Personal Development vs Faith: The Lie Men Have Been Told

Somewhere along the way, personal development got confused with self-help… and self-help got confused with self-worship. In this deeply honest episode of the Driven 2 Thrive Broadcast, Brent Dowlen tackles the tension many men—especially men of faith—feel between personal growth and spiritual identity.

Is working on yourself actually selfish? Does faith conflict with ambition, discipline, or growth? Or have we misunderstood what personal development was supposed to be all along?

This episode breaks down the difference between identity and development, explores why many churches push back against “self-help culture,” and reframes personal development as the responsibility to grow into who you were already created to be.

What You’ll Get Out of This Episode

• A clearer understanding of the difference between identity and self-improvement
• Why many men feel conflicted between faith and personal growth
• How confirmation bias and emotional decision-making affect your life
• Why personal development is about execution, not reinvention
• The biblical and neurological case for developing your gifts and abilities
• Practical ways to start improving your life one small step at a time

Big Takeaways

• Personal development does not define who you are. It develops how you live out who you already are.
• Identity must come before growth or growth becomes reckless.
• Your gifts are meant to be used, refined, and multiplied.
• Small, consistent actions change your life more than motivation ever will.
• Growth without direction becomes ego.
• Men need solid foundations, not endless reinvention.

Why You Should Listen

If you’ve ever felt torn between faith and personal development… if you’ve struggled with identity, discipline, purpose, or direction… this episode will challenge the confusion and give you a healthier framework for growth.

This isn’t about becoming someone new.

It’s about becoming more aligned with the man you were created to be.

Transcript

Personal Development vs Faith: The Lie Men Have Been Told

Speaker: [00:00:00] Somewhere along the way, personal development got confused with self-help. Not quite sure where or when, but it did. And then self-help got confused with self-worship. And because of that, a lot of men, especially men of faith, have been handed a false choice. Either trust God or work on yourself. You can't do both.

And I heard it put into words this last week that I've honestly never heard said so clearly before, and it completely caught me off guard. A minister said that self-help teaches you to build your identity on what you do, what you like, what you learn, and that identity changes with all of your whims. And then he said something that's absolutely true, that your identity is already defined by God.

And sitting there listening to that, I realized something. See, this, this is the confusion. This is the problem. This is where we've gotten into this [00:01:00] impasse, and why, like, the ministers at my church shrink when I talk about my show and what I do, because they don't understand. They're confused about what it is that I do.

That's not what we do here. We don't help men find an identity That's not what personal development is. If that's what people think it is, then that would explain why there's some tension. That would explain why there's some uneasiness between faith and personal development. And I'm not the only personal development guy who's known this.

I've talked to several of my colleagues about this. I've talked to a lot of other podcasters, and they get the same kind of headache that I do.[00:02:00] 

No wonder it feels like these two worlds are at odds, because if that's what personal development was, if personal development was about building your identity, well, I'd be against that, too. But it's not, and today we're gonna fix that. Personal development doesn't define who you are. It develops how you live out who you already are.

So, let's start with why the church pushes back, and, and they're not necessarily wrong to push back based on their understanding, and that matters. Most churches are not anti-growth. They're anti-confusion, because what they're reacting to is real. I've literally been told that my content was too confusing to risk being associated with my church.

Because I talk about faith, but I'm not a faith-based show. That's not the focus of what we do here at [00:03:00] Driven to Thrive. It's part of my personal identity, and so yes, it shows up on the show, and several of my guests that I've had over the years are faith-based individuals as well. And so it shows up in the way they talk because it's part of who they are.

And that murked the lines a little too much for the leadership of my church, because they don't wanna be associated with me doing something with my podcast at the church because it's not far enough away that they're... that wouldn't be confusing for some people. So ouch, that was not what I was expecting to hear from one of the ministers at my church.

Uh, that conversation surprised me, but I now understand it at least because there's a version of self-help out there that says, "Define your own truth. Follow your feelings. [00:04:00] Become whoever you wanna be." This is the kinda nonsense that we used to make fun of as Gen Xers. I'd hear younger generations talking about, "Well, that's not my truth.

That may be your truth, but that's not my truth." And I mocked it for years, 'cause it's stupid That version of self-help, I get it. That's dangerous. That's not accurate. In Jeremiah 17:9, it says, "The heart's deceitful." And that's not poetic language that it's using. It's, it's a warning. You don't just follow whatever you feel, and I'm air quoting that for all of you just listening, and call it truth.

I hate it when people try to bring that whole, "Well, I feel like," into a logic-based decision or conversation. We're not talking about your feelings. Screw your feelings. We're talking about actual facts and reality. That's on par with being an animal or even a child, when you're just powered by impulse and emotion, [00:05:00] not by truth.

And yes, there is such a thing as absolute truth. If you wanna argue that with me, that's probably another episode, or you might just wanna jump off this one, because that is my stance. There is absolute black-and-white truth. Neurologically, we know that your brain is wired for confirmation bias, meaning whatever you feel, air quotes, or want, your brain will actually go find the evidence it needs to support that belief if you believe it deeply enough.

It will literally find a way to tell you, "Oh, yeah, that's right," even if it's not. So if your identity is built on your feelings, it's gonna shift constantly, and your brain will justify every shift along the way to tell you you're right. That's not development. That's, that's drift. That's something you expect from a child, not from men.

And that's what a lot of churches are reacting to, the deceitful belief that you can make up your own truth, [00:06:00] because you actually will find that in a lot of self-help crap. So the concern is real on their part, but their conclusion is incomplete because they don't distinguish things. Because rejecting a broken version of self-help doesn't mean you need to reject growth.

It means we need to get clear on what growth actually is and what it's not. Now, we're gonna roll to our sponsors real quick to pay the bills, and then enter our intro, then we'll dive into this. Timestamps are in the show notes if you wanna skip ahead.

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Now, let's get on with the show.

Speaker 2: The Driven 2 Thrive broadcast: purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men. Helping men go from living to thriving, [00:09:00] purpose-filled, intentional lives

Speaker: Welcome to the Driven 2 Thrive broadcast, where men learn to lead themselves, their families, and their world with purpose, growth, and lasting impact. I'm your host, Brent Dowlen, and let me take just a moment here to apologize for the unexplained or unannounced break in the show. After over six years of doing this show, I've had a major and unexpected change in the primary direction of my normal business with very little warning and almost no heads-up.

Uh, so I have been heads down in deep focus with heavy time commitments Making a major pivot in my company, uh, it has just taken so much time. I've had to pause everything else I am doing to make sure that honestly I don't lose my company in the meantime. So thank you for not giving up on me and sticking with this during this transition.

I know it's been almost two months, but I appreciate your patience, and I s- appreciate that you're still here. [00:10:00] Now, let's get back to what we're actually doing, 'cause that's what you're here for, and this next piece is where everything starts to lock in pa- place. You see, personal development can't tell you who you are.

If you're using personal development to figure out who you are, well, you're kinda out of luck, because that's not what it does. You already lost, because development is not foundation, it's a tool. In Matthew 7, we get the picture of a house built on a rock versus sand, right? If you grew up in Bible school or going to vacation Bible school, right?

The wise man built his house... You remember that? Am I the only one? Sound off in the comments if you ever sang that growing up, okay? If the foundation isn't solid, it doesn't matter how well you build it, it's gonna collapse. Your brain works the same way. Identity is built through identifying the core principles that guide your life.

The absolutes, the core beliefs that are the hill you are willing to die on, quite literally possibly, these are the [00:11:00] rock solid foundations that you build your identity on. I've done entire episodes about it. I don't talk about it all the time, but if there's nothing stable to anchor to, your brain will just adapt to whatever environment you're in.

And that's why some guys are always reinventing themselves, new habits, new routines, new phases. It's because they haven't actually built that solid foundation. I talk about my core principles in my very first episode, in episode 200, and we'll revisit again soon, 'cause it sounds like we need to. But you see these guys reinventing themselves because they don't have a solid sound- foundation.

So they're just onto the next thing with the same instability that they've always had, because they're building without a foundation. They take their identity by what they do for a living most commonly. That's, I mean, as men, that is actually one of our most common mistakes, as we draw the bulk of our identity from what we do for a living.[00:12:00] 

I did it for years, and if you think about it, you've probably done it too, right? Think about the last time you introduced yourself to somebody. You're like, "Hey, I'm Brent. I'm a podcaster." Right? I'm, I'm stating my identity right up front. Or maybe you're Bob and you're an electrician, right? That's how we introduce ourselves.

See, that's how we see ourselves. That's where we draw our identity. So let me be really clear. Your cor- core identity does not change. I've had a lot of jobs. I've had several different professions. I've had a lot of titles. And what I do to create income has changed many times over my lifetime. I'm 46 years old.

I've officially been working for 30 years of my life. So lots of jobs, from ranch hand to magician's assistant, I'll tell you about that another time, to personal trainer, to business owner and IT guy. My titles have changed a lot, but who I am always stays the same. [00:13:00] That's because my identity is anchored firmly in the core pillars of my identity that have always been the guiding light in my life.

So once you understand that your identity is not based on things that change, it's based on core principle foundational beliefs in your life, you stop asking the wrong question. It's not, "Who am I becoming?" The personal development question is, "How do I live this out better?" See, identity comes first, then development.

Now, for men of faith, identity isn't something you discover. It's something you receive and grow into as a person. Ephesians 2:10 says we are his workmanship. The Sermon on the Mount tells us men of faith, as men of faith, they are salt and light, which translates to God's presence in the world and his reflection to the world.

They're created with intention, not [00:14:00] randomness, not accident. Now, I say that about all of you. You're created with intention, not randomness, not by accident. That's my personal belief. And even outside of scripture, if you're not a person of faith, and that's fine, thinkers like Marcus Aurelius talked about living in alignment with your nature a very long time ago.

This is not a new idea. Fulfilling your role well. Not chasing every new version of yourself, but becoming more refined in who you already are. That's the shift. Marcus Aurelius knew that that's what it was. You were already a certain person. Your identity was solid. It was a matter of becoming more refined in who you are- were.

So whether you're a person of faith or not, your identity gives you boundaries. It's the guardrails for all of your decisions and choices. It's the first line of defense [00:15:00] when making decisions in your life and about your life and about your future. Personal development just gives you movement inside of those boundaries.

Personal development helps you build skills, abilities, and talents to shine in your identity. No one at church will argue that a minister should practice or hone his skills as an orator. My dad preached his sermon to empty pews in the week leading up to Sunday morning at least a half a dozen times, often a lot more than that, to make sure he delivered the message he was given the most effective and powerful way possible to nurture the members of his congregation.

And we would all say, whether you're a church person or not, that we would hope that a minister is practicing his skills at delivering their sermons. Right? Can we all agree with that? That makes perfect sense. Now, whether you're a [00:16:00] person of faith or not, the question is really simple. Should you not hone your own skills to be the very best version of you?

Right? We don't see any oddity in it in a worship minister practicing his songs or a preaching minister practicing his sermon because those are skills they have to actively nurture and hopefully get better in over time. But then when we turn around and work on honing our skills and utilizing these skills to the best way possible and developing them, we keep bumping up against faith somehow in personal development because somehow refining those skills and gifts God gave you is misconstrued as trying to change our identity.

We're not trying to change your identity. We're taking the tools we were given and making them stronger, more effective, and better at doing their job. Once your [00:17:00] identity is anchored, then you have to move to the conversation that is where we're bumping heads here. We have to talk about responsibility because it's not optional, even though there seems to be misgivings about it somehow.

You're expected to develop what you've been given. This is where a lot of people get uncomfortable because we're not just talking about permission. We're talking about expectation. And that's why you get confused in this debate between personal development and faith sometimes that we get into between people in this industry and congregations and churches.

Like I said, I've talked to a lot of other people in this industry and, and they, they bump up against their church all the time for some reason. But it doesn't make sense to me because in Matthew 25, you find the Parable of the Talents, and in that, the servants weren't judged [00:18:00] for what they were given.

And if you haven't read this parable, you should go check it out. It's like six verses. It's quick. Okay? The servants in the parable aren't judged by what they're given. They're judged for what they did with it. The ones who are praised by the master and lifted up did one single thing. They took what they were given, and they multiplied it The one who buried it, he was called wicked and lazy.

Not because he did something terrible, he gave the guy back the same amount of money, but because he did absolutely nothing with it.

Let that sink in for just a minute, okay? I've studied this parable a lot of times. The only thing wrong was he did nothing with it, and he's called wicked and lazy. Scripture is [00:19:00] really clear. Your gifts are meant to be used, grown, and multiplied. Not stored, not hidden, not ignored. Christian author and speaker John Bevere has written about this extensively in multiple books, citing not only our responsibility, but the mandate from God if you're a person of faith to develop your gifts that you've been given to grow your skills to maximal returns.

He included it in several of his books, but he wrote two s- books specifically on this topic. Now, not a person of faith? Okay, you don't like that example, that's fine. Neurologically, it's the same principle. It's a use it or lose it fact. Neural pathways that aren't used, they get pruned. Skills fade, discipline fades, confidence fades.

You have to practice and reinforce the skills you have, and because you have the ability to add new skills, then you should add some new ones that you improve [00:20:00] and practice to help you improve who you are and the world around you. So both biblically and neurologically, you're designed to develop what you've been given and grow it and practice it and refine it.

So now that we've removed that confusion, like this... And I don't understand why it's confusion. Like I said, I don't understand why the church and personal development tends to butt heads. But we've removed the excuses because now we know biblically we're required to do it. Now it comes down to something really simple.

Execution. How do we do it, right? How does personal development actually work? Now remember, personal development doesn't define who you are. It just develops how you live out who you already are. So how do we do that? Well, this is where most people overcomplicate everything. They think personal development means reinventing their life.

They think you have to buy a lot of books and listen to a lot of podcasts. They think you have to [00:21:00] study with some guru. That's also where the church gets a little persnickety about this. It's not all that, and this is one of my ground points. This is one of the things that I will talk about till I am blue in the face.

We have shouted it from the mountaintop and yelled, shared over and over and over again on the Driven To Thrive broadcast Personal development is not complicated. It's one decision, it's one action, it's one step forward today. Really, that simple. Your brain changes through repetition, and your skills increase also through repetition.

Not intensity, not motivation, repetition. Doing it over and over and over again. Guys like Epictetus taught the same thing from the stoic scholars. Mastery comes from doing small things well consistently. That's in the teachings. [00:22:00] Not from chasing big moments. Personal development is simply adding one small positive thing that makes you healthier, smarter, more capable, better, and doing it until it's a habit you don't have to think about anymore.

You just do it automatically. Now, add a new small thing that once again makes you healthier, smarter, more capable, better, and do it until it's a habit you don't have to think about. Rinse and repeat. That is personal development. It's taking one small choice, and we're talking about small choices, guys.

We're talking about 1%. We're talking about half a percent. You want to get up earlier so you're not rushed getting out the door in the mornings. Okay, move your alarm 15 minutes. I didn't say wake up an hour earlier. I didn't say get up two hours earlier. I don't say you have to go read a book for 30 minutes before you get up and wake up earlier.

No. You wanna make it where you don't feel rushed in the [00:23:00] mornings, which tends to cloud up the rest of your day, fine. Wake up 10 minutes earlier, 15 minutes earlier. Set that alarm, get up 10 minutes earlier every single day till it's no longer a thing, and if you need some more time, add another 10 minutes to it once it's no longer a thing.

That is personal development. You wanna read more? Read one page a day. Read one chapter a day. Read for 10 minutes a day and just get however far you get. Start with something small. Start with five minutes a day. One small, simple step that makes you healthier, smarter, more capable, or better, and do it until it's a habit and you don't even think about doing it anymore.

Make it stupidly easy. Put that book everywhere you're gonna be, carry it around with you, whatever you need to do. Make it stupidly easy to add that one skill and do it over and over and over and over until you never think about it again, and [00:24:00] you just automatically do it, like brushing your teeth. That is personal development, and you just keep adding little things as it gets more Ingrained.

It's simple, it's easy, it's straightforward, and again, personal development doesn't define who you are, it just develops how you live out who you are already. So the real question isn't what's your long-term plan, it's what's the next right step for me? The Jurassic Pro- Park Problem. Yes, I actually got to call it the Jurassic Park Problem.

I engineered the entire podcast just so I could call this the Jurassic Park Problem, because it is my favorite example. I wanna leave one warming, warning, and it's this, okay? I think this is why the church butt heads with personal development. The danger is, without identity, growth becomes reckless,

i've said through this whole show, you have to establish identity first. Without identity, growth becomes really reckless. You start living by [00:25:00] one question: Can I do this? It becomes a game. In fact, you can gamify it really quickly, and it can become addictive, and you start doing things just to see if you can.

Not even things that make sense or you should do necessarily, just 'cause y- you can, to see if you can do it. It really can become gamified. I know I've fallen down that rabbit ho- hole. The better question is, should I? Now, I can call that Jurassic Park because if you're not a Jurassic Park alumni, spoilers, Ian Malcolm asked this in the very first Jurassic Park.

You guys were so busy thinking, wondering if you could do it, you didn't stop to ask the question, should you do it? Talking about bringing dinosaurs back to life. Okay? We can do the same thing with personal development. Without that grounding of identity, without those guardrails, it can become wild

1 Corinthians 10:23 tells us [00:26:00] everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. And thinkers like Seneca warned us about this exact thing. Skill without wisdom is dangerous. Discipline without direction becomes pride. Growth without identity becomes ego. This is where the problem really exists.

We have a lot of men who have not taken the time to really understand their identity, even faith-based men where it's laid out pretty clearly in the Bible. So we have a lot of men in that animal/childlike state of just drifting based on reactions and emotions because they've yet to lock into a solid foundation, something that's unwavering to anchor to.

Most men these days can't tell you what their pillars are. But when identity leads, and you have that established already, personal development, everything about it aligns. You have a foundation that guides you on your journey towards the best version of you. The best [00:27:00] version of you is firmly anchored in your identity, developing the talents to live the life you were born to live.

I talked about the pillars in episode one a very long time ago now, and I talked about them again in episode 200, and it seems like it's time to talk about it again. So for episode 400 next week, we should revisit the idea, and we'll talk about the pillars of identity. I don't usually focus on identity, but I feel like it's become a question, so we'll tackle developing your identity next week on the 400th episode.

Uh, it seems kind of poetic to do it, you know, every 200 episodes anyways. But we'll deal with that next week. For now, personal development is about becoming... isn't about becoming someone new. It's about becoming more aligned with who you were already created to be. And if you skip that foundation, you'll just [00:28:00] spend your life chasing improvement without direction, which is chaotic.

But if you start with a solid identity, each step forward builds something that actually lasts. Now, if you're tired of bouncing between motivation and meaning, start here. One step, one decision, one action today. Not to figure out who you are, but to start living like the man you already know you're supposed to be.

And if you got something out of this, be sure and like, share, subscribe. And as always, be better tomorrow because of what you do today. Let's get to work

Speaker 3: The Driven to Thrive broadcast: purpose, growth, and lasting impact for men. Helping men go from living to thriving, purpose-filled, intentional lives