Choosing Your Models Carefully

Why It Matters

You are, right now, being formed. Every day, every year, you are becoming a certain kind of person — and the person you become will be shaped, more than you realize, by what you spend time paying attention to. The music you love, the stories you follow, the people you watch and read about and think about — all of these things are quietly training you. They are not forcing you to be anything. But they are shaping what you find admirable, what you find desirable, what you think success looks like.

Most of this happens without a decision. You absorb the models that your culture puts in front of you — the celebrities and athletes and influencers and characters from movies who you see day after day. And there is nothing automatically wrong with any individual person in that category. But there is something worth thinking about in the aggregate: if all the people you most admire are famous and wealthy and entertaining, what does that suggest about what you believe a successful life looks like?

This lesson is about making the selection of your models into a deliberate act rather than a passive one. Not by rejecting popular culture or refusing to admire anyone famous, but by asking yourself — honestly and regularly — who the people are that you most want to be like, and why. That question, taken seriously, is one of the most powerful tools of character formation available to you.

A Story

The Two Posters

Rowan had two posters on his bedroom wall. One was a famous soccer player — one of the best in the world — who could do things with a ball that seemed to violate physics. Rowan had watched hundreds of hours of his highlights. He could describe his stats with the fluency of a commentator. The other poster was a photograph of his great-uncle Aldous, who had been a civil rights attorney in the 1960s, who had taken cases no one else would take, who had won some and lost some, and who had died at sixty-four, not wealthy, not famous, but respected by the people who knew what he had done.

His mother had put the Aldous photograph up when Rowan was eight. At the time he had not understood it. Now he was eleven, and he had asked his mother to tell him more. She told him stories over several evenings: the time Aldous had driven through a county where his presence was actively dangerous to file a brief for a client the system was trying to ignore. The time he had worked without pay for eight months on a case he was not sure he could win. The time a judge had treated him with contempt in open court, and Aldous had responded with exact, measured dignity, and won anyway.

Rowan looked at his two posters and tried to think honestly about what they were doing to him. The soccer player was extraordinary — the best in the world at something genuinely worth being the best at. But what Rowan admired about him was skill and fame. And when he thought about trying to be like him, the thought that came next was always: I'm not built that way. I'll never be that.

When he thought about trying to be like Aldous, different thoughts came. Aldous had not had a supernatural gift — he had been talented, yes, but what made him remarkable was what he did with what he had: the choices, the commitments, the willingness to show up in situations that scared him. When Rowan thought about that, he did not think: I could never do that. He thought: I wonder if I could do something like that.

He didn't take the soccer poster down. He still loved the sport. But he understood now that the two posters were doing different things to him — one was inspiring him toward something he admired from a distance, and one was quietly forming him toward something he might actually become. He started paying more attention to the second kind of inspiration. He started looking for more of it.

Vocabulary

Model

A person whose life or character you use as an example to shape your own — consciously or unconsciously. Models are more than people you admire; they are people whose lives teach you something about how to live.

Formation

The slow process of becoming a certain kind of person — shaped by habits, choices, attention, and the people you spend time with or think about. Formation is usually gradual, and much of it happens without you noticing.

Aspiration

A strong desire to achieve or become something. Your aspirations are shaped by your models: what you admire is usually what you aspire to.

Deliberate

Done on purpose, with thought and intention — not accidentally or by default. Deliberately choosing your models means making that choice consciously rather than just absorbing whoever the culture puts in front of you.

Canon

An established collection of works or figures considered especially important and worthy of study. Creating a personal 'canon' of admired people is a way of intentionally shaping your own formation.

Guided Teaching

Here is a principle worth knowing: you become like the things you attend to. Not magically or automatically, but gradually, through a process of imitation that is mostly unconscious. The people you watch carefully, whose decisions you analyze, whose style you absorb — these people shape your imagination of what is possible and desirable. This is sometimes called formation: the slow process of being shaped into a certain kind of person.

Most formation happens without anyone deciding it should. The culture around you puts certain people in front of you constantly — through entertainment, social media, advertising, sports coverage, celebrity news — and you absorb them whether you intend to or not. There is nothing wrong with enjoying popular culture. But if you never examine who you're absorbing and what you're being formed toward, you will be shaped entirely by other people's decisions about who should be famous.

The question this lesson puts to you is: Who do you want to be formed by? Not 'who do you find entertaining' — that's a different question. But who do you want to walk away from with something real: a sense of what courage looks like, or what faithfulness costs, or what honest speech in a difficult room sounds like? These are the people worth thinking about carefully. These are the people worth deliberately choosing as models.

Rowan noticed that his two posters did different things to him. One inspired admiration at a distance — wonder at a skill he would never have. The other formed him toward something he might actually become. Both forms of admiration have value. But the second form is more useful for character formation, because it presents a human life as something learnable rather than something that required a supernatural gift.

Here is a practical invitation: build a personal canon of heroes. Not a list of the most famous people you have heard of, but a list of the people — some famous, some not, some historical, some alive today, some people you personally know — whose specific qualities or choices have shown you something worth growing toward. Update this list as you learn more. Ask yourself regularly: Am I admiring this person for who they are, or for how they appear? The answer to that question tells you a great deal about what you're being formed toward.

A note about faith: Christian tradition has always maintained that the ultimate model for a human life is not any human being but Christ himself — and that all human models are valuable insofar as they point toward, or reflect, something of what it means to live rightly under God. This means that your canon of heroes should always be held open to revision, always checked against deeper standards, and never allowed to become a substitute for the ongoing work of seeking what is genuinely good. The goal of choosing good models is not to have the right list of people — it is to train your eye to see goodness wherever it genuinely appears.

For Discussion

1. 1.What is the difference between admiring someone from a distance and being formed by someone's character?
2. 2.Rowan noticed that his two posters did different things to him. What were those differences?
3. 3.If you looked at who you currently spend the most time reading about, watching, and thinking about — what does that suggest about what you believe a successful life looks like?
4. 4.What is a personal 'canon' of heroes? What would yours include?
5. 5.Is it possible to admire a celebrity's talent without being formed by it toward the wrong things? How?
6. 6.What does it mean that all human models should be 'held open to revision' and 'checked against deeper standards'?
7. 7.Who in your life — not famous, but personally known — has shown you something worth growing toward?
8. 8.What would it mean to choose your models deliberately rather than just absorbing whoever the culture puts in front of you?

Practice

Build Your Canon

1. 1.Think about five people whose lives or character you genuinely admire — at least two of them should not be famous, and at least two should be historical figures.
2. 2.For each person, write one sentence about what specifically you admire: not 'they were great' but what particular quality or choice or pattern of life you find worth emulating.
3. 3.Now ask yourself honestly: Does admiring this person inspire me toward my own growth? Or does it mainly produce wonder at someone else's gift that I don't share?
4. 4.For the people who inspire growth rather than just wonder: what specific thing about their character could you actually work toward?
5. 5.Write one sentence completing this prompt: 'The kind of person I want to be formed into is someone who ___.' Let your list of models inform that sentence.

Memory Questions

1. 1.What is 'formation,' and how do your models contribute to it?
2. 2.What is the difference between the two kinds of admiration Rowan felt about his two posters?
3. 3.Why is it important to choose your models deliberately rather than just absorbing whoever the culture puts in front of you?
4. 4.What is a personal 'canon,' and how would you build one?
5. 5.Why should even the best human models be 'held open to revision and checked against deeper standards'?
6. 6.Name one person — not famous — who has shown you something worth growing toward.