Well, hello and welcome to Understand Men Now. I'm Jonathan Asley of johnthansley.com, and I'm so excited to be doing this live stream for you today. Our topic, he'll be obsessed with you if you do these five things. If you do these five things, he'll be obsessed with you. Really quickly, if you're brand new to my YouTube channel, please hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you could be notified of new videos. And if any time during this video that content resonates with you, please hit that like button so I can be seen in the YouTube algorithms.  It's direct, a little tough love, and a lot of heart. And occasionally I use expletives to enhance a sentence. So if an F-bomb or two isn't your cup of tea, I suggest logging off right now. Lastly, these are my thoughts, my perceptions, my opinions, by no means do I suggest this is the truth. You have to decide the truth for yourself. I'm a bit of a contrarian, so my advice goes contrary to public opinion and traditional expectations. So once again, all I ask is you give me a little chance. All right, let's talk about those five things. If you do, a man will be obsessed with you. Now, before I get started with this, I do wanna clarify one thing, that everything I'm about to share that a woman can do, a man can do the same thing. So I'm not, or I don't wanna use the word should, but let's just say whatever a woman should do in this case, a man should be doing the same thing. So this is really a two lane street and the reason why the topic is geared towards women is women tend to be more fascinated with understanding the dynamics of relationship way more than men. I'm gonna repeat that. Women tend to be more curious, inquisitive about the dynamics of relationship more than men. And you might be asking, why is that? Well, let me just add one more caveat to that. I would venture to say that roughly nine out of 10 books that are purchased that have to do with dating, mating or relating are purchased by women. So let me just add that caveat. So I think one of the differences between men and women is women tend to wanna know why and men simply just wanna know how to meet women. That's where their stumbling block is just in that how to meet someone. I'm talking about those are the ones who actually seek advice. Those men who have insecurities, fears that don't feel comfortable walking up to a total stranger to say hello. So those men tend to purchase the books about how to meet women and women tend to purchase the books on how to understand a relationship. So that's why I just wanted to differentiate that. And again, I wanna come full circle here. What I'm about to share goes both ways. Now, here's one of the fundamental challenges with dating and relationships today is human beings aren't dating with any sense of intentionality. I'm gonna repeat that any intentionality, what I mean is any real forethought of what really is dating, what is the purpose of dating. Now, I'm here to say that the purpose of dating isn't about having a good time. It's not about finding a mate. It is simply a vetting process to get to know someone. I'm gonna repeat that's a vetting process to get to know someone. Now, before this live stream began, I posted a meme in the community section that I wanna share with everyone. It'll just take me a second to pull this up. But this really illustrates something that I've noticed today in the meme. And this is my quote. So these are my words. It says, dating is an agreement to get to know one another. These days, most people aren't dating. They're hanging out with little or no intentionality. I'm gonna repeat that. They are hanging out with little or no intentionality. I think one of the fundamental frustrations for both men and women alike is there's a lack, there's almost this ambivalence and this arrogance with a significant percentage of people. Now, I'm not saying it's 50% or more. I'm just saying it's a significant percentage of people show up ambivalent or arrogant in the process. Then there's another significant percentage of the people that are rather clueless.  And this is true for men and women alike. This is why I espouse, I espouse, I spout. What's the word I'm looking for? I scream at the top of my lungs consistently to encourage human beings to be more intentional in that process. So what does intentionality mean? Why did I say dating is an agreement to get to know one another? Well, I was watching one of my contemporary shoot a video encouraging women to date multiple people at the same time and let the cream rise to the top. I'm gonna repeat that date, multiple people let the cream rise to the top. The problem with that, and this goes into one of the reasons why he won't be obsessed with you, is it's, by the way, I don't have enough time to date three people at the same time barely. I know most humans have barely enough time to date one person at a time. Now, let me differentiate between dating and meeting, okay? I'm sure I have a capacity to meet three women in one week and I'm sure you have the capacity to meet three men in a week. So I'm not talking about the meeting phase, I'm talking about the idea of dating. And I believe and I'm encouraging human beings to be more intentional by saying, if we're going to date one another, if we're gonna invest time to get to know one another, then let's just agree that we don't need to distract ourselves by dating multiple people at the same time. That's the way I operate. Now, I'm not, by the way, that doesn't mean exclusivity, that doesn't mean commitment, that doesn't mean monogamy, it doesn't mean anything other than I'm gonna reserve my time to get to know one person at a time. The problem is, if you're spreading yourself too thin, hoping that the cream rise to the top once it ends up happening is the players, the con artists, the men who have no intention of being in a relationship tend to be the ones that rise to the top. And you've actually let a good guy go because he's frustrated that you don't make time for him. So again, dating is an intentional process, at least from my purview, not the meeting phase, but if you're going, and what I mean, again, it should be an agreement. Hey, let's just agree that we're going to spend some time getting to know one another. And there's a new term I just heard the other day, I shared it in one of my videos called hard balling. And it's so piggybacked, what I've been saying for years called radical honesty, and I'm here to encourage women to be blunt upfront with what you want, be blunt and upfront before you ever meet the guy.  That's an intentional way of dating instead of this passive way of dating. How's your day going? Did you have a good day? I hope you had a good day. Most people, all their text messages, hi, how's your day going? Hi, how's your day going? Hi, how's your day going? Okay, I'm angry and I'm upset and I want to get to those five things we talked about. So being obsessed over someone isn't a healthy thing. I'm not here to encourage being obsessed with someone. And at the same time, I do want to encourage having a healthy desire for someone. So what I'm about to share these five things that men will be obsessed with over you, it's more related to just desiring one another. These things, and by the way, there are multiple things I could share. I just picked five for today. That I think is hugely desirable by both genders. And I think it's important to lean into these things because I got to tell you, the sad reality is very few people are intentional in the process. So let me put on my trusty glasses. I'll show you my show notes, boom, boom, boom. And let's get started with the five things. He'll be obsessed with you if you do these five things. So number one is my favorite, favorite, favorite. And that is, do you sparkle or shine? Do you sparkle or shine? I want to share a story really quickly. I once had a first date about four or five years ago. And when she was, and we connected through Facebook, we had some mutual friends, we decided to meet for drinks. And when she was, and I got us a booth at the bar section of the restaurant we're at.      Ladies, and this is true, this is true both in the way you present yourself physically, but, and also how you present yourself in your dating applications, the dating apps, the dating sites what night. I encourage everyone to sparkle and shine. Nothing is more attractive to a man who spark, to a man is a woman who sparkles. That has that, just that sparkly, twingly look to her. That maybe not everyone is gifted with that. And I know many of you have complimented me. So I want to share some appreciation, especially with the photographs that I share publicly. And I learned a secret to how to sparkle. I learned a secret how to sparkle. And that is simply chuckling, chuckling. Because nothing like laughter brings out someone's energy. Their vitality, their shine, their sparkle. So it's not about dressing sexy. And by the way, most men, while they might covet a woman who dresses sexy or slutty or sleazy that they might want to covet from a sexual perspective, at the end of the day, men are more attracted to Mary Ann than they were ginger. Sure, men wanted to fuck, by the way, if you don't know the reference I'm talking about, especially if you're a Gen X or a millennial, is I'm talking about a TV show Gilligan's Island that was made back in the 60s. But there were two women on the island, ginger and Mary, well, there were more than two women. There were three women on the island, but two of them, the single ones, ginger and Mary Ann. Ginger, and I don't mean that she was the slutty one. But at the end of the, but there was Mary Ann, the wholesome one.  Always, the serious looks are always a turn off. So I'm here to encourage sparkle and shine, okay? Number, and men find that incredibly attractive. Number two, she's an authority in some area of her life. She's an authority in some area of her life. And I'm thinking of two particular women that I met over the years. One happens to be a therapist. And I was so incredibly impressed with her breath of knowledge, her ability to recognize human behavior. That happens to be my turn on. And I'm also remembering a school teacher I met who actually worked with special needs children. And she just, there was something very attractive about someone that's an authority in what they do. And when she shared her passion in her professional life, when she shared her passion in her professional life, I found that incredibly attractive. When someone is actually an authority, they're a, by the way, ladies, you feel the same way about men, right? When they're an authority in their area, that is an incredibly attractive trait and a very attractive quality. And then we all have that authority within us. And I'm here to encourage to allow that authority to come out, allow it to shine, allow it to sparkle, because for the right guy, he's going to appreciate it. Now, I know many of you are saying, well, Jonathan, most men just want to have sex and most men are narcissistic and most men are controlling. Yes, there is a significant percentage of unconscious human beings. If you're familiar with my emotional maturity relationship skills chart, I can tell you roughly about, oh, by the way, this is not a fact. This is an opinion as you can read here. Roughly about 20% of the population has clinical issues.  Now, what I mean to say is, I'm not suggesting these people can't be in relationship on the, here's the thing, if they've done little or no work to heal, it's going to be incredibly hard. And then roughly about, I say over here, about 20% of the population is healthy, emotionally healthy as good relationship skills. Folks, I am being ridiculously generous when I say that 20%, probably closer to 5%. And that's, by the way, and that's even men and women. That's the, by the way, it is not 80% men are the problem and 20% women. It's 50, 50 as far as whether they're healthy, emotionally, or clinical issues or what I say in the middle, dysfunctional. Men and women alike are absolutely dysfunctional in their relationship skills. So this is a, so coming back to my point about, you could say, well, a lot of men don't appreciate women like this. I'm talking about those emotionally mature men. I'm talking about those men whose actions match their words. They have a level of victor consciousness. They know how to actively listen to somebody and know how to fight their, they have empathy and empathy just doesn't mean I could feel your feelings. Empathy means I care about my own feelings too. And lastly, they have that capacity to be transparent in a relationship. Those are the men I'm talking about. And they'll be obsessed with you. If you choose those emotionally healthy men, hopefully you're emotionally healthy as well. Or at least, look at when I say emotionally healthy, you're not in some pit wallowing in despair. I mean, at least you're making effort to heal and improve yourself and actually lean into some level of partnership instead of being entitled or a doormat. I'm gonna repeat that, entitled or doormat, which probably is 80% of the female and male population, they're either entitled or a doormat. And so when you are with that emotionally mature man, he's gonna appreciate these five things. And number three, she's easygoing and consistent. She's easygoing and consistent. Easygoing means no drama, not actively complaining all the time. And consistent means she's not flaky. I gotta tell you something, ladies. As a single man out in the dating realm, I can't believe how flaky women are. And I think part of the problem is they're listening to such bad dating advice. And by the way, I know women have a right to be flaky.  Guys can be jerks. Guys can be absolutely unconscious themselves. And it doesn't help anyone, just because you might've been hurt in the past doesn't mean you should show up flaky, inconsistent, or a tough person to be with.  And by the way, can I tell you the date? We ended up having dinner, which I didn't wanna do. It could got progressively worse, worse, worse to the point. We almost were coming to blows with one another. I thought we were gonna fight each other. It was that bad. And I like to think I show up pretty jovial, happy, and sparkly, if you will. Anyway, coming back to easy going and consistent. Number four, spontaneous and fun. We men are attracted to women who are spontaneous that could listen. I know you're frustrated with the guy that might call on a Friday night at 10 o'clock at night saying, hey, can I come over?  But what about a guy that texts you on Friday and saying, hey, let's jump in the car and get out of town this weekend? Men are attracted to, and women are attracted to the same thing. People who are fun and spontaneous. It's an incredibly attractive trait. So I'm just encouraging you to listen. What's that saying? Something along the lines is who really, you know, on your deathbed, did you really wanna work an extra day in your life? Look at life is about balance. Life is about fun. Life is about play. You know, we, you know, there's 40, you know, we don't have to always be working and doing and working and doing. I'm here to encourage a level of spontaneity and fun.  And I encourage everyone to step into their power and start to enjoy life a bit more. And number five, this is the most important one of all, is standards and boundaries. Standards and boundaries. And, oh, I made a note to myself. Oh, by the way, clearly stated standards and boundaries. Folks, an emotionally mature man appreciates a woman who starts right from the get go. What is her standard? Meaning, what is she looking for a relationship? What does commitment look like for her? Be upfront. Remember I shared hardballing earlier? I call it radical honesty. Emotionally grown up men love women who are direct and forthright. It's only guys who are controlling, manipulated, narcissistic, emotionally unavailable. My friend calls it emotionally constipated. My Pilates instructor came up with a new word. Emotionally constipated men can't stand women who are direct, forthright and have boundaries. Men like me love it. We love, love, love it. I'm dying to meet a woman who could be more direct, a bit tenacious, a bit more forthright and expressing their standards and boundaries for themselves. Because when you're with, folks, I'm here to say, after listening to all this, I'm gonna bring my book into this. My book is called What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway? What the Heck Is Self Love Anyway? There's a link below to my book. Chapter one, speak your truth, do it with kindness. What I mean to say is be who you are, that kind, loving, compassionate person. Be who you are, be expressive because chapter nine in my book, if it's sincere and from the heart, you can't say the wrong thing to the right person. So I wanna encourage you to embrace what I'm sharing here. And my hope is you meet a guy who is also sparkly.  He's easygoing, he's spontaneous, he's fun, he's consistent. And lastly, he has his boundaries and standards as well. Because when those two people meet, look out.  Hey, that's me talking, but anyway. All right, I think you get the gist of where I'm going. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Please post a comment below. If it resonated with you, please hit that like button and share this with you. For those who know my usual format on my live streams, there's a chat box in the corner. If you have a question, this is the Q and A time. If you have a question for me, write the word question, post the question there after, or purchase a Super Sticker Super Chat. There's a little dollar sign in the box. All the monies from the Super Sticker Super Chat goes to a scholarship fund in the name of my son, Connor Asley, who passed away. That's him right there and right there. Aw. In his honor, I started a scholarship fund to defray the cost of personal development for those folks interested in personal development work. And also to donate to causes like the Hoffman process and insight that I talk about frequently. And if you're listening to the audio portion of this, you won't be able to see the chat box. Now I'm gonna look at questions in a second. I wanna share something with the audience today. As I said before, dating is an agreement to get to know one another. You know what fascinates me so much is a lot of dating advice is very, a lot of unhealthy dating advice. And I think it's because it's coming from the egoic place that most human beings operate from a place of get versus give. I'm gonna repeat that, a get versus give attitude. This is why I continually remind everyone my relationship iceberg, my relationship iceberg. And I'm showing it here. If you look above the waterline, it says attraction and chemistry. And most folks hyper focus on chemistry and romance without understanding the important aspect of a relationship and that's compatibility which is shared values, blundable lifestyles and emotional maturity. And so when most dating advice is hyper focused on attraction and not understanding about values about lifestyles and lastly, is this person grown up enough to be in a relationship with? Then the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over again expecting different results. And I'm here to offer, I share with you a variety of books in every video to encourage you to build, shore up who you are from the inside so you can show up as a good partner on the outside. And so when I do share books, listen, I know many of you go, go as Jonathan all you do is talk about books. Well folks, I'm not here to sell you on some big gigantic five, one year $25,000 program because the truth is most dating coaches are completely unqualified to heal childhood wounds and traumas and adult traumas that cause negative patterns and limiting beliefs in their life. This is why I continually recommend the Hoffman process, the Hoffman process. This is deep work to get to a really good place in your life. The reason why I recommend so many books is because, or going to workshops and things is because most dating coaches, they're totally winging it based on rhetoric and garbage from the book, the rules or other things. And I'm here to encourage personal development, self-help and spiritual work. Don't get advice, don't do that work from a dating coach, do that from someone who's truly qualified, whether it's a therapist or people who have done deep dive into human behavior and not dating rhetoric advice that's all based on attraction to try to hook someone when you get hooked by the wrong person over and over and over again, what's left is bitterness, jadedness and unhappiness. So I'm encouraging everyone, do the inner work because you'll attract a better quality person because of that. Okay, that was my rant really quickly. I saw a lot of questions come in. Again, don't forget to purchase. I saw Super Sticker come in. So I wanna thank Roller Girl. Wait, thank you so much for the $1.99 Super Sticker. Thank you. And I know you said I wish you could give me more. Thank you, I appreciate that. All right, let's go swim in. Shane writes in, question, I'm back again. So I have really big boobs going back to Ginger versus Marianne. It's bad to wear shirts that show off sometimes. I have a BF, don't want him to think badly of me. So I don't see a question there. And I do wanna, if any way I was disparaging the Ginger versus the Marianne, I wanna clarify something for everyone. What I mean to say is not the Ginger was slutty, but what I'm noticing is a significant percentage of women who lead with their looks, their body, their boobs, they're leading with that in the dating apps. They're leading with it on their dating apps.   We wanna marry the Marianne's for the most part.  But quite frankly, we dump those people once the plastic starts to fall apart anyway. So that's my judgment, my opinion anyway. But I'm here to say, I'm not disparaging someone who might have big breasts or anything like that.  By the way, this is my Nemo cup. So Shane, thank you for that question. By the way, it's not easy to drink from that mug. All right, thanks for that question. I really appreciate it. All right, let's go swim in. Pamela writes, question. If there is a difference between meeting someone and dating them, how many meetings are typically needed before there's a decision that you may wanna date? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I love this question. All right, for each person, it's to each their own kind of thing. For each person, it's different. I know that if I really like someone and we have one or two, so the first time we meet is a meeting. And if we get together a second time, that's the first date, okay?  I'm coming from wanting to get to know someone. If I've met someone for a meeting and then we went on a date and I genuinely wanna see them again, provided that we're clicking, provided that we're vibing, the provided that it seems like we share the same values, our lifestyles are blendable, and I get a sense that she's an emotional grownup. And by the way, folks, I interrogate women right from the get-go. It's my, by the way, there's a link below to schedule a coaching call with me. What I teach best is asking the questions to determine if you're compatible with one another. So I interrogate women. But Jonathan, you're never supposed to interrogate a guy, you should never interview a guy.  This is the job interview. You wanna ask as many questions to determine, does this guy share the same?  You don't, for example, you don't ask any questions, you're just having a good time, you're having a good time.  And you meet the, by the way, this is for those in the United States. You meet a person who loves AOC and Bernie Sanders and would die on the sword for them.  The other person is quadruple-boostered max and everything else. Do you think these two people will get along? So why spend time getting to know someone without knowing if you're a good fit with them? So coming back to your, so I'm all about interrogating someone. It's not sexy, but you know what? I rather homie want, by the way, an emotional grown-up woman actually loves the fact that I'm asking deeper questions than the surface questions of, how's your day going? Is your day going? Did you have a good day? I hope you had a good day. So if I wanted to see, so we had the first meeting, first date, we now have a second date. If by that third time, I'm like, I want to see this person. Usually it's because I want to explore getting to know them, which means I want to date them. So roughly it takes about three face-to-face meetings, for me anyway, to know I want to explore one person at a time. And quite frankly, if I liked someone on the first meeting and we had a second meeting, I don't want to be distracted by all the swipe. I don't want the pings of hinge popping up and bumble popping up and match popping up and millionaire match popping up. And Tinder popping up and OKCupid popping up. It's a distraction. And then I can't give my full, undivided attention to one person. So for me, that's how I operate. And I invite everyone to operate the same way. Pamela, thank you so much for that question. I really, really appreciate it. All right. Lisa Cunningham says, love at first sight is bullshit, is bull. I believe lust at first sight is very possible. By the way, if love at first sight happens, true love, I said this before and I'll say it again. Love doesn't happen in the good times, love happens in the bad times. Let me give you an example. To me, true love is, I'll sit by your side as you're going through chemotherapy and I'll wipe the vomit from your face. If any man or woman knows on a first date that they will be with that person through the tough times, and let's say that tough time happened on the second date, I think 999.999 men and women out of 1,000 will bolt because you haven't fallen in love. Let me reframe that. You might have lust at first sight, but can you be there for that person through thick and thin on first sight? I don't believe that happens. And if it does, it's the absolute exception and not the rule. So Lisa, thanks for writing that, I appreciate it. All right, we've got a super sticker I just saw, so let's open that, bear with me. And writes, I took myself out of the dating realm. I have two exciting projects in my life starting up, will take a lot of time and energy. Am I right to pull out? Well, I guess it boils down to do you want a fully committed relationship in your life?  Folks, you know, we all love the fantasy of bumping into someone at the grocery store. Look it, I have been to, I go to the grocery store three times a week. Now mind you, I'm masked up these days. I have never had a woman drop the hanky in front of me at a grocery store. And what I mean to say, I've never had a woman that I met organically in that way. And most of the time when I met him organically, it was at bars and mostly I had liquid courage that allowed me to walk up to a total stranger. So coming back to it, if you want to be in a relationship, you have to be intentional and make effort. So the question really, so if you've got work and stuff in your life, you don't need to be dating, you don't need to make the effort, you can do whatever you want. And at the same time, I'm here to say, if you want a fully committed relationship with someone at some point, you're going to have to make effort. And by the way, folks, let's be clear about something. Oh, by the way, this morning I got an email from a dear friend who it's roughly the one year anniversary of her and her boyfriend that met online, actually 13 months ago, they met online, great couple. I mean, I really love this couple and they just got engaged, I got the email announcement they got engaged. Can I tell you, within my circle of friends, and I'm blessed to have a pretty good community of friends, I've been to four weddings in the last three years, four weddings in the last three years from everybody who met through a dating site, of which there's still another percentage of people that are engaged out of this group and they all met online. Folks online dating, whether you like it or not, is the number one place to meet people. Whenever women say to me, where are the good men, where are the good men? Online dating is roughly where 50% of all new relationships for people over 45 years old. Actually probably millennials too, so it's probably for everyone, it's roughly 50% of all new relationship and that number is gonna be 60, 70 and 80% in the next coming years because meeting organically barely happens these days. People aren't going, and by the way, the looking for Mr. Goodbar at the night clubs isn't happening much anymore either. It's through online dating. So whether you like it or not, that's where people are meeting. You can hate it, you can love it, but I'm telling you that's where people are meeting. Unfortunately, people are putting out crappy representations of themselves in the dating realm. Let me give you an example. This is a photograph of one woman, I'm sorry, I'll hide her name. Look it, that's her first photograph. Here's another one, I'll hide her name. First photograph, here's another one. First photograph, I mean, and here's another, here's another one, her and a guy. That's her first photograph on the dating app. Here's another one, first photograph on the dating app. And lastly, look at this one, first photograph on the dating app. I mean, this is what, and by the way, women or ladies, let me just say this, men are just as bad.   But I'm here to say is online dating is not going away. So either learn to embrace it and how to be effective at it because it's getting progressively harder to meet people organically. I'm not suggesting it doesn't happen, it's just getting much, much harder. So anyway, thanks for your question. And my invitation for you is when you're ready, put yourself out there. And thank you for the Super Sticker, I appreciate it. Lisa says, I adore deep questions, me too. Bea says, Jonathan, I want to thank you for the book recommendations. Are you the one for me? Are you the one for me? Although dated, it just read, help me understand my choices in men. I think you're talking about the Barbara DeAngelis book. Are you the one for me? No, who's right and avoiding who's wrong? Even though you might think it's outdated, I think this is brilliant. Barbara DeAngelis is brilliant. And I highly recommend this book. So Bea, thank you so much for bringing that up. Okay. Miss Beateen, second grade says, what questions should I ask on a first date? Couple good questions. Oh, I saw the cutest little TikTok video that was, it was actually, no, it was a sponsored video of three women talking and she was talking about this guy she had a date with and she was having a really good time, really good time, really good time until she finally asked the question of a guy, what do you think about therapy? And he goes, therapy, therapy is for losers.  I mean, he sounded like Mr. Perfect, but the minute he said therapy is for losers, I'm here to act, I'm here direct. What personal development work have you done? What self-help work have you done? What spiritual work have you done to heal childhood wounds and traumas? I love that as a first question, but Jonathan, that'll scare a guy away. Look it, only jerks, assholes, controlling people get offended by that. Actually emotionally mature people go, that's an interesting question.  So my invitation is to go deeper than the surface. Now, I'm gonna share one last thing here because this is my first date request from women. I'm gonna share this with everybody. I've shared this before, I'm gonna share it again. If you haven't seen this meme I posted before, here, let me put it on this side here.  I wanna talk about Adam's death, alien sex, magic, intellect, the meaning of life, far away galaxies, music that makes you feel different, memories, the lies you've told, your flaws, your favorite scent, your childhood. What keeps you up at night? Your insecurity and fears. I like people with depth who speak with emotion from a twisted mind. I don't wanna know, what's up? My favorite meme. So coming back to your question, I think I gave you a mouthful right there. So thanks so much, Ms. Second-Grader. All right, we're gonna take one more. By the way, if you have a question of me personally, write the word personal question. If you have any personal question to ask of me, write the word personal question, post it because I'm gonna spend the last few minutes talking about that. But I'm gonna take Nicole's question before that. So again, personal question and then ask me a personal question. So Nicole writes, question, what are your top three tips for good bio on a dating app? Jonathan, you are Mr. Sparkle. Thank you. Tips. First off, tip number one, never start a sentence with I. Never start a sentence with I. I've seen so many profiles.  By the way, psychologically speaking, that comes across as narcissism, whether it was intended or not. So tip number one, never start sentence with I. You could simply start a sentence while personally speaking, that way you're not starting with an I. You could say personally speaking. So that's tip number one. Number two, put something juicy in there. Something like, instead of saying I like restaurants and traveling and walks on the beach holding hands, if you say a restaurant, then tell them your favorite restaurant is Mastros because they have this great sizzling mushroom dish that I just can't, I look forward to. You know, so make it more juicy and delicious. Make it more, not the food aspect of it, but be more detailed, be more effervescent, be more creative in saying I like restaurants, share a specific restaurant and why you like it. And last but not least, humor. I read one woman's profile that said, I'm the kind, she said these words, I'm the kind of girl that would get up at four in the morning to drive you to the airport.  And not that that's overly humorous, but I love that sense of creativity, that sense of humor to, and actually painting a picture of what it'd be like to be with them. Humor is hugely important. We have so many sticks in the mud.  Part of the reason why I curse, folks, I got complaint the other day on one of my videos that it's not professional to curse. I'm here to say I curse because it's an exclamation point of humor for me. It's an exclamation point of humor for me. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea and that's okay, but this is my humor. And I like to share this content in a more effervescent humorous sense. So again, no I share details and have some humor in it. So great question. Thank you so much, Nicole. I really appreciate that. I hope that helped. All right, let's just go, I'm gonna look for those personal, if you have a personal question of me, I'm gonna go backward here to see if we have any personal question. So, Suzanne writes, personal question, what attracts you to a woman physically? Okay, great question. So I shared this in the beginning, sparkle.  You know, just something about that smile, eyes, shiny hair, something that demonstrates vitality, that demonstrates vigor. That's one of the first things I look for is, is she smiling?    So everybody has it. Look at the secret to a great photograph here. Let's do a little practice on this. I hope I can do this. We're gonna do a reverse screen. I'm just gonna demonstrate a point. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. So folks, all I did was chuckle. All I did was chuckle.  That is sexy. But anyway, that's what I'm attracted to. So Suzanne, thanks for that question. I really appreciate it. All right, let's see if there's any personal questions of me. Oh, Nicole again. If you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life, what would that song be? Ba-da-bum-bum-bum-bum, ba-da-bum-bum-bum-bum, ba-da-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum, ba-da-bum-bum-bum-bum-bum. Sometimes I feel lost and lonely, then I find it's all been in my mind.  So it's one of my all-time favorite songs. Actually, lately I've been listening to, on a separate note, White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. I've been jonesing on that one lately, because I'm a Big Time Matrix fan. But anyway, that's the song, if I could listen to one song the rest of my life, because that's my anthem. But quite frankly, it probably also would be classical music, because there's no real words to it. It just would play over and over again. But again, that would be my all-time favorite. Thank you so much. All right, let's see if there's any other questions. Oh, okay, Casey writes. Personal question, have you met Coach Lucia from the Art of Love? She's another YouTuber coach based in LA. You know, she and I have connected, we've exchanged pleasantries a few times over the years, but no, I haven't connected with her. And I think I swiped right on her on a dating app once, but she didn't swipe back. So anyways, thanks for that question, Casey. Appreciate it. LKE's got a mushroom. Everyone knows how much I love psychedelic journey. So thank you for that. All right, personal question. Oh, here we go, Julia. Personal question, do you regret the rough time you went through after your divorce? Do you regret the rough time you went through after your divorce? So as much as I regret, well, I wanna be careful with the word regret. I went through the darkest, deepest, I mean, gut-wrenching period in my life from the time I got divorced for about five or six years, I was in the pit of despair on a lot of different areas of my life. And I was addicted to drugs and alcohol, but because of it. And I wasn't a really good parent to my boys. And I feel a sense of sad and remorseless over that.    And it took having what I call a humbling event or humbling events to actually wake me up to actually appreciating the more important things in life that isn't centered around money and getting laid. So I Googled, what does humble mean? What does humble mean? And I'm gonna read it out loud. Having or showing a modest or low estimate of one's importance. So what I mean to say is I operated from any very egoic place in my life. And it took a humbling event to help me become humble. So I have no regrets over the field of glass that I crawled through to get to where I am at today. My only sadness is I wasn't a good parent during that time. And I didn't get to appreciate. And the other thing is I really wish smartphones were invented then because I would have taken a gazillion pictures of my boys back then when there were babies and youngsters. It came out later, but I wish we had smartphones then. So, Julia, thank you so much for that question. I hope I answered that for you, I really appreciate it. All right. All right, Nicole says, question, how do you know if you met the right person? I think you know it when you ask them to marry you. That's how you know you met the right person.  That's when you know it's the right person. You don't know it on the first, second, or third date.  You may have enthusiasm for someone on a first, second, or third date, but you don't know if you're gonna go the distance with them on the first, second, or third date. So anyway, that's my answer to that. And we're gonna take one more question after I respond to my Pilates instructor who says, let's go for a jacuzzi. All right. Roller girl says, you have grown then, Jonathan. Thank you so much. All right, looks like there's no, oh yeah, this will be the last one of the day. Alicia says, question. Have you ever been in a long distance relationship and what tips do you offer to keep it going? Thanks, Jonathan, super live chat. Thank you so much. So I've been in many long distance. Let me reframe that. I haven't, well, it depends on what we define long distance. My most significant relationship, we live 30 miles away. That's a long distance in some sense. And I've had plain right away relationships that never worked out. I did a video called the seven tips for surviving a long distance relationship. I just shot that within the last 30 days. So scroll through that and find that video. And I give you the tips to how to survive a long distance relationship there. So yes, I've done them and it requires being intentional, having a plan and not spending a lot of face to face time because men don't bond through the telephone. All right. You know, this would be a great place to wrap up for today. I hope you found value in that. He'll be obsessed with you. If you do these five things really quickly, I'll share them with you. Number one, you sparkle and shine. Number two, you're an authority in some area of your life. Number three, you're easy going and consistent. Number four, you're spontaneous and fun. And lastly, you lead with your standards and boundaries and you clearly state them. Men who are emotional grown up love these kind of women. And the men who are controlling narcissistic assholes, they just want to use you anyway and you don't want to be with those guys anyway. And if you need to learn how to vet those guys, check out the link to a free discovery call with me. Oops, I'm bleeding. I cut myself. Oh, by the way, I broke one of my favorite mugs the other day that says swear. You'll feel better mug and that's how I cut myself. All right, folks, we're going to wrap up today. If you found value in this, please share this with your friends. Really share this video. Please like this video, post a comment below. Check out the links below to a discovery call to my group coaching called a midlife love mastery to my book, what the heck is self love anyway?  You can follow me on Instagram there. All right, we're going to wrap up this video as I always do.  I'm going to reach into the camera and give you a hug of love if that's okay. I'm going to ask you to turn to someone, a pet, a teddy bear pillow and give Iter them a hug of love because hugs are a great source of love. And let's face it, we could all use more love in our lives. Thanks a bunch. Bye everyone. Bye-bye. Bye. Oh, I'm going to say good night to Grace and Jennifer and Nicole and Vivian and Carolyn and Todd. Hey, man in the group. Roller girl, Natalie, Gemma, Colleen, Claire, Kelly. Everyone, big hugs to you. Have a wonderful weekend. Be well.


Hey, man, so keep your face there in 1 Kings chapter 22. We're going to be looking at that story in just a little bit. We're going to focus on the beginning of this story, where, of course, Jehoshaphat, Jehoshaphat allies himself with King Ahab and goes to war in this ill-advised sermon, this even, this ill-advised alliance between these two men. You know, a good king, King Jehoshaphat, the son of Asa, and this wicked king of the north, King Ahab. That's what we're going to talk about this evening, and this evening's sermon is something, it's a topic that is very important, and it's very important that you get right, because this topic tonight could literally make you or break you in your Christian life and your actual life. Look at Proverbs chapter 11 verse 14 on the front of your bulletin. You don't even have to turn there, just look at the front of your bulletin, where the Bible says where no council is, and people fall, but in the multitude of counselors, there is safety. So we see here that council is a good thing, meaning advice that's given to you is a good thing that Proverbs 11 verse number 14 is telling you, but it has to be the right type of council, it has to be the right type of advice. As we see in 1 Kings chapter number 22, in look at verse, just look at verse number six of this story, Jehoshaphat wisely says, let's get some prophets and see, you know, and it's like, hey, come with me, you're like my brother, my enemy is your enemy, and let's go and fight the Syrians, let's go fight these people. And Jehoshaphat wisely says, let's get some prophets and see what the word of God says if we should do this. But look at verse number six, the Bible says then in King of Israel, this is Ahab, gathered the prophets together, about 400 men and said unto them, shall I go to Ramoth, Gilead to battle, or shall I forbear? And they said, go up, for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the King. Jehoshaphat is wise, he doesn't believe this, and he says, is there anybody else we can ask? Look at verse number seven, is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides that we might inquire of him? And the King of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, there is one man, Mekai, the son of Imlah, by whom we may inquire of the Lord, but I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil. And Jehoshaphat said, let not the King say so. So basically he says that there is one prophet of what you're looking for, but he only prophesies evil towards me, meaning he only prophesies bad things about me. But the point I wanna make before we start the sermon this evening is that there was 400 people telling him the wrong thing to do. And there was only one telling him the right thing to do. And that's what I wanna talk about tonight. I wanna talk about this idea of bad advice or bad counsel in our lives. I mean, this is literally something, if you cannot figure out how to recognize good counsel from bad counsel, it could ruin your life. It's something that is that important. Now look, we're living, turn to Daniel chapter 12. We're living in an age, I mean, it's literally called the information age that we're living in right now. Ever since the late 19th or the late 20th century, we're living in this age where just information is just readily available to everybody. And you say, what information? All information. You can find out information about anything, any subject, anything. Anybody can, anybody with an internet connection, a library card, whatever. I mean, people, you don't even, people are like, what's a library today? But I mean, all information is available. Look at Daniel chapter 12 and look at verse number four. Daniel chapter 12 and verse number four.  Now, this is talking about a sign of the end times, meaning many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. Now I need knowledge here as information. I don't necessarily look at this as wisdom, okay? But I look at knowledge here as just information. Talking about information, the availability of information will be increased. I believe Daniel chapter 12 and verse number four is the strongest argument that we will see the end times in our lifetime. I don't know if that'll happen or not, but if there's a verse in the Bible that says that we might, it's this one. Because knowledge, there's never been a time where more knowledge is more available, more information is more available to more people than right now. But you ask yourself, you say, well then if so much information is available to everybody, why are we so dumb? Why are we so foolish? And I'm gonna talk a little bit about why that is, but I mean the main reason is that a lot of that information is bad. A lot of that knowledge is false. For somebody that needs to know or wants to know the truth, and the truth just eludes them, it's because they're not able to sort between the bad information and the good information. And that's super important that we understand how to do that. So tonight I wanna give you three categories of bad counsel that you can look for in your life. I'm gonna give you three biblical categories of just sources of bad counsel. So if you can recognize the bad counsel, maybe you'll be able to separate it from the good counsel and move forward in your Christian life in a proper way. The first one is this, turn to second Peter chapter two, second Peter chapter two. I'm gonna give you three sources of bad counsel. Remember, and look, you're gonna, we're gonna go through the sermon tonight and I hope you pay attention, but remember the bad counsel in your life will likely outweigh the good counsel. I'm kinda giving you an answer up front there. There was 400 prophets that, prophets that were giving bad advice, literally advice that killed the man. They were telling him to do something that would literally cost him his life. It was 400 to one. This kinda gives us an idea of how much bad counsel we will have to weed through in our lives. So I'm gonna give you three categories. And the first one is a huge one, especially where we live and when we live today. Look at second Peter chapter two, look at verse number one. Second Peter chapter two, look at verse number one. The Bible says, but there were false prophets among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you who privilege shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them and bring upon themselves swift destruction. So we're kinda talking about this case in our Sunday evening sermon series. We're talking about false prophets that teach Calvinism, false prophets that teach Lordship salvation. We talked about false prophets that teach dispensationalism. All these different false prophets are bringing in these damnable heresies, but look at what it says happens to them. It says they bring upon themselves swift destruction, meaning them doing this, spreading this falsehood is going to destroy themselves. But look at verse number two. And this is where we come in. It says, and many shall follow their pernicious ways. Now look, if the false prophet and the false teacher would just destroy themselves, fine, we wouldn't even have a sermon series about it. I mean, who cares?  But it's not that simple. Why? Because many people follow them. And what happens is the people that follow them, the people that take their counsel will bring upon themselves swift destruction as well.  This is why we're preaching about these things here, trying to warn people about the actual gospel, what the Bible says, and try to get people to warn people about this. That's the point of the sermon series. But look, look at verse number three. This is point number one in verse number three. It says, and through covetousness, they shall with feigned words make merchandise of you. That's the first thing, the first category of bad counsel you need to watch for in your life is people that want to make merchandise of you. We're not talking about, we're talking about the false prophets on Sunday evenings in our sermon series, but tonight I'm telling you a source of bad counsel in your life, a huge source of bad counsel in your life is people that wanna make merchandise of you. You say, what do you mean? What are you talking about? Look, our culture today is based on this. Our culture today is based on people trying to make merchandise of you. What does that mean? It means they're trying to make money off of you. They're trying to use you for financial gain. Turn to Proverbs chapter 21. Turn to Proverbs chapter 21. It's everywhere around you. And you're saying, I don't see it. Well, I'm glad that we're talking about it tonight because it is everywhere around you. Let me just give you some examples. This idea of just consumerism in the United States. This idea of all this advertising that is out there constantly in your face in every form of media. It's advising you. It is counseling you to do what? To spend all your money. And more. Just spend, spend, spend. And you don't have the money, so borrow the money. I was at, when we were in Sacramento, I went to a Bass Pro shop with Ashley last night. And I like going there. I like going there and looking around and I don't go there that much. I don't know who would ever actually go buy things there that they needed. But I like going there and looking at things and it's kind of an experience to go there and all of that. But we were walking through the boat section and looking at the brand new shiny boats and all this. And every single one of those boats had a pedestal in front of it with a price tag on it. And I told Ashley in preparation for this sermon, it was perfect. Because I told Ashley, there's one large number. They're very easy to see on the tag. And there was this brand new boat. And on the very large number, I just showed Ashley, she was about 15 feet away. And I said, what is the number that pops out to you on this price tag? And she said, $662. And that's how much that boat was per month. And then you see a tiny little number in the very corner that says $86,000. It's this tiny little number. You have to get right up to the tag and look right at it. And you see $86,000 for this brand new shiny boat. But what people see and what they want people to see is the $662 a month.  I can do that. You know what's ironic? It's ironic that you could not afford to buy a pair of sunglasses at Bass Pro Shop. You could literally go there and have $12 in your checking account and not be able to buy a pair of sunglasses there but they will sell you an $86,000 boat. They will let you sign that paperwork and walk out that door and get yourself $86,000 in debt. Why? Because they're making merchandise of you. You're like, but I don't have the money. Why would they let me make that kind of decision? They don't care. They will find any way possible to get you approved to buy, they'll finance it over 22 years. They'll give you, I mean, whatever it takes, whatever it takes to get that payment down to, I can only afford $620 a month. They'll make it happen. So you can sign that paper. But what are they doing? They're making merchandise of you. It's bad advice. It's bad counsel. And I was on an airplane the other day and they were offering credit cards on the airplane. They're offering credit cards to buy your wifi and your peanuts on the credit card. You could literally get yourself in debt on a 45 minute flight from Phoenix to Fresno. It's crazy.  But they will do it. Why? They're making merchandise of you. It's everywhere, folks. Student loans.  And they will say, that sounds great. Sign here. And they will let you take tens of thousands of dollars and yay hundreds of thousands of dollars out in debt and ruin your life.  You can't declare bankruptcy. You have to die. They'll garnish your wages until you're dead. It's extra wicked. But they don't care why because they're making merchandise of you. You need to recognize this, folks. Everybody's trying to sell you something. Everybody's a car salesman out there today. If you gave everybody 25 bucks a month that won $25 a month, you'd be broke. I've told this one right here and all the other kids since they were this tall that it doesn't matter how much money you make, you can spend it all. You can spend every single penny. A lot of people think that all my problems will go away if I just make a little bit more money but you can spend every penny. It doesn't matter how much you make. Are you in Proverbs 21? Look at verse number 20. It's bad advice. It's bad advice and it's people trying to make merchandise of you. Look at Proverbs 21 in verse number 20. The Bible says, here's the Bible advice on this topic. It says there's treasure to be desired and oil in the dwelling of the wise. You know what it says? In the dwelling in the house of somebody that's wise that doesn't spend all their money, you'll find value there. You'll find things that have value.  A foolish person listens to this counsel and spends every dollar and then more. A foolish person does that. Turn one chapter over to Proverbs 22 in verse number seven. Here's a universal truth.  You're like, America, freedom, I'm free. I'm America, I got a gun and I'm free. But look at Proverbs 22.7. This is a universal truth. The Bible says the rich rule with over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender.    I don't care what century you live in. This is true.   That's just the way it is. And look, it's all about people making merchandise of you. You can't follow this. Our entire culture is based on this. Our entire culture is based on constant consumption. Unfortunately, look, it's not my problem. It's not my problem that the culture of this country just based itself on people just needing to constantly consume. That's not my problem. The Bible says I shouldn't operate that way. Just because that's what everybody else does and that's the counsel that everybody's trying to lead me into doesn't mean that I should go against what the Bible says. We're talking about how to filter out bad advice.  Spending and not saving is bad, the Bible says. Things, stuff is made this way on purpose. We just talked about this the other night with the guys in the church. But there's something I brought up the other night. It's called the Great Lightbulb Conspiracy. And this is a true story. In 1910 or 1920, right around that time, there was a cartel, meaning a group. We're talking about the electrification of America. This huge new technology had come out where electricity was coming to normal everyday general population American. And light bulbs were a big deal. So the light bulb manufacturers got together and they called it a cartel because it was basically this group of manufacturers that all got together and they decided that they were going to limit the lifespan of a light bulb to 1,000 hours. You say, why in the world would they do that? I thought light bulbs just burned out because you know, it just wears out. There's a light bulb in Livermore, California that's been burning for over 100 years. Livermore, California, it's in a fire station there. They know how to make a light bulb that can burn for 100 years. But guess what? It doesn't fit this idea that we have to constantly consume. They want to sell you more light bulbs. They want to what? They want to make merchandise of you. Raise your hand if you own a printer in your house. You want a printer? Am I the only one that owns a printer? Raise your hand if you own a printer. Raise your hand if you've ever, now put your hands down. Raise your hand if you've ever been to the printer parts store. It doesn't exist. Because every error code on the printer, look, I've looked them all up. You get an error code, it's like you look it up. How can I fix this? Buy a new printer. Every code, it's like a joke. It leads you to the same place you need to replace your printer. Why? Because they're made to fail. They're made to just, you have to buy a new printer every single year. Every year and a half, whatever it is. It's people making merchandise out of you. It's, I mean, there's multiple applications of this. I can go on all day long. The military industrial complex. What do they do? They build stuff just so it can be destroyed. What do they do? They build tanks and they build bombs. They don't wanna build a tank that lasts forever. They wanna keep selling tanks and they wanna keep building bombs and they wanna keep exploiting. The problem is somebody's gotta drive those tanks and somebody's gotta get blown up by the bombs. So what are they doing? They're literally making merchandise of human lives. I mean, it's a real thing. For them to make money, they just build things for the purpose of them being destroyed. But they're destroying human lives but they don't care. The medical industrial complex. What do they do? What do they do? They make pills and they make shots. Somebody's gotta take the pills. Somebody's gotta take the shots. They're making merchandise of people. They're making merchandise of human lives. This is politicians today. You were coming up on an election season and I can already feel myself getting sick. But politicians, they run on all these promises. They run on all these promises. We're gonna do this and this and this and this and this and I don't care. Republican, Democrat, whatever it is. They run on all these promises and then they get elected and they do none of it. You say why? Look at what's happening today. Is anything that's happening with any wars or borders or whatever it is. Anything that's happening today is it what is in the best interest of any American? I mean you think people start asking what's going on. What's going on is they promise certain things and then they get elected and they start working for the people that pay the bills. They start working for the lobbyists and the special interests and the industrial complexes. That's what happens folks. Why? Because they're making merchandise of you. Building codes. I mean we were at a new hotel last night and there's an exit sign every 15 feet on the ceiling. I'm just like, this is ridiculous.  And then there's exit signs on the floor. On the wall like two inches off the floor every 15 feet. Because I suppose somebody thought of in a conference room at one time, you know, what if there's smoke in there or whatever and probably somebody had a buddy that makes exit signs. You laugh but that's exactly how it works. You say well the light bulb thing's over, right? LED light bulbs, they last 120,000 hours. That's over for the average lifespan of a light bulb being used every hour of every day for a certain period of hours, that's over 20 years. Now raise your hand if you've ever changed in LED light bulb. Do they last over 20 years? No, they don't. They last about as long as the incandescent ones did. Why? Because they're designed to fail. I actually used to work in the industry that made the chips that went on the circuit boards. Guess what? We designed them for five years. On purpose. We literally designed them for five years. We quit and designed them for 50 years. But we didn't. We designed them for five. Why? We sell more. Money. TV's, not that you should have one, used to last 30 years. Now they'll last what? Five. And they burn out. They break. They stop working. You need to save. You need to consume less. You need to not fall into this garbage advice that is everywhere in our culture today.  It's all bad advice. It's bad counsel. Turn to 1 Timothy chapter one. Turn to 1 Timothy chapter number one. Here's the second one. So the first one is this. You need to just be aware of people that are counseling you or giving you advice that are simply trying to make merchandise of you. Look, I just touched on a couple things. It's everywhere today. Just follow what the Bible says and be like, you know what, there's nothing I tell the kids all the time. If you save money and you have savings, you have options.  That's it. It's that simple. It's that simple, folks. There's everybody out there is trying to make merchandise of you. That's why you see people in such bad situations today. Cause someone just made merchandise of them. Someone just ripped them off. Someone just made them make a bunch of bad decisions so they could make money. They don't care about you, these people that are pushing this idea. The second one is counterintuitive. The second one, you're going to 1 Timothy chapter one and you're gonna look at verse number five, but the second one is counterintuitive and the second one is many times people who failed in a particular area are ones that are very happy to give you advice in that area. And the first Timothy chapter one kind of explains this and the second topic of bad advice, the second area of bad advice that you need to avoid is what I'm calling vein jangling, vein janglers. Look at verse number five of first Timothy chapter one. Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart and out of a good conscience and a faith unfaigned from which some having show swerved have turned aside onto vein jangling. You say, what is that? Verse number seven starts to explain it to us. It says, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm. That is just think of that for a second in verse number seven. Here's people that desire to teach. Think of someone that reads a manual about something. Think of somebody that reads a manual and how to operate something in their house, their blender, and they don't understand it at all. They read the manual, they don't understand it, they don't get it. But they're just like, I really want to teach this. I really want to teach people how to use this blender even though I understand nothing about it. We talked about this with dysfunctionalism last Sunday night where you have people doing this with the Bible. They don't understand the Bible. They don't understand any of it. They just really want to teach. Why? For their own vanity. Because they're vain for themselves. Look, teachers should want to teach to show other people things. I mean, a good teacher, I've said this, a good teacher will take something complicated and make somebody able to understand it in a simple way. But a good teacher does that for the other people, not for themselves. The history of dispensationalism, we talked about this last Sunday night, I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this, but it's a perfect example of this. It's just these vain janglers that were teaching this false doctrine, they didn't understand the Bible. How do I know that? Because you could never read the Bible.  It would be impossible. Because it's not there.  But they were not qualified to be talking about or teaching what they were teaching in the first place. This is the problem. Vain janglers, they're not qualified to be giving advice in the area that they're giving advice. So this is, I mean, to avoid vain jangler that you just have to ask yourself, does this person have credibility in this subject? Does this person credible in the area that they are advising me or trying to give me counsel right now? And this is why, like, failures in areas, and look, I'm not trying to beat up on anybody tonight, but you'll find people that have failed in certain areas in life just giving all kinds of advice in those areas. You'll see it again and again and again. And many times it's unsolicited advice. Many times it's just advice. They're just, like, vomiting upon you and you didn't even ask for it. But it's coming from people that have not succeeded there. It doesn't make any sense. This is the guy that's been married several times given marital advice. I mean, I don't have any times that I need to see this. He's, you know, he's been married. He's on his third marriage and he's telling people, don't get married. Marriage is bad. He's never telling people not to get married. Or he's literally telling people, how to be married? It's crazy, but it happens all the time. Talking about people that have raised disasters in their family, their family's a train wreck and they're giving people advice on how to raise kids. It happens all the time. Did you know, and somebody mentioned to me, somebody mentioned to me today, and I looked it up and it's true, but how about, how's this one? Psychology, psychology, like first of all, there may be no faker science than psychology. But psychologists are their profession with, I won't say highest, but I'll say one of the highest because I did find several corroborating studies that show this, but they have the highest rates of suicide. You say, you mean of people that are counseling? No, themselves, the psychologist. And the person that told me this said that they think that in a lot of these articles that I read today on this, they were saying, well, we need to stop, they're depressed because they're just, they have such a heavy burden. No, they're suicidal because they have problems themselves. They're secretly trying to fix themselves. But the point is, what are they doing? They're advising other people in an area they have no qualifications to advise anybody. I mean, this is Jordan Peterson. He's an ex-drug addict and he suffers from depression and every time you see him talking about anything important, he starts crying and all these things like, what are you doing advising anyone? He's not qualified in the subject. Look, I'm just saying, I'm trying to beat up on anybody this morning that's not perfect, I'm certainly not perfect, but I'm just saying, you need to consider the source for the advice, the counsel that's coming towards you. Because look, you're gonna have 400 people counseling you in a bad way. And you're probably only gonna have one that's giving you a good counseling. You need to recognize that. So you need to consider the source, no matter how good that counsel sounds, you need to consider the source. If you're new to a situation or new to a church, you know, this is why, you know, you need to stick to the pastor of the church. You need to stick to the deacon of the church. We don't have a deacon here. But why? Because there's specific qualifications for that job. And let me just show you two things that the pastor, two responsibilities that the pastor has underneath him that nobody else that will give you counsel has. Turn to 1 Timothy chapter three. Turn to 1 Timothy chapter three. There's two things that make the pastor uniquely qualified to give you better advice than other people. And this is for your safety and there's a reason that God made it this way. Look at 1 Timothy chapter three in verse number one. The first one is the pastor has qualifications that he has to meet. So the pastor has very specific qualifications. Look, if you're going to a church, you should make sure that the pastor of the church that you're going to, if you're listening to this online, meets these qualifications. Otherwise, this doesn't even apply to you. If you're going to a church and the pastor doesn't even meet these qualifications, he's not even qualified to be the pastor of that church. Look at 1 Timothy chapter three, verse number one. The first thing that the pastor has that is safe for you is qualifications. This is a true saying. If a man desired the office of a bishop, he desired the good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality, apt to teach. Meaning he has the ability to teach. Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre. That means, what does that mean? That means he's not going to make merchandise of you. You got some pastor, some pastor and there's plenty of pastors like this that are just out to just make merchandise of people. These are the false prophets that the Bible was talking about in 2 Peter chapter two. But patient, not a brawler, not covetous. And then verse number four and verse number five are super important. One that ruleeth well his own house. Having his children a subjection with all gravity, for if any man not know how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? There's the guy given family advice that's wrecked his own family right there. That is not to be the pastor because it's important that the pastor's family is in order, why? So he has credibility. So you can take counsel from that man and say, you know what, I can expect those results. Who would take counsel from somebody that is on their fourth marriage and take marital counsel from, but there's lots of people out there giving that type of counsel. Not a novice, that means he knows the Bible. Unless being lifted up with pride, he fall into condemnation of the devil. Look, it's a tall order. These qualifications for a pastor and for a deacon is the same qualifications. It's a tall order, but it's for your safety. It's for your safety so you can know that you can get good advice from that source. Now go to Hebrews chapter 13 and this is the one that really your pastor has different from even a good friend of yours. Look at Hebrews chapter 13 in verse number 17. And I've offended some people in this church by saying this statement, but I'm just gonna say it again. As the pastor of the church, I'm not really your friend.  And it's really because of Hebrews chapter 13 in verse number 17. Look at Hebrews chapter 13 in verse number 17. The Bible says, obey them that have the rule over you and submit yourselves. Look at this next statement though. It says, for they watch for your souls as they must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief or that is unprofitable for you. What the Bible here is saying is that the pastor has a responsibility to watch out for you. And he's gonna give account of how well he did that to God one day. Nobody else in the church has that. That's a super safe situation for you to be in. Look, that's a heavy burden for the pastor. You know what that means?   It means he's gonna tell you at times something that may make you dislike him or dislike what he said. But he has a responsibility to God, not to you. He has a responsibility to watch over the flock. He's the under shepherd of the flock. Guess what? You're the flock. So he has to do a good job there because he's gonna stand before the Lord Jesus Christ and explain how well he did it.   That's what the Bible is saying here. So look, the pastor is safe, is safe, especially if you're new to a church and you don't really know anybody else. You don't really know other people in the church. I'm not saying that men can't identify other men and ladies can't identify ladies. Don't get me wrong, but if you don't know people and you don't know who's who, the safest bet is the pastor because he's got responsibilities that nobody else has. And look, it's a tall order. And you know, it's a servant. It's a servant position that may not always go well for him. Turn to Psalm chapter one. So what do we see so far?  You need to be watching for people that don't have your best interests in mind. And then vange anglers are these people that they just wanna teach. They just wanna be teachers.  But the third one is this. Look at Psalm chapter one. Look at verse number one. The Bible says in Psalm 11, it says, blessed is the man that walketh not in the council of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. So the third group of people that you need to be aware of and especially not be taking counsel from is simply ungodly people. Notice here it doesn't say unsaved people. It says ungodly people. Let me tell you something. There are plenty of unsaved people that are not godly people. I don't know, plenty of unsaved people that are not walking the way they should walk and you should not be taking counsel from those people. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter six. There's plenty of ungodly, saved people out there, folks. I hate to report that to you tonight, but there is. Shouldn't be walking in that council. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter six. As a matter of fact, even saved people when they get backslidden and they get ungodly and they start getting more and more ungodly, they're gonna try to get you to be ungodly too. You need to be aware of that council. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter six. Look at verse number one. Look what Paul says here. He's kind of rebuking this church because they're suing each other. They're suing each other in outside courts, in secular courts. Look what he says in verse number one. He says, dare any of you. Who's he talking to here? He's talking to the people in this church. He's not talking to saved people that they got saved that don't go to church. He's talking about people in the church at Corinth. Says, dare any of you having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust and not before the saints. Do you not know that the saints shall judge the world and the world shall be judged by you are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? He's talking about the people in the church. He's like, why would you not use the judgment of the godly people in the church and instead go to the world for this, for this judgment. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter three, just a couple chapters back. He's saying, why in the world would you be using the wisdom of the world over the wisdom that is in the house of God? Look at 1 Corinthians chapter three in verse 18. The Bible puts it this way. 1 Corinthians three verse 18 says, let no man deceive himself.  That he may be wise. Notice the Bible there is saying, if a man thinks he's wise in the things of the world, he's like, he needs to forget everything he knows. I mean, I've said this so many times to you.  And just start going with what the Bible says. You can't read the Bible with your own culture in mind. Delete your culture and pick up the culture of the Bible. Look at verse 19. Why? For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. This is what Paul is saying. Why would you be using the wisdom of the world because in truth, they're a bunch of fools. Tell me we don't see that today. People don't even know if they're men or women today. People are teaching that if you think you're a man, you can become a man.  You've got people dressing up like animals now. Thinking that they're animals. This is like, you have to like read these things twice and be like, is that real or is this a joke? We become a gazing stock of the world. We've got, I mean, it's such a mess out there in the world, just our culture in America, in the West today that you literally have un-vandalized nations like India and China and Russia and all these different countries in Africa looking at us going, we don't wanna be like them. Looking at what we're doing over here going, whoa, that's crazy. Look, it's all foolishness. It's all foolishness. That is the wisdom that is out there today. Even in our own cities. Even in our own cities. You know these cities that we're living in that are just trashed and wrecked? You know these cities have leaders that are in charge of them? These cities have their mayors and they have city council leaders. They have people that are in charge. It's not like there's nobody in charge. It kinda seems like it. But there's actually a structure and people in charge. My wife saw a sign the other day we were in a coastal town right on the ocean and my wife saw a sign the other day and it said this, it said, don't feed the birds. It was a serious sign. You're gonna laugh before I even finish reading it but it said, this sign said, don't feed the birds. They'll become dependent on the food and they'll make a mess all over town. I took my wife and I were laughing. We just need to replace birds there with able-bodied male. Don't feed the men that are able to work. Why? Because they'll become dependent on the food and they'll make a mess all over town. Whoever wrote that sign should be the mayor of that city. Just hire them. Just hire them, because they've got it. Like that's the answer right there. But here's the point. The wisdom of this world is foolishness. These answers are easy. These are not complicated things to solve. This is why I'm not worried about AI taking over the world. Like the AI thing, it's gonna go away. It's a fad and everyone's worried about it because AI, artificial intelligence is just a computer program designed by a human being that is supposed to have intelligence and I'm not seeing a lot of intelligence out there today. So I'm not too worried about the machines taking over. But look, in 1 Corinthians chapter six he is talking about just throwing off all this foolishness that is outside and relying on the counsel, the judgment of the people in the church.     This foolishness of the world, they'll try to get to your kids in the craziest ways. But it's all foolishness. We need to make sure that we keep those 400 foolish prophets away from our families. Stick to godly people. Stick to people that are walking the walk. Turn to 2 Samuel chapter 13.  And Amnon has this wicked desire towards his sister Tamar. And then he has, you know, there was no indication he was gonna do anything about it, but then he has this wicked friend Jonadab that comes up to him, he's like, what's going on? What's the problem? All this, and then Jonadab gives him this, this wicked plan to assault his sister and he goes and he does it. So one thing that you need to understand about the foolishness of the world and the counsel of the world is that there's a lot of bad people out there that will give you counsel. There's a lot of bad people out there that want you to be bad with them. They want you to go, because look, misery loves company. Criminals love company. Drugs loves company. Drinking loves company. Sin never wants to be alone. There's a lot of Jonadabs out there. How many people do you know that? Like, oh, he just fell into the wrong crowd. What does that mean? He took bad counsel. Bad people gave him bad counsel and just like Amnon, he listened. But you know what? If you take bad counsel from bad people, you become a bad person. That is the, I mean, I have seen this so many times, especially with young people, where they're at a crossroads and somebody giving them good counsel and they have somebody giving them bad counsel and they choose the bad counsel and guess what? They become a bad person. They lose everything. They literally destroy themselves. Why? Because these bad people, they don't have their friends' interest in mind. They just want people to be bad and do bad things with them. They have theirs. They have their interests in mind. Bad people will make you bad. So look, folks, knowing who to take counsel from and who not to, knowing what counsel to take and what counsel not to take will have a major impact on your life. You need to check people's motives. When people are giving you counsel, you need to check people's motives. Is this person trying to make merchandise of me? Is this person trying to rip me off? Does this person gain from this advice that they're giving me? What does this person have to gain? You know, is he trying to get me an appearance gain that he's in? That right there will just weed out a lot of counsel. You need to check the source. You need to check the source. Do I want, here's a really easy question to ask yourself. Somebody that's trying to give you counsel, especially unsolicited advice, meaning advice that you didn't ask for, do I want the results that this person has? They're giving you a business advice. They're giving you financial advice and they're broke. They're telling you how to do things in your life and you don't want the results that they have. You need to just run away from that counsel. Do I want those results? One of the things we went out fishing in this last couple of days, one of my favorite things to do, I think even more than fishing at this point. As I like to go out in the dark, very early in the morning at like five o'clock, five thirty in the morning, when all the, I mean, you're going out in the ocean in the dark, that's some, as the Bible would say, that's some stones right there. I like to go out and talk, especially to the older guys. They're heading out in the dark, they're like five o'clock in the morning. I just like to go down there with a cup of coffee and just banter back and forth and just, hey, what are you guys fishing for? What are you using? And then they just kind of start talking to you and showing you stuff and all these different things. I just love it. But you know what I also do? I also like talking to the same people as they come back in the afternoon. Why? Because you get to see the results. You get to figure out, like you got some guys that went out at five o'clock in the morning and they went 15 miles an hour out and they come back with some bluefin tuna. Like, okay, I'm gonna listen to that advice. I'm gonna listen to what those people were saying. Why? Because they're credible, I want those results. Check the source. Is all I'm trying to tell you this evening. But here's the coup de gras right here. Turn to 2 Timothy chapter three. Here's your ultimate protection on bad counsel. Turn to 2 Timothy chapter three. The ultimate protection for you for bad counsel is this. You need to know the Bible. You need to understand what the Bible says. You see, it's kind of a trap. It's kind of a trap because what happens is if you don't know the Bible, you're gonna need a lot of counsel. But if you don't know the Bible, you're not gonna recognize bad counsel.  But if you know the Bible and you treat the Bible as your highest power, which it is. So no matter, look, Romans 13 says, you know, obey the higher powers. Meaning, no matter what, the word of God is the highest power. And if you know what it says, it doesn't matter what counsel's coming your way. If you compare it to the word of God it's like, ah, that doesn't jive. You need to go with the higher power. You need to go with the Bible. Look at 1 Timothy 3 in verse number 16. The Bible says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable. Look at that. For doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. The Bible is ultimately your protection. Turn back to 1 Kings chapter 22, turn back to 1 Kings chapter 22. I wanna show you one more thing. The problem is, is people don't recognize bad counsel as bad counsel because they don't know the Bible. They're in this cycle. They're in this cycle. Look at 1 Kings chapter 22. 1 Kings chapter 22. Here's something that people do, though. Giving a comparison on what Ahab did here with 1 Kings chapter 22. Look at verse number six. It says, then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together about 400 men and said unto them, shall I go against Ramoth Gilead to battle or shall I forbear, meaning shall I not go? And they said, go up, for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king. What people will do is they will literally not go to people that they know will give good counsel because they don't want that answer. And this is what King Ahab was doing.  Can we get somebody that's real here? But ultimately King Ahab, he just wanted to go. And that's what people will do.  So they'll go to the 400 prophets and they'll literally solicit bad advice which is what Ahab did here. And then the one prophet gets up and what does he have? What does McKay I have? He has that responsibility. He's like, I have to tell you what the Lord said. And what happens to him? He gets punched in the face for it. He gets thrown in prison for it. They feed him with the bread of affliction for it. He doesn't have to suffer, but he told them. But he told them the truth. So don't be that guy. If you find yourself in the position where you're like, I don't wanna ask this godly person or I don't wanna ask the pastor because of this, you're already in a very bad place. You're already in a place where you're in a lot of trouble. If you're looking for people to just validate your bad counsel that you're giving yourself, that's not a good place that you need to be. So look folks, to wrap it up here. You need to be getting counsel from godly people. You know, your pastor's there to protect you. You know, it's not for my own gain, trust me. Like plenty of people have been mad at me for what I've told them, but I wouldn't do it different. Plenty of people and people that aren't here anymore, I've told them to their face that they were doing the wrong thing. And so be it. I'll tell them again. I don't take that back because, you know, the Bible is clear on what my responsibility is. So you gotta watch out for qualified people. You gotta watch for godly people. These are where the good advice is gonna come from. You gotta watch for people that are gonna make merchandise. So you're like, man, you're really narrowing down. You're really narrowing down the field here pastor. This is what I'm trying to get you to understand. It's 400 to one. It's 400 to one, the people that wanna give you counsel. It's 400 to one. It's 0.25% of the people that wanna give you counsel are gonna give you good counsel. And that's what you need to see. The people that give you counsel in your life should be a short list. Let me tell you something. A lot of people give me counsel. Multiple times a week, I will get emails. I will have first time visitors come here and tell me what I need to do at this church. No joke. It happens all the time. People send me emails all the time. People call me. People send me letters. I just got a letter yesterday on how we need to change our soul wedding plan. It happens all the time, but the people that I take counsel from, I can count on one hand. And that's how you need to be. You need to, you know, you need to listen for the voice of the shepherd as it says in John chapter five, as Jesus says. And if you know the voice of the shepherd, it helps. And then you'll be able to filter out all this bad counsel that's coming your way. Because look, there's people out there. It's like it's depressing almost, right?  I mean, who do we talk about about two months ago? Andrew Tate. What's he doing? You know what he's doing? He's making merchandise of people. He's found a niche. He's got a bunch of young men that things sound good to them.  This is a man who's ruled by his wife right here.  You're ruled by your own emotions. That's not being a man. A man is supposed to be ruled by the word of God. He's supposed to lead his family by the word of God. This Andrew Tate, he's out there and he says a couple of things and people follow him. And it's a bunch of people, they're never gonna be him because the reason he got rich is by making merchandise of them. And if you have these sins in your life, like I wanna be rich quick, I wanna get rich without working. Someone's gonna come and they're gonna make merchandise for you. Someone's gonna come and they're gonna put you in some scheme.  They got ways to find you and snag you. So if you're in some kind of sin and you follow that sin, somebody's gonna get you.  So you gotta follow what the Bible says about counsel because following the wrong counsel will literally ruin your life. Maybe even before you get started, let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.


The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has emphasised that, in light of disruption in the technology world, it is keen on balancing healthy competition with the entry of disruptive technologies to ensure sustainable telecoms industry growth and development in Nigeria. The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Dambata, stated this during a presentation to the Commission by a delegation from SpaceX, an American aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company. SpaceX is in the process of launching a low-Earth orbiting constellation of satellites to provide low-latency high bandwidths and internet to all corners of the globe and has identified Nigeria as a critical market. A statement signed by the Director of Public Affairs, NCC Dr Ikechuku Hadindi explains that SpaceX had been in discussion with NCC virtually over the past several months to begin the process of pursuing all necessary licenses to bring Starlink, its satellite-based broadband services to Nigeria. Hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.


Hey there, Chad Bond, you're here for High University Libraries. I have several hundred business students who are researching the fitness center industry in the United States. What they'll want to do is make sure they collect demographic information for their consumers with data that looks just like this. In order to get that data, you need to use a database called MediaMark Reporter, and this video is going to show you how to do it. What you'll learn in this video can also be applied to most other consumer markets in the U.S. as well, so it should be transferable. Your skills should apply with further research down the road, so here you go. So when you first get to MediaMark, what you want to do if you've never done this before is register for free and create an account with them with your Ohio email address, okay? I've already done so, so I've already got that confirmation email, I'm already signed up so I'm going to log in here. Do not try to log in with your college or Ohio University ID here before creating an account here. Like I'm just using my Ohio email address, and this really isn't even my Ohio password, it's just a password I made to go along with this database. Okay, so I'm going to log in here, and it's going to take me to a page that looks like this. Ignore everything on the page and go directly to MediaMark Reporter right here in the top right-hand corner. That will take you to a page where you agree you're using this for academic purposes only, so we will accept the terms and conditions here. And it takes us to this page, which admittedly looks a little bit goofy. So what you want to do to get started, there's no search box here until you click on the product and after you do that, that's when your search box actually shows up, okay? Now you could go in here and search for a topic, you could go here and search for late yoga or running or jogging or weightlifting or whatever, but I happen to know that the physical fitness activities are actually in a leisure and sports section, so I'm just going to click there and go straight there to browse. So this will take us to everything that has to do with leisure and sports that MediaMark has information on. So if we scroll down, we can see all kinds of stuff on movies. Here we go, physical fitness, right? So do you belong to a gym, right? So this will give us demographic information for people who actually belong to ballet total fitness, okay? I'm going to go down and say if you exercise at a club in the last 12 months, two plus times a week, right? So this gives you information here and the way you read this is this number here is going to stay the same whether you're looking at who goes to a club to work out versus who eats salad dressing, it's going to be the same number, okay? So what we're really looking at here is a projected number who have done this activity, okay? So the way you read this is, for example, let's look at men. This basically says of those who, of all the men in the US, 112 million of them, 13 million of them are projected to have exercised two plus times a week at a gym or at a club in the last 12 months, which is 12.3% of the total male population, okay? And this is actually 49.5% of the total number who have worked out at a gym, whereas women make up 50.5% of the people who are projected to have worked out two plus times a week in the last 12 months. So as you scroll down, you see there's a lot more demographic information for these people and you can actually download this to Excel just by clicking on add to your reports here, okay? If we scroll down some more, we see there might be some other activities. So, for example, sports, how often engaged in. So here we have people who do aerobics, right? If we scroll down some more, we would see people who do bicycling, boating. Let's see, fishing, football, frisbee, golf, hiking, hunting, here's jogging, right? So you kind of see we get different information that way. Let's go, there's martial arts, there's Pilates. So lots of stuff in here for your, and as you click on that, your demographic information is going to change here. Okay, so here we have, do we have yoga? Let's see if we do. Way down at the bottom, we'll probably be there. Yeah, yoga. Once a month, right? So what you can do is you can actually click add your reports and close that. And then if you want to, you can actually go in and say, let's go back up and do our Pilates once a week, add to my reports. And let's go back up and do martial arts, add to your reports. Okay, and let's go and do, it's probably good enough to start with there. So what you can do is go to your view report list. And I've actually already done a couple things before. Let's see, so we have sports, jogging. I've got Nike Athletics shoes. I'm going to remove that. And we will update there.  So it's a really cool way to really understand the overall market. So basically what this will look like, I'll go and create this to kind of give you an idea of what it looks like here. So once you've created your spreadsheet out of that, basically what it looks like is basically you have all your demographic variables over in the left hand side. And as you scroll across, you can see that's where it gives you your various information there. Okay, so a good way to kind of seeing how things might compare. Okay, so you might be able to say, well, do people who jog a lot, do they have the same demographic characteristics as those who maybe do yoga quite a bit or that sort of thing. So you might be able to see some commonalities there across the data points by comparing them that way. Now this data is for national trends. So if you wanted to adapt this down to the local level, what you want to do is use this kind of information and understand your local market. How many people in your local market, for example, Indianapolis, Indiana as an example, are in the age category of 25 to 34, or in the age category of 55 to 64, or what's their household income level in that market. Okay, so you can say, let's take these national trends and apply it to the local level by understanding our local market demographics. And what you could do is you could use actually a census website to get that kind of information. And I would suggest just googling census quick facts. Unfortunately, due to the current government shutdown, the census website is not working, but you can get census information in databases such as SimplyMap and things like that. But this would be that once it's back up and running, assuming the government comes comes together with a budget pretty soon, this is a great place to get quick demographic information for your local market. For example, household income, race, age, educational level, things like that. Hopefully this video helped you better understand how to use the database and how to better understand the fitness center market. Should you need more help, look for the contact link on the business blog. I'll be glad to help anyway. I can't take care and have a great day.