greatest spiritual leaders in history have all preached love for others as the basis for all happiness, and never did they accompany such mandates with a list of unlovable actions or deeds. They never said, love everybody except for the gays. Love everybody except for the homeless. Love everybody except for the drug users. Love everybody except for the gang members, or those covered in ink, or the spouse abusers. They didn’t tell us it was okay to love everybody with the exception of the “trailer trash,” those living in poverty, or the illegal immigrants. They didn’t tell us it was okay to love everybody except for our ex-lovers, our lovers’ ex lovers, or our ex-lovers’ lovers. The mandate was pretty damn clear, wasn’t it?Love others.Period.

If there is one thing I have come to believe over the years, it’s the notion that there really is somebody for everybody. Every single person is going to look at beauty from a different angle. Every single person is going to be attracted to certain features and characteristics that are completely different than the next person. And… there isn’t a person on earth that everybody on earth finds attractive.

The world population is nearing seven billion. John Travolta and Farrah Fawcett didn’t procreate and produce all seven thousand million of us. Audrey Hepburn and Burt Lancaster didn’t personally populate the world. Almost every child that was ever born is the byproduct of two everyday people who found each other attractive enough to go jump in the sack together. Almost every child that was ever born came about because two everyday people thought the other was attractive enough to warrant a second glance. If you want proof that attraction belongs to the individual, go sit on a bench at the mall and look at all the different couples walking by.You will believe that there literally is someone for everyone.

Those who truly want greatness must surround themselves with people even greater than they are.

Most rules are made by people with no authority who want to control and limit you from reaching your true potential. Ignore them, break their rules, and wave at them as you soar past them to greatness.

One of life’s ironies is that the more honest and vulnerable you are, the more others try to discredit you as a fraud and a fake. Shut them up by not caring.

I made a big mistake, and I didn’t use it to make my life better. I used it to be okay with a life less lived. I used it to be okay with mediocrity and the mundane. And I didn’t make myself any better because of it.And that’s not okay with me.

Who I am is not the same minute to minute or day to day. There are far too many variables for that to ever be true, for me, or for anyone.

Improvement is always on the schedule for tomorrow. Change is always taking place some time in the future. It’s human nature.

People usually live up to their expectations. The kid picked first for dodgeball feels a duty to be the best, and to perform the best, and to be better than anyone else. They feel a need to execute. And, the only way they are going to achieve that is to make their body run faster, jump higher, and move quicker.If more fat kids were chosen first for activities and sports and group/team dynamics, they would automatically start to change their lives to fit into the expectations that surround those moments. Any time a child is picked last, they know it’s because people expect the least of them, and so they never actually have a need to rise above that.

I will never have greater respect than for the man that realizes he was wrong and graciously admits it without a single excuse.

Find a way to change your attitude for the better and your life will change for the better with little effort from you.

I will one day accept death with gratitude if I meet it having lived a life that became truly my own.

Sometimes we need to look at everything going wrong in our lives and admit to ourselves, "I am the only common denominator here.

My dad encouraged me to quit my job and pursue the life that I am about to have. He got excited with me. He was the first one to tell me that I could do it. I am 30 years old, and I still find great power in my own dad telling me it’s possible.I still find great power in my own dad telling me I can do it.

My entire life, I’ve never been able to understand the concept of not being happy or excited when others were successful or had something good happen to them. It quite honestly is a concept that I cannot grasp.

The most difficult part of dating as a single parent is deciding how much risk your own child’s heart is worth.

Every person is attractive to somebody. You are. I am. Jim Bob over there is, too. Every person is probably ugly to somebody, too. You are. I am. Jim Bob over there is, too. Don’t take it personally.And, we all need to do ourselves a favor. We need to believe people when they tell us we’re beautiful, handsome, sexy, attractive, hot, or hunkalicious, especially when that someone is somebody that we think is beautiful, handsome, sexy, attractive, hot, or babealicious.Because you know what? They probably really think so. They probably aren’t lying. They probably don’t give a damn that you don’t look like Pamela Anderson.

I am not where I am because of luck. I am where I am because I took risks others weren’t willing to take. The world rewards the risk takers. It always has. It always will.

Don't be mad at me for my success. Be mad at yourself for not doing what it takes to get what I have. Then do something amazing with that emotion.

Certain girls deserve lots of flowers. You are one of them.

Death is most terrifying to those who have yet to live.

Life and love are not about what you know, but about what you know you don't know.

One of the greatest tragedies I can think of is for a person to die having never fully questioned the life he was born into.

It doesn’t matter if I’m off the beat. It doesn’t matter if I’m snapping to the rhythm. It doesn’t matter if I look like a complete goon when I dance. It is my dance. It is my moment. It is mine. And dance I will. Try and stop me. You’ll probably get kicked in the face.

Every success and failure of any relationship is two-sided. No matter how thin, the pancake always has two sides. Yes, I blew my marriages. And so did they.

I'm not saying you are jealous or insecure. I'm just saying that you obsessing over another person's accomplishments makes you look that way.

The next time you want to withhold your help, or your love, or your support for another for whatever the reason, ask yourself a simple question: do the reasons you want to withhold it reflect more on them or on you? And which reasons do you want defining you forevermore?

What would it hurt for me to give that homeless guy a couple bucks? Who the hell cares if he spends it on beer? Maybe beer is a step up for him from the harder stuff that knocked him onto the streets in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, he’s actually going to spend it on food (homeless people do eat, right?). Maybe, he really is a desperate human being who is trying to change his situation.

When one says, I won't judge you for that, what they're really saying is, I am judging you for that. Think about it. If you walk into my house and I tell you, "I won't judge you for wearing those pants," what am I really saying?

There are too many people who love me, and accept me, and never try and change me, and who don’t condemn me in the slightest, for me to waste even one moment of my life anymore worrying about what other people will think.

When I date women now, I have learned to simply not care what they think about it. I’m the same person I always have been. Faithful. Dependable. Kind. Sweet. Funny. Awesome. And if they want to discount me because of something as insignificant and irrelevant as me experiencing attraction to men as well, then they don’t get me in their lives. They don’t deserve me.

So many people hate me and love me for the exact same reasons. This is all the proof I need that my opinion about myself is the only opinion I should ever care about.

So you want to be famous? You want to inspire large groups of people? You want to be recognized and appreciated by thousands or even millions? Stop trying to do it by speaking to the masses. Do it by speaking to individuals. If what you have is truly amazing and unique and worth sharing, individuals will share it. It is always about the individual, no matter how big you get. Remember that.

Don’t judge me for escaping the stresses and cruelty of the world differently than you do.

I have learned that trying to control other people’s opinions of you is the fastest possible route to unhappiness.

Nobody on Earth can tell you how you should live your life. Nobody with any real authority anyway.

I do not see the point in dressing and acting and speaking in a way that makes you feel more comfortable and me feel less comfortable.

Think about the word mould for a moment. A mould is a device into which one crams and smashes something until it becomes the shape that they desire. Don't spend your life letting other people destroy you while they try and force you into their moulds.

Be a little less obsessed with how I live my life and a little more obsessed with how you live your own.

What haunts me far more than anything I’ve ever done are the things I haven’t done.