Forge Virtue Podcast

Podcast in reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AdkwqkE20M

You already know what to do. You have known for years. So why does your life look exactly the same as it did twelve months ago?

This is a short one, but it deals with the reason most men never change.

I almost never finished the podcast that prompted this video. I turned it off halfway through, bored, convinced I was hearing the same recycled advice for the hundredth time. Something made me click back on it a few weeks later. The second half contained three ideas that explain why so much formation content lands on men who agree with all of it and change nothing.

The first has to do with why the most important truths in your life sound boring. There is a specific reason certain advice makes you roll your eyes, and that reaction is telling you something about yourself that you are not going to enjoy hearing.

The second explains why the man who wants an extraordinary life cannot keep behaving like the men around him. Most people are not aiming where you claim to be aiming. Their behaviour is calibrated to their goals, not yours. If you keep matching it, you already know how this ends.

The third is the one that would have saved me years if I had understood it at eighteen. There is a single measure that determines whose criticism you should take seriously and whose you should discard entirely. Apply it honestly and most of what you are afraid of stops mattering by the end of the week.

Underneath all three sits the difference between the soul that shrinks to fit other people's expectations and the soul that stretches towards great things in spite of fear. The Church has names for both. Most men are living in the first one without ever having chosen it.

St James says faith without works is dead. You can hold the closest approximation to divine truth available on this earth and still be a grave sinner. Knowing is not the same as doing, and the space between the two is where most men spend their entire lives.

You do not need to be taught. You need to be reminded.

In this video I cover:

• why the truths that matter most sound like cliches, and what that says about you
• the gap between knowing something and executing it
• why extraordinary results demand non-ordinary behaviour
• how to weigh a man's opinion by his proximity to your goal
• the disordered fear of judgment that deflects a man from the good
• pusillanimity, magnanimity, and stretching the soul towards Christ

I also share an update on the Fit for the Kingdom School, which launched last week. The masculinity course is up, community access is free, and we have just begun a ten week theology of the body course with Father Ben Duza on Tuesday nights at 8pm New Zealand time. https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

Skool: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

Chapters
0:00 The Hormozi Podcast That Struck Me
1:10 Why Deep Truths Sound Like Cliches
2:20 The Gap Is Execution Not Info
4:05 You Need Reminding Not

Chapters
1:19 How can fathers repair relationships with sons
13:16 Young man asking a woman for inappropriate photos
16:20 Where can I get FFTK Merch
16:52 How to Structure Morning Prayer
21:26 Would you take TRT when you get older
25:14 Helping teenage boys become real men
36:33 New haircut
36:57 Women being strong without becoming girl bosses
45:33 How do you overcome lust

Live Q&A on faith, fitness, relationships, and life advice, open to everyone. Join Tomas from Fit for the Kingdom as we work through your questions on prayer, training, dating and marriage, discipline, and living a serious life in the middle of a world that makes it difficult.

We will be revisiting some of the best questions from previous Q&As and taking new ones live in the chat. I will have a co host with me to help field questions and keep the conversation moving, so this will be less of a monologue and more of a real discussion.

When:
Saturday 10:30am NZST
Saturday 8:30am AEST

Set a reminder above so you do not miss it.

Ask your question:
Drop it in the live chat, send me a DM on Instagram, or reply to the story.

Cannot make it live? The full replay stays up on the channel, so subscribe and hit the bell to catch it.

What we cover on this channel:
Fit for the Kingdom is a Catholic formation apostolate running across New Zealand and Australia. We help men and women build the physical strength, spiritual discipline, and real community needed to live for Christ without compromise. Expect training, prayer, Catholic teaching, and honest conversation about relationships, vocation, and what it actually takes.

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio.

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

Skool: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

I don't get anything out of prayer.

I've heard that from a lot of men. I've said it myself. And the moment you say it out loud, you've already told on yourself, because that sentence assumes prayer is something you're supposed to be extracting a return from.

In this video I break down what prayer actually is, starting with the part nobody wants to hear. You owe it. Not because it feels good. Not because it makes you calmer or more focused or more productive. You owe your father honour because he gave you existence in a limited way. God gave it to you absolutely. Aquinas has a name for the virtue that governs this, and once you see it, the days when prayer feels like nothing stop being a reason to quit.

But that's only half of it, and the half that gets men praying like they're paying a bill. What you owe isn't tribute to a distant force. It's communion with a Person who has a name, a face, and wounds. Christianity was never a religion of the book. Christ didn't hand out a text and disappear. He founded a Body and gave Himself in the Sacraments, and the man who tries to do this privately ends up with a religion of one, with himself sitting at the centre of it.

Then I walk through the five forms of prayer from the Catechism. Most men only ever pray one of them, and it's the smallest one. I'd ask you to be honest with yourself as I go through the list, because the order matters more than you think, and the last one tells you whether the other four have actually changed you.

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

Skool: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

Chapters
0:00 Why Prayer Feels Unclear
2:47 Three Ideas About Prayer
4:03 Prayer Is an Act of Justice
8:45 When You Do Not Desire Prayer
12:16 Dryness and Desolation
15:10 God Is a Person Not a Force
18:43 Walk the Sacramental Life
20:49 Song of Songs and Intimacy
21:26 Five Forms of Prayer
23:57 Praise and a Wedding Story
26:32 Prayer Changes Your Life
29:38 The School Community
31:28 One on One Mentorship

Live Q&A on faith, fitness, relationships, and life advice, open to everyone. Join Tomas from Fit for the Kingdom as we work through your questions on prayer, training, dating and marriage, discipline, and living a serious life in the middle of a world that makes it difficult.

Ask your question:
Drop it in the live chat, send me a DM on Instagram, or reply to the story. If you would rather stay anonymous, submit it here: https://forms.gle/wMqmfZxRmo1RbMa28

Chapters
0:00 Setup And Pulling The Questions
2:37 Is Work Just Slavery
19:51 Advice For Women When Men Fold
29:04 Is Too Much Training Wasteful
33:55 Balancing Hard Work And Family
36:56 Quitting Smoking And Addiction
39:52 Signs Of Being Lukewarm
45:24 Building The Virtue Of Studiousness
58:05 Closing Thoughts

A man wrote in and said labour is slavery, meaning from work is sinful, and you should work as little as you can and enjoy the rest. That comment kicked off this live Q&A, and it turned into an hour on the dignity of work, the virtue of studiousness, addiction, lukewarmness, and what to do when the men around you are folding.

Tomas is joined by Lachy, a theology student and co-worker on the farm, to answer questions submitted through Instagram and YouTube. No abstract theory for its own sake. Every answer comes back to what you actually do on Monday morning.

In this episode we cover why work was part of Adam's vocation before the fall and not only part of the curse, how to find objective meaning in a job you do not enjoy, why virtue cannot be switched on and off between the gym and the home, how much training is too much, how to structure a day around prayer instead of fitting prayer around the leftovers, and why most people burn out from resting badly rather than working hard.

If you are stuck in a job you hate, dragging yourself through your third attempt at quitting something, or wondering whether you have squandered the faith you were handed, this one is for you.

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

The Legion: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://fftkingdom.com/the-legion

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

Half your life is spent working. Most men have quietly accepted that half of it means nothing.

I wrote an essay earlier this year on St. John Paul II's Laborem Exercens, and it's essential for revivifying and re-enchanting our view of life. We have taken something that Adam was doing before the fall, something woven into the image of God himself, and reduced it to a paycheck and a clock. John Paul II has a name for that reduction. Economism. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

This is the video where I break down why work is not primarily economic, why capitalism and communism both fail the worker for the same underlying reason, and what it actually means to say that man is not for work, but work is for man. I get into the subjective dimension of labour, the theological grounding of stewardship in Genesis, the universal destination of goods, and Josef Pieper's warning about the total work society that leaves no room for leisure, contemplation or anything that makes us human.

There is a point in here about identity that I think most men need to sit with. If you are not taking your identity from Christ, you are taking it from somewhere. Money, fame, status, the next target. You cannot take it from nothing. And the rat race will happily give you one.

This is a longer one, and it is not for everyone. But if you show up to work tomorrow morning with a different lens than you had today, it did its job.

Dean Mischewski's talk from St. Michael's Troops on living your faith in the workplace: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GArkpgGMQRs

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

Skool: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

Chapters
0:00 Channel Update And Semester Wrap
0:55 Introducing Laborem Exercens On Work
3:12 Adam Worked Before The Fall
4:47 What Is Economism
6:28 Three Points On The Dignity Of Work
9:00 Realizing Yourself Through Work
10:15 Worker As Subject Not Object
12:39 Focusing On People Not Product
14:09 Economism And The Industrial Revolution
15:11 How Capitalism And Socialism Both Fail
17:41 Pieper And The Total Work Society
18:35 The Trap Of Self Worth In Success
21:46 Viktor Frankl And Finding Meaning
23:37 Work As Participation In Creation
26:05 Stewardship And Getting Better At Work
27:41 Work And The Common Good
32:01 Avoiding The Rat Race
32:56 Support The Mission And Community

Aquinas would tell you the will moves toward whatever it actually loves, and your loves are built by repetition, not by information. You can read the right books, listen to the right men, agree with every word, and still find your body walking toward the same sin at 10pm. The intellect can hold a truth for years while the appetite goes on running the house.

Which is why commitment collapses when the reason behind it terminates in you. Discipline built on a self image will hold for six weeks and then quietly negotiate itself away, because there is nobody standing on the other end of the promise to break faith with. Reasons that survive have names attached to them. A wife. A son. The men who follow you. God, who gave you the body and the hours and expects a return.

Look at the man in Luke 9:62 again. His hands are still on the plough. He is still technically working. The furrow goes crooked because his eyes went back to the house, and that is how most men lose ground. Not by quitting, but by continuing while looking backward at the old life with something like affection still in them.

So write the list before you need it. BE FIRM with your identity. Specific, written down, so that when the alarm goes at 4am the decision has already been made by a clearer version of you.

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

Skool: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

There is a man who believes in God and is losing anyway. He is not a bad man. He would tell you Christ is Lord and he would mean it. He goes to Mass. He would defend the faith if someone attacked it at a dinner table. And he is losing, steadily, in a way he has no vocabulary for, because nothing in his week looks like a defeat.

That is the whole trick. The enemy does not need you to renounce Christ. He needs you tired, distracted, and slightly compromised, every day, for forty years. He is patient in a way you are not.

You have been formed by something. That is not a question. You did not arrive at your opinions, your appetites, and your tolerance for what you watch by reasoning your way there. It happened by osmosis, slowly, from a society that has been catechising you since you were a child. Plato saw this 2,400 years ago and wanted to ban certain music from the Republic. Ask yourself what he would have made of your feed.

Here is what most men will not accept. There is no morally neutral action. You are either being pulled toward God or away from Him, in every hour, including the hours you consider yours. Christ said it plainly and men have been softening it ever since. I want to show you what losing actually looks like from the inside, because it does not look like losing. It looks like a decent life with a few loose ends. I go through the loose ends. Some of them are yours.

I speak directly to the men caught in lust, and I tell you something you will not hear from most Catholics. You are waiting for a rescue that is not coming, because you have misdiagnosed what you are dealing with. The despair you feel about it is doing more damage than the sin. I explain why, and what you actually do instead.

In this video I cover:

• what spiritual warfare actually is, and why ignorance of it is the enemy's first victory
• the man who believes in Christ but never lets it touch his morning, his phone, or his appetites
• how the world forms you by osmosis until your beliefs quietly follow the culture
• the small unguarded moments the devil uses instead of grave sin
• emotional unchastity and why you cannot guard your interior life
• why lust and corn do not require a miracle to overcome, and what the despair cycle is really costing you
• the rule of life, and the one test for every decision you make
• what Christ revealed to St. Faustina about silence and humility
• the 400 year old manual that already answers everything you think is unanswerable
• why the body and the soul cannot be separated, and what that demands of you

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

Skool: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

Chapters
0:00 Why Studying Theology Matters
1:45 The Reality of Spiritual Warfare
3:19 How the World Tempts Us
6:54 Belief Without Action
9:16 Filling Your Mind With Junk
11:22 You Have No Rule of Life
12:29 Train for Martyrdom
13:18 Lust and the Cycle of Despair
16:18 How the Devil Distracts Me
19:31 Start With a Rule of Life
21:53 Books for the Spiritual Life
23:54 Body and Soul Are One
25:44 Are You Ready for Judgment

Most men are in the same place they were two years ago and cannot work out why. They pray. They train. They get to confession. They read the right books. They go to Mass. Nothing moves. Fr. Chad Ripperger said something in his recent interview with Shawn Ryan that put language to a problem I see in almost every man I speak to. It comes down to the nature of sacrifice. Where it comes from, what it actually requires, and why so few men ever complete it.

Sacrifice sits under the virtue of justice. Justice is giving to each what they are due, and underneath it sits the virtue of religion, which is giving God what is owed to him. Worship. He is our creator. Your life, your intellect, your faith, every single thing you have is pure unmerited gift. There is nothing in your life that does not already belong to him. So when men tell me they are already sacrificing, I ask what they are actually handing over. Nine times out of ten it is the offcuts. The lamb with the broken leg. Cain kept the best for himself and gave God the leftovers. Abel gave the best he had and retained nothing.

And there is a reason the thing you refuse to give up is the exact thing keeping you chained to the flesh, stuck in the same base pleasures, unable to reach a single one of the greater goods you claim you want. Chastity requires it. Temperance requires it. Marriage and children require it. A body worth calling a temple of the Holy Spirit requires it. The bridge between fallen man and divine life is Christ, and the shape of that bridge is sacrifice.

In this video I cover:

• the three components of sacrifice: the offertory, the slaying of the victim, and the consummation
• why the victim has to be completely consumed and what happens when you hold back five percent
• detachment, concupiscence, and why enjoying the material world is not the same as being bound to it
• how the refusal to sacrifice keeps men trapped in lust, hedonism, and delayed commitment
• Lucifer's original charism and how the enemy uses it against you now

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

Skool: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

Chapters
0:00 Why Most Men Stall in Virtue
0:52 Sacrifice Comes From Justice
2:12 The Offertory and Setting Apart
4:24 Slaying the Victim
5:22 Consummation and the 5% You Keep
6:58 Sacrifice Is the Bridge to God
7:32 Sex Marriage and Real Fulfilment
8:53 Physical Health Requires Sacrifice
9:24 Lucifer's Charism Was Sacrifice
11:40 What Have You Not Given God
12:13 Why the Mass Is Necessary
12:57 The Legion Coaching and Troops

Modern Christianity has a massive blind spot, and most guys walking around calling themselves Christian have no idea it exists. Believing in Jesus and feeling sorry when you sin has become the whole religion for a lot of people. That's not Christianity. That's a watered down version of it, and it's why so many men stay stuck in the same cycles year after year, never actually growing.

Here are three non-negotiables for a real spiritual life. Not suggestions. Not nice to haves. Things the saints understood that we've largely forgotten. I break down exactly where modern Christianity gets it wrong, why reducing faith to an intellectual checklist leaves you spiritually weak, and what it actually looks like to live the interior life the way the church has always intended.

This is what I've lived out myself and what I walk men through one on one. Please watch my other videos for more help on how to practically do this, such as this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMt6_kPw9vg

In this video I cover:

• why the spiritual life has to be your number one priority
• the blind spot in modern Christianity that turns faith into a checklist instead of a life
• why faith without works is dead
• the church already gave us 2,000 years of spiritual tradition
• the power of the sacraments, confession, fasting, and the rosary
• why reading the lives of the saints will completely reprogram how you see the world
• stop negotiating with sin and actually fight it to the point of shedding blood

FOLLOW ME ON RUMBLE IN CASE I GET BANNED: https://rumble.com/c/tomasmones

Skool: Stop doing this alone, join a brotherhood of Christian men who will hold you to the standard you already know you should be living. → https://www.skool.com/fit-for-the-kingdom

FFTK: Come train, pray, and build with men in person. → https://fftkingdom.com/

1:1 Coaching: If you're tired of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it, apply to work with me directly. → https://forgevirtue.com/

Find out more: links to all my social media profiles and content can be found here. → https://forgevirtue.com/links

Chapters
0:00 Welcome and Recap
0:16 Sydney Blasphemy Incident
1:49 How to Grow Spiritually
3:00 Make It Your Priority
4:19 Faith Without Works Is Dead
6:34 Spiritual Life Is Not Optional
7:38 Real Prayer Versus Habit
9:48 Recover Church Traditions
10:19 Eucharist Source and Summit
11:34 Why the Rosary Works
12:41 Study the Traditions Yourself
13:36 Imitate the Lives of Saints
16:05 Secular Thinking Versus Faith
17:49 Holiness Is a Pursuit
19:06 Work With Me and The Legion