Carl McCunn was a wildlife photographer from Texas.  He decided to go to Alaska for an extensive photo shoot.  He hired a bush pilot to take him into the remote Alaskan wilderness. With 500 rolls of film, 1400 pounds of food and other provisions, two rifles, and a shotgun he was very prepared. He had a complete strategy to enter the wilderness. His entrance strategy down pat.

6 months later a state trooper found McCunn’s lifeless body in his tent. The one thing he forgot cost him his life.  What did he forget? His exit strategy. McCunn’s diary, which was found next to his body, said he failed to make specific arrangements to be picked up.  McCunn wrote, ”I think I should have used more foresight about arranging my departure.” Now that’s an understatement!  McCunn had a well thought out entrance strategy but no exit strategy.

As your children graduate from middle school and start high school, or graduate from high school and start college, make sure they begin with the end of the next stage of their lives in mind. They need to start with an exit strategy.

Here are 4 F’s you can share with your children to help them exit the next stage of their life well.

1. Faith

“Do I really believe that what I believe is true?” It’s the most important question your child must answer. Everything else your child does over the next few years will be determined by his or her answer to this question.

2. Family

Mark Twain once said: “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished by how much he’d learned in seven years.”

The fifth commandment tells you to “Honor your father and mother.” Honor your mother and father even if you think they’re ignorant, even if you don’t agree with their decision, even if you think they don’t understand, even if you think they don’t deserve it.  Honor means respect their position of authority as your parent and obey them. So teach your child how to do that by honoring your parents in a meaningful way.

3. Friends

Share with your child they will have a lot of peer pressure in high school.  Peer pressure can be a good thing…if it’s the right kind.  If it’s pressure to do good.

Let them know that it’s critical to choose right peers who pressure them to do the right things. The first 10 days of school will be important in choosing friends. You need to ask your child questions like: Who will you hang out with?  Who will you eat lunch with?  Who will you play sports with?  Encourage your child to find other students who believe what they believe and live like he or she lives.

4. Future

Want a bright future?  The great apostle Paul said, “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” Do everything to please and honor God.

Paul also said, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart…” Do everything with excellence.

Challenge your child to do everything with excellence. Homework? Do it with excellence. Sports? Do it with excellence. Mowing the yard? Do it with excellence.  Working? Do it with excellence.

Those are the 4 F’s that will help your child not just survive, but thrive through school and exit well—faith, family, friends, future.

In Jeremiah 29:11, God says to each of you, “For I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Carl McCunn did not have a plan.  He was stuck in the wilderness with no way out. Carl McCunn did not have an exit strategy. You do, and you can share it with your child. It’s a strategy that will prosper your child, a plan that will give your child hope and a future.

Over the past few days, I hope I’ve given you a clear picture of what it looks like to peer at the peak of success as a dad and how to lead your children on a path grounded on love.  When you know the seven essentials—Makeup, Mind-set, Motive, Method, Model, Message, Master—you’ll be able to love and lead your kids well and will leave behind a well-marked trail—a legacy—for your children, grandchildren, and future generations to follow. In this video, I’ll give you some critical things that you must know in order to leave behind a loving legacy for your children.

Key Points Recap:

• Men must know that being a dad is a life-long journey.
• Men must know that being a dad is our most important job
• Men must know that our mission of loving and leading our kids is all-important.
• Men must know that none of us will ever “arrive.” We’ll always be striving toward the goal of being an All Pro Dad.
• Men must know that they legacy of love we leave for our kids will affect not only our children, but generations to come.

I’d be honored if you joined me by taking the first step toward the peak of success as a dad and ordered my new book All Pro Dad: Seven Essentials to Be a Hero to Your Kids.

And here are the rest of the All Pro Dad Book Chapter Summaries.

We all live our lives for who or what we think gives us ultimate happiness—our master. Everything in the All Pro Dad book about how to be an All Pro Dad hangs on one question: Who or what are you living for? Your answer will reveal your master.  As I share in this video, knowing the one true Master is one of the seven essentials you must know.  In fact, it is the ultimate essential.

• All men must understand one thing…everything you do, everything, is driven by what you think will make you happy. Just as the earth revolves around the sun and keeps a constant orbit as a result of the gravitational pull of the sun, your life will revolve around what you depend on for happiness. The gravitational pull of the source of your happiness will be so strong that it will influence everything else you do, including what kind of father you’ll be. A man will live for what he thinks will make him ultimately happy.
• Everything in this book about how to be an All Pro Dad hangs on one question: Who or what are you living for? If you miss this, you miss everything. You’ve got to get this right to be the loving and leading dad your children need you to be.

Here are the rest of the All Pro Dad Book Chapter Summaries.

Everyone has a message. Maybe you’ve discovered your message; maybe you haven’t. Your message is an integral part of your life story. It’s something you have to say to the world. Knowing your Message is one of the seven essential Ms that I tackle in the new All Pro Dad book.

In this video, I share how your message is either born out of pleasure or pain. If you allow it, the pain you and your kids experience can be an intervening force to get the focus off what you want for yourselves and on to the needs of others.

• Your message is what you have to share with others. It’s the way you love others.
• Sometimes our message is born out of what gives us pleasure in our lives, but more often, it’s born out of what gives us pain. We all experience pain.  The question is, “What will I do with pain?” “Will I let it make me more focused on myself or on others?” If we let it, pain can be a “relational bonding agent.” The pain you’ve experienced in losing a job, losing a parent, divorce or alcoholism be turned into a passion and your passion into loving others who have gone through the same thing.
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Everyone can be great, because everyone can serve.” We need to show our kids that loving and serving others is our great eternal duty.

Here are the rest of the All Pro Dad Book Chapter Summaries.

Consistency is key in fatherhood. In your home life, work life, church life, social life, and online life, you should be a model of consistent behavior to your kids. You must also understand the principle of sowing and reaping. The seeds you sow into your relationship with your children will determine what you reap in return. As Tony Dungy and I share in this video, you should always strive to be a worthy model of integrity, humility, empathy, and courage to your children.  Knowing that you’re a Model to your kids is one of the seven essential Ms to be a hero to your kids that I address in my new All Pro Dad book.

• Consistency is key in fatherhood
• A father should also model integrity, humility and courage

Here are the rest of the All Pro Dad Book Chapter Summaries.

How can I better love my wife and children? That’s a question every dad must know the answer to.  In my new book, All Pro Dad, a man must know the Method to love and lead his family well.  It’s one of the seven essentials a father must know to be a hero to his kids.

Husbands can be prickly, irritable porcupines sometimes. Wives can too. It’s easy to love your spouse when they are sweet, kind, and lovable. But you need a methodology to love them when they’re porcupines.

You also need a method to love your sometimes porcupine kids. Building memorable monuments with your children will help you to love them well.

In this video, Tony Dungy and I talk about how to love our wife and kids well.

• It’s easy to love your wife and kids when they are kind and lovable, but how do you love them when they’re not, when they’re unlovable?  We must hug the porcupine.
• What does my relationship with my wife have to do with fatherhood? Everything! The most important thing you can do for your kids to love your wife well, even when she’s a porcupine.  In this chapter of the All Pro Dad book, I give some truths to help men to do that.
• I also give dads specific methods to show their love to their kids—how to build what I call “memorable monuments” in their kids’ lives.

Here are the rest of the All Pro Dad Book Chapter Summaries.

In every episode of the television show Law and Order: SVU, the special victims unit of the NYPD is searching for evidence so they can track down the perpetrator of the crime. They often find that evidence in the fingerprints on things that have been left behind, the fingerprints of someone who took something away from another. As fathers, we can leave a legacy of fingerprints behind that provide evidence of what we took from relationships, or we can leave a legacy of “loveprints” behind as evidence that we gave and gave and gave to our family and to others.

Why do you do what you do? Are you living your life to give or to get? Check out this video as I address these questions from the new All Pro Dad book and talk about one of the seven Ms that dads must know to be a hero to their kids—Motive.

• Winston Churchill once said, “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” As a dad, I need to constantly ask myself, “Am I living my life to give or to get?” When it comes to our kids, we need to ask “Why am I making this decision?” “Is it best for my child long-term or just a short-term fix that’s convenient for me?” “Is this activity something my child will enjoy or just something I want to do?”
• Motive is fundamentally a heart issue. We hear all the time, “follow your heart.” That’s a mistake.  The heart is deceitful; the heart is selfish. Don’t follow your heart; lead it so you can love your kids well. In this chapter of the All Pro Dad book, I will show you how to lead your heart and why that is important in your job as a dad.

Here are the rest of the All Pro Dad Book Chapter Summaries.

You have to understand your ultimate purpose and responsibilities in your job to do it well. What would you think of an executive if he didn’t know the mission of his company? What about a football coach who didn’t know the purpose for his team? What would your reaction be if a military general said he didn’t understand his objectives on the battlefield? If a manager was never given a job description, do you think he’d understand the responsibilities of his position? You’d expect all of them to fail, and in some cases, maybe even be fired, right?

Well, the same holds true in your job as a dad. In yesterday’s blog, I talked about the first essential M dads must know to be a hero to their kids. In this video, Tony Dungy and I discuss the second M from my book, All Pro Dad, that fathers must know—Mind-set—and we address a man’s most important job and his mission as a dad.

• The mind-set of many fathers is thinking that their job as a dad is to be just a provider and protector. An All Pro Dad needs to have a new Mind-set.
• Navy SEALS are physically and mentally tough. Their job and their mission are all-important.  A dad’s got to be mentally tough too and needs to have the mind-set that being a dad is his most important job and that his mission is all-important.
• Our biggest fear in life shouldn’t be failure; it should be succeeding at things in life that don’t matter.  A father’s mission matters. What is that mission? To love and lead our children.
• And father’s got to have clear goals to accomplish that mission. I talk about specific, practical goals that dads can use to accomplish that mission in Chapter 3 of All Pro Dad.

Fathers who are in their homes are working harder and putting in longer hours so they can do more for their children. They want to give them laptops, Xboxes, cell phones, designer clothes, and new cars. Why? Are they giving them gadgets to keep them preoccupied and more stuff to help them fit in? Are they trying to help them find their value according to our culture’s standards? They may be giving their kids what they think they want, but it’s not what they need.

What our children, and all of us, really need is to be able to answer this important question: “Who am I?” Tony Dungy and I will help you answer that question in the video below as we start exploring the seven essentials, 7Ms, to be a hero to your kids. The first M from my new book, All Pro Dad, that a man must know is his Makeup.

• To know your Makeup, you have to understand two things—your identity and your gifts.
• First, your identity. Your identity is who you are. It’s what makes you valuable. You are valuable because of who you are, not because of what you do.  You were created exclusively by God and for God. That’s your true identity.  And God doesn’t make junk. You were hand-made, custom-designed and fully loaded by God to do awesome things!
• Second, your gifts. Every man has incredible gifts. In this chapter of the All Pro Dad book, we’ll help men understand those gifts.
• So why is it so important to understand your value and gifts as a dad? You can only give to others what you’ve got. You need to understand yours so that you can validate your kids’ value and gifts.

Here are the rest of the All Pro Dad Book Chapter Summaries.