Reversing Your Potential As A Man

The McLetter
November 11, 2023

Masculine traits like accountability, ownership and purpose have gone down the tube in today’s modern society.

There’s a famous quote that illustrates this well:

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times”

In times of abundance, strong men are the first to go. We live in times where food, water and comfort are well taken care of. Yet more than ever, men are lacking purpose, direction and joy. This is leading to the total breakdown of our society. If we don't act fast, we will continue to follow the cycle of man and find our entire society drowning in hard times.

The Weak Man

But maybe this is wrong. Maybe we don’t need men anymore.

Of course, we needed strong men in the past when we had to defend against lions, tigers and other threats to our tribe. But we're not facing those threats anymore. So why do we even need masculinity? Maybe it's possible that the whole world should be feminine. Women should be feminine and men should be feminine.

The problem with this is that we are still hardwired to act in ways that made us joyful. In the same ways are ancestors had an instinct to protect and provide, so too do you. Do you not hear your inner voice telling you something is wrong?

When you're not getting up early, going to the gym and building your life's work, you feel unhappy, angry and upset. It leads to lack of identity, lack of purpose and eventually, mental illness.

As a man, you have desires. You want the nice car, the nice house, the beautiful wife, etc. But, above all else, you want freedom. The freedom to pursue what you want, when you want. The freedom to provide for your tribe and protect those you care about. It’s your mission. Your reason for being on this earth.

When your desire doesn’t pull you towards this purpose. You know something’s wrong. Every time you miss a workout, don't work on your hustle and drink alcohol instead of working on your purpose, your inner voice makes you pay. Do this long enough and you’re at total odds with yourself. The last thing you want is to be on your death bed, filled with regret about what you could’ve or should’ve done.

The goal is to be on your death bed, with your children and your children's children surrounding you. You want to remember all the wonderful moments spent with them and gifts you provided to the world.

You will reflect on the things you built and the time you spent. You'll wonder, “Did I spend my time the way I wanted to spend it?”

If you as a man don't embrace baseline masculine qualities like ownership, authenticity and purpose, you will live a life of regret. It will become more and more painful the longer you travel down this road.

Suffer

Fortunately, you are never to late to start. You can start right now, in this moment. Part of being a man is being present. As Tony Soprano said, "‘remember when’ is the lowest form of conversation".

As a man you always need to be present, looking forward. What can you use at your disposal now, to get to where you want to be. Use that information to take action.

When you take action, you may fail. But you will be building skills in the process. You will be gaining XP for core masculine traits. Traits like embracing uncomfortability, discipline, presence, strength, etc. will start to level up. The real path to joy comes from the day in, day out grind towards your purpose as a man.

In order to pursue your purpose as a man, you need to level up your masculine traits. You have to put in the hard work everyday. You have to suffer.

And you have to be smart about it. Sacrifice things that feel good in the moment for things that will bring results in the future. It feels good to munch on a piece of banana bread first thing in the morning when you wake up. But waiting until 12pm, doing fasted cardio and then having that treat is more rewarding and brings you more joy.

Anything I've ever done in my life that's been rewarding, has been hard. As I write this, I have a solid physique, one that I am proud of. But it took years of going to the gym, eating a lot of protein and missing out on parties. All of these were sacrifices. I sacrificed those moments of temporary happiness in the past, for the joy of having the physical presence I wanted today. And this sacrifice will continue so I can enjoy it long into the future.

Recognize that if you want to obtain your dream (physique, career, wife, etc.) you will need to make sacrifices in the now. It’s a conscious decision you need to make right now. If you want to wake up early tomorrow morning, you need to make that decision now. If this sounds like something you want, then here are some actionable steps on what that might look like for you.

Level Up Your Character

After years of exploring the best ways to maximize your energy for future success on achieving your goals, here is my current process:

1) Identify Your Purpose

You need to figure out why you are here on this earth. What is your purpose for being here? If in this moment, you don’t know, then your purpose is finding that out. This might take a while and that’s ok. I am still in a process of self discovery. It’s hard, I know it’s hard, so I enjoy the ups and downs of it because that’s the point.

Talk to people you find interesting. Look at your watch history on YouTube. Are you watching videos about the gym, diet, basketball, football, etc.? If so write that down. If you don’t know what your purpose is, write down a list of 25 things that you want to try and cross them off the list, one at a time. Which of those 25 things felt natural to you? If you enjoyed none of them, then write down another 25 things and try them. Continue this process and you will move closer towards your purpose.

2) Write down your goals

A goal is something you are moving towards. In Football (the American version) the goal post signals the place that the offense wants to be. Write down where you want to be. What do you want to accomplish? If the gym is the thing you want to pursue, write down what you want.

Be extremely specific.

Do you want to look a certain way? Is there a certain physique you want to have? Do you want to look more like Arnold from The Terminator or Brad Pitt from Fight Club? Find someone who has the physique you want, print out that picture and tape it to the mirror in your bathroom.

Get extremely clear on what your dream life looks like in the next 5 years.

3) Break down your goals into daily habits

Figure out what you have to do on a daily basis in order to get what you want. Maybe you don’t know and you have to seek out that information. Figure out the workouts and habits of the people that have what you want.

Build you daily routine that will create the progress towards your goal.

For example, to achieve your dream physique, your Monday might look like waking up a little earlier, going to the gym, doing 15 sets of chest and eating 180 grams of protein. If you consistently cross out the items on your list, every day, then your goals will become reality.

4) Do the work, fight through the obstacles 

Now the hard part.

The first 3 parts are sexy. It feels good to write down your goals. It feels good to daydream about what your life will look like or feel like when you’ve achieved your dreams.

It doesn’t feel good when your alarm clock goes off at 6:30am and you have to embrace the suck of getting out of bed in order to make the vision on your whiteboard a reality. But this is life. This is what you must accept to level up your character and live a life of joy. The joy comes from doing what you say you’re going to do on a daily basis.

5) Make Sacrifices 

Making sacrifices will give you back extra energy that allows you to fight through obstacles.

Dopamine is the reward chemical. When you experience that “feel good” energy, that’s dopamine releasing in your brain.

Our ancestors received dopamine when they did something successful, like kill a buffalo, which took hours of hard work. Today, you can get cheap dopamine with things like soda, alcohol, video games, nicotine, etc. with no hard work at all.

The problem is, dopamine is finite but renewable. It renews itself (through things like rest, walks and yoga), but you only have so much of it per day, week, month, etc. So, if you do easy things you exhaust your supply of dopamine, it harder to get out of bed when the alarm goes off at 6:30am.

The more sacrifices of easy dopamine you are able to make, the easier it becomes to do hard things, like daily tasks, that create actual progress towards your goals.

6) Dream Big

What you think is possible, is far outside your imagination. Your first goal might be to build your dream physique.

Then you build it and your like, “what’s next?”

Why not help your best friend build their dream physique? Maybe you decide you want all your friends to build their dream physique. Now you have a community of guys leveling up and pursuing their purpose.

This is how society becomes strong once again. This is how we reverse the cycle of man and create prosperous times.

Good Times, Strong Men.

All of this starts with you.

Hope this edition got your Saturday started off the right foot. As always - Let’s Get it Brother!

The very best,

Matt Mc

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