Where is your King?

Where is your King?

Hi, everybody. Dmitri here. 

I’ve been hearing this question a lot in men’s groups lately: “Where is your king?” And it’s actually a great question, because it can help focus you on what’s truly important to you when you’re having a difficult time. So I want to talk about it for just a couple minutes here. 

First off, this question, “Where is your king?”

When do we find ourselves asking this question?

We find ourselves asking this question when someone is having a hard time and complaining about some kind of a hard time. At least, this is what I see in the men’s groups that I’ve been in. 

A man may be complaining about his job, some difficulty at work. Or being out of work and being discouraged. Or a relationship issue, something like that. And the guy will be complaining about it and someone will ask, “Hey, where is your King?”

Asking this question is a way to help someone step out of this, “I am a victim of my experience of life” mode, and to step into, “I’m the sovereign of my existence” mode. “Where is your king?” is a way of asking for that transition. 

But I want to drill that question down a little bit more, because it’s a hard one to answer. Let’s make it a little easier.

If you want to find your King in a situation where you are overwhelmed or stressed or having difficulty, a great question to ask is,

“How do I want to be in the face of these circumstances, exactly the way they are?”

So if I’m complaining to my support group and saying, “Well, you know, my wife is late all the time and she makes me late and it’s humiliating, and it’s upsetting, and it makes me really angry and I’m really pissed off about it,” someone might say, “Hey, where’s your King?”

And the question is, “How do you want to be in the face of her being late and making you late?” 

And that puts me back in my kingship because I’ll say,

“The way I want to be is, I want to be the husband who extends the hand to his wife, and who is loving and supportive, so that we get back to being a team."

That’s the way I want to be.

And I want you to get the way that question shifts me from saying, “I’m mad at my wife and I just want to complain about it,” to saying, “Oh—I want to be a resource to my wife. I want to be an inspiration about it.”

So that’s the first power of asking yourself, “How do I want to be in this situation?”

Or say there’s a problem at work. It’s super stressful, there’s a lot going on, it’s overwhelming. Or—what often happens to us in life—we really get into complaint mode because more than one super-overwhelming thing is going on: “Oh, I’m having a breakup, and work is falling apart, and I’ve had a cold for three weeks.” This is when we really start to collapse in on ourselves, and lose track of our King.

And so in men’s groups if I’m complaining about that, a guy might ask, again, “Where is your King?” And so the way to think of that question is, “How do you want to be in the face of all this actually happening in your life? How do you want to be?” 

So you might say, “How I want to be is I want to be at peace and I want to be calm. I want to be somebody who spends more time on self care during these difficult times. I want to be somebody who sits in meditation and takes a hot bath and find ways to experience love for myself.” 

And so what I want you to get is the shift. It’s easy to complain—and we should complain, right? An old teacher of mine used to say, “The rule of pain is to complain.” We want to complain and be heard.

But when you're done complaining, ask yourself, “How do you want to be in the face of this circumstance?”

That will bring your king or your queen energy online and focus you really on what’s best about you.

Now, I may not know how to be the guy who’s at peace when a million terrible things are going on, but I can start that process. And the way I start that process is by knowing that it is something that I desire. 

This is my challenge to you in this:

Any time you find yourself complaining, think about something in your life that’s really bothering you and ask yourself, “How do I want to be in the face of this circumstance?” Not, “I want it to go away”—it is this way—but “How do I want to be in the face of it?”

And start allowing yourself to pursue being that way.

That's the path of a King. 

Hey, if you’re here, maybe leave a comment, let me know that you saw this. And good luck being in your king, or being in your queen.