329 | Slaying Your Dragons, Setting the Standard, and Carrying Weight Like a Truck (Danny Silk: Part 1)
Episode Description
In this eye-opening episode, Danny Silk discusses the seven key traits that make up the creed of manhood. You’ll be inspired to rise above cultural influences and become a dragon slayer instead of a destroyer. Ultimately, you’ll discover how to use your strength to protect, display Christ, and lead boldly.
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Danny Silk is a renowned speaker and prolific author who draws on decades of experience as a counselor, social worker, husband, parent, grandparent, and more. He is the President and Co-Founder of Loving on Purpose, a ministry to families and communities worldwide.
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· You can either slay your dragons or become a destroyer.
· It is your job to set the standard of love in your home, marriage, and community.
· Men need to carry responsibilities to activate the strength they were designed with.
· Fools want to be the master of their own universe, but wise men love correction and feedback.
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm gonna give it my all.
Danny Silk: [00:00:39] The standard of love in the home belongs to the man. It is my job to set the standard, Christ-like, in my home, in my marriage, with my children, in my community, in my leadership role, wherever I am. It's my job to set the standard of love. It's not my wife's job. It's not, you know, my mom's job. It's nobody else's job. It's my job.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:01:04] Welcome back to DadAwesome. My name is Jeff Zaugg and today we have Danny Silk joining for episode 329. And this is the first half, the conversation I had back a couple months ago with Danny, I just knew this, this needs to be two episodes. There's just too, too many practical, actionable, like, too many steps. It's too much for any dad, for myself, or any of you guys to take in the full kind of 48 minutes. So it's got about two 24 minute episodes coming at you guys. He is dropping a book here in 2 or 3 weeks. His new book, we'll talk all about it here. But this is one of those like, I was so thankful he had time to go round two. So thankful to share this resource with you guys. They've got a whole new podcast series and lots and lots of just help for all of us at DadAwesome! I want to remind you, Mother's Day is a few days away. Use the code momawesome on the DadAwesome Store, if you want to get it on, I can't remember if it's 15% off of 20% off, but we just did a special sale for Mother's Day so you can pick up some DadAwesome gear. Also, we reopened the Dad Awesome Accelerators. We've had a phenomenal first six weeks. We launched the first ever DadAwesome Accelerator group. Just ten dads, guys, applied for this. We prayerfully put together this group, and we've been journeying every single week with kind of high bar of like, you got to be all in to be in, but man, the impact has been huge. You guys will hear more about this later, but we've reopened for this summer cohort, so we're going to do another round of DadAwesome Accelerator starting in July, and all the information on that can be found, if you just send a quick email to, awesome@dadawesome.org, send that email and we'll get you all the information along with the link to apply and praying for the next group already and excited for the next group because man, it was fun. It was so impactful the first round. Okay, let's jump right in. This is the first half of my conversation with Danny Silk. Danny a year ago, at the end of our conversation, I was like, any last thing you wanted to share with DadAwesome? And and you, like, dropped to a three minute like, oh, yeah, there is this. And you, you laid out this framework for the way of the Dragon Slayer, and I couldn't like it was wild when you just in the last three minutes and I said, when it's, when the time is right, when you're going to drop this book, will you please come, go round two on DadAwesome? Because there's so much that you dropped in three minutes, like you got to come back. So welcome, welcome back to DadAwesome.
Danny Silk: [00:03:38] Thanks for having me, man. I love it .
Jeff Zaugg: [00:03:41] For sure. Now any time, talk about a memorable title. When you're talking about slaying dragons, there usually is a backstory though, or like something that cause, cause did you go with such a such a visual, such a memorable, such a like, aggressive, like, like terminology. Where to dragon slaying, like that idea, why did that leap into this concept?
Danny Silk: [00:04:01] That's a great question. I don't really recall how it happened other than, it probably came up in conversation, you know, that that somebody was just, we got to slay this dragon, you know, got to slay everyday. We got to, you know, I think the visual of a man at war with, with his enemy is, you know, kind of motivating and, kind of classic captures, really what it is that men are doing all day because we're not, you know, we're either, we're either slaying the dragon or we're riding the dragon, you know. And, that whatever film that was with the dragons ripping through the city, maybe, or a hobbit or something, you know, just ripping through the town and to torch it. That's what happens when a guy is not slaying his dragons. He ends up a destroyer in his own house and his own community, you know.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:05:01] So that would be the passivity side of, like, you're going to cause harm if you're not in battle.
Danny Silk: [00:05:05] Yeah. Yeah. It's the self-preservation side. You know, the guy that is, he's either doing it passively or he's doing it aggressively, you know. But, but it's really all about him. And he's really not thinking generationally. He's really not thinking Kingdom.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:05:24] So this takes us to, you know, very different, word picture, but a childhood memory of swimming pool. And you shared a story in the book about this idea of the kids get the current going round and round. And I very much have done this with my daughters, more in a hot tub, because I got little girls, right. It's a hot tub. Get that hot tub spinning. And, and then and then someone hops in and off they go. Would you share a little more, kind of color this in as far as how culture, how we're going to go with the flow if we don't actually fight against. What do you kind of bring that to life?
Danny Silk: [00:05:57] Yeah. Well, it very much is that, there are people that are committed to going a certain direction. And we're experiencing it right now in, in living color that, we, we have, a media machine that is stirring the, the momentum of culture. And as our kids are dropping in, you know, or people are dropping in, there's a there's already a current. You have to have something inside of you that both weights you down to the bottom so you can get some traction and strong enough to turn and face that bad boy. And but what happens is, once you get enough people opposing and moving in synergy, in the opposite direction, you actually can bring that strong current to a stop and then reverse the current. And so very much is, you know, again, it's the Kingdom. It's an upside down world. And that's what I really want to call our generation to, is let's be the generation that faced this ugly lie, chase it down, band together and create a different tomorrow for our boys.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:07:20] And led by men, which is, yeah, which is kind of rare right now as I've traveled. Yeah, yeah, I've traveled the country. I've been looking for the bright spots where the men who are stepping in, come with their whole hearts and sparking change. And now there are seven kind of areas that we'll, we'll chat about. We'll see how many then we get to today. And then there's that, the creed that, that has kind of seven key components to it as well. But then there's the end, like the big dream, which is this compounded men actually in deep real brotherhood on mission in pulling more guys in. So I hope, I was hoping maybe you could actually describe the current, the opposite current, of where where you hope at the end of reading your book and at the end of man saying, I'm in for this mission, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to sit on the sidelines. I'm not going to ride the dragon and cause harm or with my passivity, I'm going to be a dragon slayer. What's the end dream that you you hope for and you pray for?
Danny Silk: [00:08:17] A massive movement of men who have decided in their life, their character and their their legacy that they are going to put Christ on display in the way they lead their family. The way they live their lives, and how they want to be remembered. You know, that my dad, my uncle, my grandfather was the most Godly man that I knew. Like I massive, hundreds of millions of men that are leaving that legacy for others to follow.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:01] And I mean, that jumps, in my heart right to this, right to the creed. This idea of this is the Dragon Slayer Creed. If this is what I was known for, if this is what, you know, my four little daughters, their husbands, someday, if they're known for these things, I mean, yes, it's going to actually it will go into all these other spheres that the book talks about these different seven sections. But is it okay if we riff a little bit on the Creed for a few moments? Is that right?
Danny Silk: [00:09:26] Absolutely.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:27] Do you want me to tee them up, or do you want to just walk it through? What's better for you?
Danny Silk: [00:09:31] Alright, you tee them up.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:32] Yeah. Great. So men always protect, so they never exploit the weak. Talk a little bit about, about that first one.
Danny Silk: [00:09:40] Just being such a huge part of masculinity is that, you know, we are built to protect. I always, I use the analogy of, you know, there's, there's noise in the living room in the middle of the night, and the husband wakes the wife up and says, go see what it is. Go find out what's out therem honey. Like, yeah, we laugh at that because it's such a preposterous suggestion, that a man, a man would stay in bed and send the woman out to face danger. Like, not on your wildest day. So this is built into my role. It's built into my my, my design, is to be the one to run towards the shooter. To be the one to run towards danger, to be the one everybody hides behind. That, you got to get through me to get to that. So men always protect, meaning they are also, stronger, more vicious, more violent, more dangerous, so that had never be pointed in the wrong direction.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:10:48] Harm, right. Never.
Danny Silk: [00:10:50] Yeah. So the job is to protect the weak, never to use your strength for exploitation.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:10:57] I've been saying this phrase just taking, you know, straight from scripture, for Jeff so loved his girls or his family or his wife or Jeff so loved that he gave, right. And same, that's a protector would live that way, right? That's it.
Danny Silk: [00:11:10] Absolutely.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:11:11] Yeah. So the next one, men always set the standard of love. Would you kind of expound on the second one?
Danny Silk: [00:11:19] Let's see, it's Ephesians 5, I believe it is where Paul says, husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church, which means that the standard of love in the home belongs to the man. It is my job to set the standard, Christ-like, in my home, in my marriage, with my children, in my community, in my leadership role, wherever I am. It's my job to set the standard of love. It's not my wife's job. It's not, you know, my mom's job's nobody else's job. It's my job. That, conversely, is I never hate my enemy. Which means, I've been instructed to love so completely that it includes someone who would be trying to harm me. Even that that, and that's what Jesus puts on display. So I know we love to have a bad guy in our lives, but that's how we create triangulation and irresponsibility all over our life is if we find a bad guy. We now have a victim, and victims are not responsible for anything they do, say or think or live. So no bad guys. No capes, no bad guys. That's right.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:12:41] That takes it the next step for sure. With that in the standard for love to add that second, the second half to it. But the third one is men always provide resources strength and identity.
Danny Silk: [00:12:52] Yeah. And they never consume or compromise the quality of life for others, you know. So, we're providers. You know, as as much as a as a protector, I'm a provider. And so I bring nourishment, I bring benefit, I bring safety, I bring thriving to those around me. And that I add to who you are as a result of your relationship with me. And I am never going to, in that position and posture, consume from who you are, what you have. You know, so many guys end up with, I married this beautiful lady, ten years with me, and she just wore out and tore up and what happened to you? Like you happened to me. That's what happened to me. You. And that is the opposite of being a provider. That's a consumer. And that's a fail.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:13:52] Yes. Oh, man, there's so much more I could ask as follow up questions on these. I just wanted to paint kind of the Creeds. We'll keep it, we'll keep going forward. It's hard for me to keep going forward here, Danny. So, so the next one is men always control themselves from the inside out. They they never control other people. And this was a lot of our last conversation we had a year ago was around, hey, why don't you control your freaking self? Like, that's self control. We got to live that way, right. So we'll save the long riff on that for the last, last year's episode. But anything you'd want to add to that one?
Danny Silk: [00:14:23] It's just, it's just absolutely essential that men understand that your primary job and really the only job that you have is control yourself. Control freaks, control your freaking self. You never control other people. And when we turn love into control, we misrepresent our Father. You know, God is Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom, not control. If anybody is going to be a control freak, it could be God and he's a freedom freak.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:14:58] That's amazing. What a gift. What a gift. The, okay, we'll go to the last three, here. So, men take full responsibility. They never blame others or neglect their responsibilities.
Danny Silk: [00:15:09] Yeah. It's just, it's, it's, I I heard somebody describe a man like a truck. You know, he just rides smoother when he's got a load, you know. You know, and men need to carry responsibility to feel that the strength that they were designed with. And when we, the the world today is trying so hard to get rid of responsibility for a man. And it's, and it's just bringing out the worst in men because they just ride too rough. They need a load, you know. You got to put a load in a man to get that, get that design activated in him. And we are never blaming our lives. We're not victims of anybody. We are, sure we get victimized here and there, but we're never victims, you know. And so once you get victimized and you realize, oh my gosh, that should not have happened, the next question out of your mouth is, what am I going to do? I have a choice, I have, I have a good choice and I have a stupid choice. What am I going to do?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:16:15] Yeah, well, and this next one, it comes, I mean, we're recording, we're not dropping this episode today, but we're recording on Easter week. So I mean, what a what a week to talk about this. Men sacrifice for the benefit of others. They never sacrifice others for their own benefit. This giving posture. Yeah, what would you add there?
Danny Silk: [00:16:35] Yeah. Well, it, it kind of goes back to that, that protector thing. But it, but it's kind of blended, right. It's the, the protector and the provider they're, they're blended meaning, I will use every bit of benefit that I have to strengthen, nourish, develop, add to you and who you are. And I won't, I won't think primarily of myself. I will think primarily of you in my decisions, in my character. And, and and I am more than willing to take the bullet. You know, I will take the sacrifice. I will take it on the face. I will, you know I will gladly. There's a scene in Cinderella Man, and, you know, James Braddock is, he's living in that shack, and he he's he's working all day and he's training all day, and he's got another fight coming up, and his wife is frying some baloney in the pan. And the little, and the little girl wakes up and he says to her, he says, oh, honey, I had a dream last night that I had this great big steak and I ate it and I'm so full, here. And he gives her that little piece of baloney and his wife's like, honey, he's like I'm full. You know I'm good. I got to go to work. Like, there you go, I will sacrifice. That's my, that's why I'm here. That's who I am. I will give it all and add everything I can to you.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:18:14] Wow. Wow. The last part of the creed and this, I mean, this is, this does wrap in your heart for this whole project is men live submitted to other men. They never live as the masters of their own universe.
Danny Silk: [00:18:31] Yeah. So, they put you in solitary confinement for a reason to torture you, right. And, and the torture is you now have no other feedback. You have no way to measure reality. Now you have become the center of the universe. You are the determiner of what is real and what is fake. And that is torture. And men choose that. Proverbs 18:1 says, A man who isolates himself, seeks his own desires, and rages against wise counsel and judgment. And so men, wise men, actually love feedback. They love correction. They love to learn. They love to grow. They love the challenge. Iron sharpening iron, they love it. Fools want to be the master of their own universe and pretend that they're God.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:19:30] Yeah. I think it's important, Danny, to just like, pause for our listeners for a moment and me to clarify that this is not, this book and this content that we're talking about today, these topics, you didn't create this for a seminar. You didn't create this for exporting. You actually have lived out 4 or 5 years for just 12 guys. Like you've, this this is, this is very counter what a lot of let's bigger, farther reaching, let's get the message out to the masses. You've lived it first and have seen it go to, yeah, these 12 who are leading other 12 really. Like like you lived it for your own, though, before any of this started to multiply. And, can you help with the backstory of the advice? It's Paul Young talking about Billy Graham, talking to you, it is like a three way, like stepping stone to like, the advice around 12. Can you kind of share that story?
Danny Silk: [00:20:23] Yeah, I got a buddy, Bob Hasson, who knew Paul Young somehow, I don't remember how that connection was made. And, he, you know, he set us up where the three of us two spent a day in Portland together. And, but I don't remember what we did other than that, he said something to me that just banged around in my head. At the time, I was traveling 220 days a year, doing conferences and flying around the world, and I was out of my mind. I don't know what I was thinking. And, he had a friend who had just come back from meeting with Billy Graham, who was in his early 90s, obviously retired. And he said to him, Billy, if you had all to do over again, would you do anything different? And he said, yeah. Yeah, I would, I would get 12 guys and I'd pour my life into them. And there's other conversations. And, Franklin Graham is kind of, I don't know if my dad would say that. So, so I'm shrinking the story down, but, you know, it's, it's, I would have got 12 men and poured my life into them. And that sparked a conviction in me to where I am just running my wheels off, trying to get to everybody I possibly can, a quarter inch deep. Instead of doing what Jesus did, which is just change, you know, change the lives of the men around you and then release them to go do the same thing. And so my 12 guys, you know, at the time of gathering, I think I had one guy had written a book and I, I don't know any of them have done a conference. You know, these are not 12 superstar mega-church leaders, you know. These are our regular guys. These are friends of mine that I've went hunting with. I've gone, you know, I've been in trouble with. I've traveled with. I've done life with for decades. Some of them, you know, are in the 25 years together, and you're like, okay, this is going to last a while, you know. And so let's keep it alive. Let's keep it active. And let's, let me, let me introduce you to these other amazing humans. They are only going to nourish you the more you get to know them. So we're four years deep. We have monthly zoom calls. I'm the, I'm the conduit. I'm the one who takes responsibility to blow the trumpet every month. Hey, guys, see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. And I have yet, four years later, I have yet to get all 12 of them on on a single call, I have yet. Nonetheless, I keep showing up. I keep showing up, I keep showing up.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:23:31] And we have to stop there for a second because, you know, Danny, from the outside in, what you've had a chance to lead, and now your family is leading into the different spheres, from business to ministry to individuals to marriages that you've had a chance to influence. I love hearing that, like, as a leader with 12, it's not, it doesn't look perfect. It's not a perfectly wrapped like everyone's not there every time. And this is a lot of history, but you've decided to be the kind of man who sticks with it and says, I'm going to own the championing this because I know it'll matter for the long haul. It matters. And that's something that I just continue to ask men, hey, when was the last time you took ownership, took the lead, took initiative to pull guys together around something that matters. And it can be around your book, you know, around slaying these dragons and around, like, it could totally be this. But it could be around the book of Proverbs. It could be around whatever. When was the last time you pulled some guys together and to grow because you knew it mattered? Almost always the response is, oh, I, I, I haven't. And it's wild to me. So I just, I love here on a micro level that like you just said, I'm going to just do the hard work and I'm going to be the guy that reminds and rings the bell and says, come on, guys, let's go. We're back this month and then plans the trip, plans the next trip. And that is a part of it as you get together in person. Why, why do you think, I mean, why are so few men taking initiative, taking ownership, being the one to to to pull the brothers together?
Danny Silk: [00:24:59] Well, there's a war. I mean, one of the dragons is men and men. You know, it really is a contest, in many ways, to be in covenant with other men. It's, it's, you know, you have to push in. You have to push through. You have to, you have to understand that, that you are designed for community. You know, you were designed for for relationships to to put on display your ability to love. And when you surround yourself with a wife, children, you put, you pretty much you put it on display like, wow, I suck at this. I am so selfish. I had no idea. I thought I was the catch of the day and look at me. I cannot seem to figure out how to stay connected to this lady. Like, yeah, that's that's because you are learning and growing, because there's reality. There's reality standing there with you, not romance. And you know that that I think when, when men are faced with ownership of community, they are challenged to love and grow. So I think it's very natural for us to kick in our self-preservation and think about myself and my video game scores. You know, and, I'm in total control, and, oh, I'm so frustrated. Oh, this is so challenging. Oh, this is just sharpening my whatever, you know, like, that's great. No, you are wasting your life. You're wasting your life and you have a really great reason for it, because you worked all day. Because you did this. Because you did that, like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You were designed to be poured out, man, you were not designed to be cellared, you know, for some special moment.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:27:07] Thank you so much for joining us this week for episode 329. This was just the first half of my conversation with Danny Silk. The conversation notes, the transcripts, all the quotes, and other links out to his resources, this specific book that they're launching, is all going to be found at dadawesome.org/podcast. I want to remind you guys a few more days left till Mother's Day. So, the code, the discount code, momawesome is still good on the DadAwesome store, to save you guys, I believe it's 15%. So you can use that to buy some DadAwesome gear. It's not a gift for Mother's Day, but it's an excuse to do a special sale on the store, so go buy yourself a gift. And, then lastly, want to remind you the DadAwesome Accelerator is up, and, well, it's not up, it's up and running right now, the first round, but that's all closed. The next round, we just opened back up the opportunity to be one of the ten dads that joined us this summer, in July, for a special six week, high bar, high expectation, we're all in. We're going to grow. We're going to encourage each other. We're going to kind of dive deep into everything we've learned in six and a half years of DadAwesome. We're going to deliver that in a small group format, this summer. So there's more coming on that. But if you're interested at all, at all, about the DadAwesome Accelerator Group this summer, just send an email to awesome@dadawesome.org. Guys, thanks for listening this week. Definitely come back next week for the second half of this conversation with Danny Silk. So, jump back next week, episode 330, will not disappoint. Have a great week. Let's keep pursuing the hearts of our kids. Let's keep bringing joy. Let's keep being, you guys have all heard this before, let's be the thermostat, not the thermometer. Let's set the temperature of joy and peace and love in our homes. Have a great week, guys.
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· 6:28 - "You have to have something inside of you that both weights you down to the bottom so you can get some traction and strong enough to turn and face that bad boy. But what happens is, once you get enough people opposing and moving in synergy, in the opposite direction, you actually can bring that strong current to a stop and then reverse the current. [That's] the Kingdom. It's an upside down world. That's what I really want to call our generation to, let's be the generation that faced this ugly lie, chase it down, band together and create a different tomorrow for our boys."
· 14:24 - "It's absolutely essential that men understand that your primary job and really the only job that you have is control yourself. Control freaks, control your freaking self. You never control other people. And when we turn love into control, we misrepresent our Father. God is Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom, not control. If anybody is going to be a control freak, it could be God and he's a freedom freak."
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